Cath Counihan (@psychotherapy_mum) on perfectionism in motherhood and shifting the narrative
This was SUCH a great chat with Cath - we touched on all of this and more:
Aligning our values alongside our parenting
Taking the pressure off being a cycle breaker
Parenting as a performance and relation to our own shame stories
Seeing our kids for who they are and having the congidence to advocate for them
How our childhood impacts our parenting and perfectionism
How perfectionism can impact our relationship with baby sleep
Celebrating our own wins in parenting
Expanding our window of tolerance in parenting and worst case scenario planning
You can find Cath here:
Insta: @psychotherapy_mum
Podcast: Grow Yourself Up
https://catherinecounihan.co.uk/
Hey Mama, I have a Sleep Guide for you! For birth to 18 months, this guide is steeped in evidence and laced with compassion. And you can download the first chapter absolutely free HERE.
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As always, thanks for being here- if you enjoy this poddy I would LOVE if you could give a rating and a review. It means the world to me.
xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:05
Hello love and welcome to the mama chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shirts and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Fiona Weaver, founder of mama matters, and through honest chats with experts and each other, will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. Wherever and whoever you are. You belong here. Now, let's have a chat
Fiona Weaver 00:43
Hello, my love's I hope you are well, I have been MIA for the last couple of weeks because I just you know, you know how it goes. I dropped some balls. And sometimes the podcast is a ball that I drop. And that's okay. I am here I am back. I have an amazing chat to share with you today. I actually recorded this literally this morning. I am away at the moment. And I was able to get up superduper early and interview Kath Carnahan who is in London. So the time difference makes it quite difficult for us to work it out at home with kids around, but I'm away. So it has felt really amazing to be able to coordinate that. Whilst I'm by myself. I have always dreamt of just taking a night away and just working uninterrupted and working into the night and working in the morning. And I found this Airbnb in Casuarina. I will share it on my socials. But holy moly, I am home. I love it here and I want to do this once a month. I find it really difficult. We're a one car family. So thinking about how other people are running around. In my absence for school and candy pickups and drop offs and things I find that really hard.
Fiona Weaver 02:02
And I FaceTimed my kids last night and my daughter, my four year old daughter was just sad. She just missed me she looks like she looked like she was just grieving. It was hard.
Fiona Weaver 02:14
But this has been incredible for my soul, my husband gets golf time. This is what my
Fiona Weaver 02:22
soul time looks like. So if you have been thinking about it, if you have the capacity to do it, I am giving you the gentle nudge because this has been amazing. I want to do it every week. One of the reasons I came away was because I am working on a project and I am almost ready to share it with you. And that is the membership the mumma matters membership community. I have been thinking about this for years, and I am finally putting it all together, it is going to be affordable, it's going to be really community focused and focused on building connections, supporting one another having a really safe space to complain that you're tired and know that no sleep training things will get thrown at you. We are going to really be working on owning our imperfections as mothers and parenting authentically and breaking free from the shoulds of modern motherhood. And of course, there will be a lot that comes back to sleep in there as well. So you'll have a place to ask me all of your questions. We'll have live q&a days, we will have a really active Facebook community group. We will have monthly master classes sometimes by me sometimes by our guests, we have guest interviews, we have a resource hub full of little tip sheets and tricks and tips, tricks and tips and
Fiona Weaver 03:45
and workshops and up it's going to be great. I am inviting you to be a founder with me. This means that we kind of build it out together, you'll get it at a price that you won't get again, but you will be locked into it. So I won't be this price. Next time I launch it. It means that you get to help me create what you need, which is really exciting. I want it to be a real collaboration. So it's called coming home. And I want it to be about coming home to yourself coming home to your new community coming home to your values coming home to your kids, all of that and I really hope that that conveys a really safe nurturing fun space for you. So this is coming next Tuesday. Please make sure you're on my mailing list and I will share it all with you.
Fiona Weaver 04:33
Anyway, enough about me. I am going to talk to you about my friend calf. So Catherine Han is an integrative psychotherapist working in private practice in London. She has the most incredible accent. She didn't write that in her bio, but that's just my opinion. She's the mother of twin girls and one of her areas of expertise is the intersection between our own trauma and our parenting. Calf specializes in complex trauma, perfectionism, nervous system healing
Fiona Weaver 05:00
Shifting dysfunctional patterns in our families and re parenting. Her passion is to shift shame and help each client gain an embodied sense of being good enough. Kath has done a lot of her own personal work and her own trauma therapy prior to kids. And despite this was set back to emotional ground zero by motherhood. Kath hosts a weekly podcast grow yourself up focused on how we can learn to tend to ourselves in adulthood when we have not had our needs met as children, and the challenges of doing this as we parent. She also writes has taught at the Bowlby center in London, and will begin teaching for the International attachment network in 2023. She has more than a decade of clinical experience and had a previous career in financial services. I thoroughly love this chat with Cath and I'm not going to talk to you anymore. I am going to let you devour this conversation and I hope you have lots of aha moments and really helpful takeaways. So enjoy. Good morning Kath. Welcome to mama chatters I'm so pleased to have you here. Thank you so much, Fiona, thanks for having me. It's just such a joy to be here. I've been wanting you on for so long. I listened to your podcast with Dr. Sophy Brock. And that was where I first found you because I don't think I followed you on Instagram before that. And I loved the chat that you had with Dr. Sophy. I can't remember what the what the overarching theme was. But I really enjoyed you guys sharing your stories of parenting and parenting as a performance and perfectionism and parenting and all of that. Yeah, I think that I joined Sophie to talk about perfectionism and shame, which are two of my favorite topics. And
Cath 06:37
I think many of us, you know, we develop perfectionism as a coping strategy in our childhoods. And it often seems that we're doing really well in life. Because often, you know, you do really well in your career with perfectionism. And
Cath 06:53
it's, it's like, it's something that helps you achieve, and another hood, it's just really decimating. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's sort of what we're going to speak to today. We, we are talking about how perfectionism shows up in motherhood and how we can sort of gently push back against that or nurture ourselves through that. So I'm really looking forward to today's chat. It is five o'clock in the morning here, and I think it's seven is at seven o'clock. pm in London. Yes, yes.
Fiona Weaver 07:23
So it's really nice to be able to finally connect with you. Okay, so please introduce yourself to those who don't know you, who's Kath Kernaghan.
Cath 07:36
So I'm impressed use you pronounce my surname correctly? Thank you, because I listen to your podcast.
Cath 07:43
Ah, do I say my name.
Cath 07:48
So, I'm a psychotherapist and integrative psychotherapist, I work in private practice in London. This is my second career actually, I've been doing it for about
Cath 08:01
emphasis is my 12th year of seeing clients. Prior to this, I worked in financial services. Well, I I retrained I left financial services. But I am very interested in the intersection between our own childhoods and any trauma and water and wounding and traumatic stress we had in childhood, and how that manifests in our parenting. And it's my belief that there's a lot more wounding and trauma out there, which makes parenting so much harder. And so I focus a lot on that intersection, from like a strength based perspective, not that it's kind of a life sentence or anything, but it does mean we have a more sensitized nervous system, and that really close out a lot. And in terms of how hard or difficult we find parenting, I mean, parenting is really hard, but,
Cath 09:01
and some of that trauma is so invisible to the naked. I mean, people might think that they have not experienced any trauma, but trauma can be you know, emotional trauma, attachment, trauma, all of that. Hey, yeah, yeah.
Cath 09:17
I mean, I think that's the most emotional emotional neglect, which we previously wouldn't have labeled emotional neglect, emotional, but what we now call childhood emotional neglect, and things like emotional abuse, where you may have a very, say, narcissistic or emotionally immature, parent. Those are, those are exceptionally widespread and devastating in their impacts. And often it's not. So think about it. It's not what actually happened to you. It's what you didn't get. Which makes it even harder because it's difficult to see what you didn't Get?
Cath 10:01
Yes. And so and sometimes people don't necessarily want to see that in their parents as well, if they have really fond, you know, memories of their childhood and whatnot, it can be quite confronting and difficult to realize that in the first instance, and then it can feel quite liberating and empowering. Yes, just work to be done. Isn't that really true?
Cath 10:22
And I think that I remember having a discussion with my own therapist about this about, okay, who can I blame now, like wanting to blame someone for some of the struggles and wounds that I have. And certainly there is stuff I can directly blame my parents for. But there's also a lot of stuff which is generational, which they got from their parents, and what their parents got from their parents, which, you know, we can't blame we'd have to blame back through the generations. And there's just no point. And so that can be quite sort of comforting in a way that I do believe that most parents do the best they can, with the toolkit they have. Yeah. So most do it excluding categories of like violence and sexual abuse,
Cath 11:19
our generation is in a position where we are starting to poke holes in all of this, all of these narratives and all of these generational patterns that have been handed down. And that's amazing, because we are doing the work, essentially. But it also places a lot of pressure on us to break these generational cycles and to, again, do the work. I'm reluctant to use that term now. Because I feel like there's so much pressure to, to fix everything or change everything in one generation and knowing that we can't, or we don't need to change everything in one generation, but we're bringing awareness to it. And that's how things do Shift.
Cath 12:02
Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's such an important point of view, no, because we can't, like if we consider the background of perfectionism, many of us will then think, right, I need to, like, break all the cycles, and do this perfectly. So my children don't have to recover from being parented by me. But really, we need a much gentler approach to think that, okay, I can bring awareness to this, but because I've can't be perfect, there's absolutely no ways I can break all the cycles. And I always think it's a good idea to focus on things that feel like really important to our luck with our own values, like I was hit a lot as a child, you know, like, hit with a ruler, or things like that, and many people were. And so that felt like an important cycle for me to break, not to hit my children, we can't do it all. And we have to pick, you know, in some families, like diet, culture was so big that food was really controlled, and there was no, no liberty or ability to exercise your own appetite. So that might be for someone who is recovering from an eating disorder, a really important thing for them to break a cycle around. But it's so individual. Yeah, and I really want to give like a strong message of we cannot, it's a place of power to be a cycle breaker, but we cannot break all the cycles, we can leave some for the next generations.
Fiona Weaver 13:28
Yeah, leave some for your kids to work out there. I think that can be a real universal parenting. Role strategy technique is to come back to your values. So like you're saying, come back to your values as to what is really important for you to not do with your kids that was done for done with you. And focus on that, and the rest can wait or the rest can just be the second priority. And then it's the same when we're making any parenting decisions or sifting through any advice or information that we see online, it's you have if you are familiar with your values, and your negotiables and your non negotiables in parenting, then you can always bring it back to that.
Cath 14:07
I love that point. Because I think that it can be so easy to like pay attention to the next trend or the next thing that you feel you need to do. But if we can keep grounding back into like, actually what makes my heart sing and what's important for my family, cultural, our family culture. Then you've always got like a guideline.
Fiona Weaver 14:31
Well, we've got the mapped ie the framework, and it takes a little while I know it has for me anyway. I feel like even just recently. I mean, I've been far more confident in the last few years of parenting versus having a new baby for the first time. But even more so recently just feeling liberated from the shoulds of parenting, the rules of parenting and really real really tuning to what works for our family what works for our individual kids and just owning that with confidence there's I don't know what the shift is, but it feels liberating and just to be letting go of all of this getting it right doing it right perfectionism and parenting it's it's, it can feel stifling
Cath 15:18
is so stifling. I really agree with you. And I think that what you said about doing what's right for your individual children and your individual family. That's like, focusing on what each child actually needs and honoring those relationships. Like it's the most beautiful gift for that child that's really seeing them. And it often doesn't fit in with, with what we think is like, perfect, you know, or is our child perfectly behaved? Or do they have perfect table manners? All of that stuff is so it's so superficial. Yeah, the time I think,
Cath 15:56
I always think back to Dr. Shefali, is work on parenting, parenting with the ego. And I noticed that I pick up on that when we my husband, and I might be, you know, worrying about something or thinking about something. And I'm like, that's, that's the ego. That's our ego. Talking. That's not actually about our kids.
Cath 16:18
Yes, yes. So I think I would call that your she languages, ego. And I would say that, that's when our own that we often want to pull on perfectionism and control when our own sense of shame gets attached. So when we feel like we need to prove something,
Cath 16:39
or like, show somehow, like, look at us, we look good, and our kids look good.
Cath 16:46
It's actually our own sense of not feeling good enough that gets touched, and then we want to pull on trying to perform or get to perform. I mean, I noticed that happening for me.
Fiona Weaver 16:56
Yeah, yeah, I noticed that too. But even when you kind of change the rules when you're around people, I noticed that we had somebody to stay. This was a while ago, and she was not a distant relative, but not, you know, my close family who I feel super comfortable with. And she was staying with us. And we have a small place. And it's always a little bit unsettling, especially for the big one who's quite sensitive, he gets put out of joint a little bit. And she was just on Him about everything. And then I would be more on him about, you know, washing hands and things that were quite relaxed around. We don't get him to wash his hand 10 times a day. And things that aren't actually real values to us. My kids do wash their hands, by the way, after they use the toilet. But you know what I mean? Like we don't, it's just not our failing daughters
Cath 17:52
good. Daddy's good,
Fiona Weaver 17:55
like rebellious children. And that's okay. It's working for them. I actually feel like I don't recognize my daughter if she doesn't have a dirty face. Like it's just so part of her identity. But then I felt really guilty about
Cath 18:07
that microbiome. That's right. Yeah.
Fiona Weaver 18:12
Yeah, but afterwards, I felt I actually apologized to him like, though you should and he said the rules are different. And I said, Yeah, sorry. That's just that's, that's my stuff. We're good. You do you
Cath 18:25
what beautiful reflection from your son. I noticed that, especially if I'm taking my children. I've got two very enthusiastic, joyful kind of children who like Tada, it's really like we've arrived there, quiet sort of little sort of in the in the corner things. And I remember taking into a gym class, and when they were much littler. And in the gym class, it wasn't a massive gymnasium with all this amazing equipment, like trampolines and all these different things. And they were supposed to queue up and listen to the teacher and do the things and they were always wanting to explore the rest of the class, or the rest of the equipment. And I landed up never wanting to go to the class because I felt that everyone was looking at me that I couldn't control these people. And they were like, so like, wild and and it was because I felt that they were like I was actually projecting onto them. My sense of not being good enough. And thinking all the mothers would think I've got disrupted children. And I spoke to the teacher and she was like, no, they're so young. You know, that's fine. I expect them to do that. But I really had to kind of get that reassurance for me. I think it's so kind of really tending to ourselves so that we could let them be children is so important.
Fiona Weaver 19:41
Yeah. And do you reflect in those moments of what it was like in your childhood? Did you have to be on your best behavior and and you know, seen and not heard? Yes,
Cath 19:51
well, I am. Yes, I learned I had a brother who died of caught death when I was three. So I really learned then to be very that's like a lot of my sort of some of my story about to be good and to be helpful and and eldest of four. And so I was very, very, like precocious and old beyond my years and very good, basically. Yeah. So I think I was so good that I didn't have to be kind of. I was like, over good because of some of those early experiences. But I think what you're talking about, I think so many of us didn't actually really have a childhood.
Fiona Weaver 20:41
Yeah, I agree.
Cath 20:42
We would just we learned we had to be good. And, like emotionally neat.
Fiona Weaver 20:49
Yeah. Not getting the way not not take up too much space. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, because I have stories about gymnastics as well with my daughter. And she loves it. Like, she's four. And she loves it. And she's naturally quite good at it. She's just, she's just got the got the neck, she enjoys it. And she was in a class with all the toddlers. And we just went around with the circuits with the parents, and she would have fun. But she kind of grew out of it. And one of the coaches came in, invited her to her class with once she was four. And she said, this is an invite only class, she's really like, I really want her in my class. And I didn't really understand what it meant. But she loved that coach. So I was like, Yeah, of course. And she was ready to move on. And then she went into this class, and it was, I didn't realize it was getting them comp ready for next year, she's literally just turned four. And so it's a lot of strengthening and a lot of waiting your turn and you know, sitting down quietly until you have the turn to climb the rope. And she now hates gymnastics. And she, this is also a class where you hand them off to the coach and you go and sit behind a window and let the coach do the work. Which is fine for many kids, but my daughter is slow to warm. And if that was I've pulled her out of that. Now we're just trying to find somewhere that she can have fun. But she, if that had been my son who was also slow to warm, I would have felt so much discomfort with the push and pull of feeling like I needed to leave him with the coach and look relaxed and chilled as a parent and confident versus knowing that he will not take to that and he will not feel comfortable. Whereas with with Sally, because she's She's three years behind noxee. So I have the wisdom from noxee that I could feel confident say she's slow to warm, she doesn't feel comfortable yet. And she was acting silly. And you could tell that the coach was kind of like, you know, come on back up. And I was saying she's uncomfortable. That's why she's that she's just uncomfortable. She's not comfortable in this situation. And I will, you know, see if she warms up and I will gradually ease back. But at the moment, I need to do it with her. And I could advocate for myself because I had that, that that wisdom, perhaps from doing it with noxee. But it takes a lot of assertiveness and strength and sitting with that own your own discomfort of potentially being judged for maybe being overparenting or overbearing or involved. When, but I knew that that's what she needed.
Cath 23:37
Yeah, that's I love that story. Because I think you're absolutely right, that thing about we have to advocate for the Booker's. They can't.
Fiona Weaver 23:45
And it's just comfortable. There's the
Cath 23:50
Yeah, exactly. And, and we can sue that discomfort. And but it takes it's that takes a lot of awareness what you're talking about right there, you know that you had enough awareness to be to be able to sit with your discomfort and just do that for yourself. Because I think that because of the way many of us grew up, in those situations, we feel we need to hand over to the coach. And that often is a part of our perfectionism that at what part of people pleasing, I guess that we need the coach to be pleased with us? So we actually abandon our children?
Fiona Weaver 24:25
Yeah, which might ease a little bit of our discomfort at the time, but it always catches up. Yes. And it's damaging to the relationship and it's damaging to our own confidence in
Cath 24:35
and I would rather be I mean, I totally know what you mean, because at the same gym class, as they progressed, they also wanted to do initially we were in the room, and then they wanted us to be behind or out of the hall, this massive Hall. And I basically said no, and put my foot down and said, I will be here, you know, for a bit longer and I was the only mother who did that. And I did have that feeling of like god I'm so difficult Huh. But anyway,
Fiona Weaver 25:02
yeah, I hear you. It's hard, isn't it. And I remember being so slow to warm as a kid to I have memories of sitting on the side of the pool and not going in and my mom feeling. I remember her being patient but frustrated with me, because I was just so scared to take that plunge. Oh, that's a pool pump. But I needed so much time to warm up myself. So I can empathize. But I also am careful not to project that onto them, maybe.
Cath 25:38
But I also think that it's it just goes back to that thing of, of always seen for how we are and are we allowed to be how we are. Because we, like many of us are slow to warm, or we're shy, or we need more support in getting used to a school setting or something. And I wish we taught parents more, your only job here is to is to meet the child's needs and to help them feel safe and secure. You don't need the childcare provider to be pleased with you. But that's not how we sort of set up. So no, I talk about this on this podcast with you because then we can give moms like a real boost to say like,
Fiona Weaver 26:27
precaution basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that is that is your biggest job is to be the the bigger, stronger, wiser kind person in your child's life to advocate for them and see them for who they truly are and support them in learning life. When you when you speak about perfectionism, we've kind of touched on what that might look like. And a lot of it might come from having to, you know, perform as a child is be on our best behavior and be small and things like that. But can you speak a little bit more to perfectionism how that shows up in motherhood.
Cath 27:08
Okay, so we can kind of conceptualize of perfectionism as this idea that we have trying to meet, ever changing set of Annecy of unattainable and unrealistic expectations. So I think it's it. You don't have to be a perfectionist in all areas of your life. You know, many of us are. Like, I'm a perfectionist in the area, I guess of work. And somewhat in parenting, I've really put a really worked on not being like that and parenting. But like, for example, I've got a really messy house. I'm not. I'm not a perfectionist in terms of mess. But and so for some of your listeners, just you know, you don't, it's not that you'll be perfectionist and on all of your life, because I think often there's this idea that in motherhood, if you've got a really clean house, that means you're a perfectionist. But it's a lot more around like the standards we hold ourselves to, and also the standards we hold others to or how we expect them to behave. Because we often are very tied to our children in ways that we think that behavior is all about us. So in perfectionism, that can mean certain motherhood, it can be that you feel that you need to make all their food from scratch, or puree, all these organic vegetables or you need to have someone who sleeps perfectly. And by that, I mean they do like seven to seven, or they are always sharing, you know, so when you have people over, you expect them to share from them when they're like 18 months and I'm like no one can share this with each other. Like for older it's kind of it's applying these unattainable and always shifting standards in any area, essentially. And then the kind of the transaction which is often not conscious, but it's like if that happens, then I will be okay. And that's often operating out of awareness. So for example, in therapy, we would notice we would try and make all those linkages to see like, what does it mean if they for example, if you buy pouches for your baby and they never have a homemade puree, like why does that matter? But this there's so many links around if this happens then I will be okay. And it's often about tending to our own childhood pain.
Fiona Weaver 29:40
Now there's so much damn Yes, I have so many points I want to go with that. One thing that stands out is the know if this happens then I will feel okay and that is where people get so stuck on asleep. And I because I've worked on therapy before I went out and did this work. And that is what comes up so much, I will be okay if I can just sleep. And so if I get him sleeping, and napping for you know, three hours throughout the day, then everything will be okay.
Cath 30:15
Yes. Yeah. And I think sleep is a particular area where that kind of perfectionism comes into play, because somehow, we make that connection that our baby sleep is linked to us. And yes, it is linked to us in some sense in terms of, there's lots of things we can do to help them. And if we are ourselves very frazzled and anxious, that's not really gonna help their nervous system. But really, they're an independent being, and their sleep is, will happen in time. And it's not in our control. That's also another thing, which is this, like, we cannot control him, basically. But I think that, you know, to your point around sleep, I think that's why sleep training is so seductive. Because there's this thing, if you do this, then this will happen. And that never holds. It just never holds. And also, they forget to mention in all of these books, I remember, in the NCT of the term, one of those called the National childcare trusts, like the group, some baby group that I was in. All of these people had a book that said they could get their babies to sleep from seven to seven. And I was like, Are you planning to do that? And, and it's all about just leaving the baby to cry, basically. And I had trained as a psychotherapist before that, and having trained all on this child development stuff. I was like, but are you? And are you aware of the psychological impact it had? And they just thought I was talking rubbish, actually. So
Fiona Weaver 32:00
going back to what you said about the, when we have perfectionism shows up in motherhood and how the standards constantly shift. I wanted to go back to that quickly. Because is, is that is that the not good enough story? Because even when we make these standards for ourselves, and then we meet them, then they're still not good enough. And we need to create new standards, is that what you're referring to?
Cath 32:24
It's also something about the fact that when we're perfectionist, we never stop, to actually go, Well, look what I've done. Isn't that amazing? Look at me, I've done something really worthwhile, and special. And and let me actually celebrate that, let me feel how that feels on my nervous system. Let me notice that let me absorb some satisfaction, let me celebrate myself. We never ever do that. We just take that off. I mean, whether it's, it's something in your in your own business, whether it's whether it's that you've achieved, like you feel like you've achieved something with your child, or whatever it is, we never stopped to say, wow, look at that, you know, even if it's the way you relate to your child, and you used to get into a rage when they behaved in a certain way, and now you've really worked on tendons to yourself. And so you're much better resourced, and you've got a wider window of tolerance. And so then you are parenting much more in line with, with how you would like to be parenting. We never stop and say, look, look at look at these wonderful changes I've made. Look, I'm more connected to myself, look, I'm being present for my child are crammed into my own needs. We just go right, what's the next thing that we do? And particularly in parenting and motherhood, I think we could all do with so much more self celebration, and kindness and an honoring of what we are already doing.
Fiona Weaver 33:59
I love that. I think about it from a self compassion lens. But I love that self celebration. I think that sometimes that that's something that people might relate to a little bit more self compassion feels a little bit hard just celebrating your wins. And noticing them.
Cath 34:19
Yeah, and noticing them because that's actually how we repattern our nervous system is by really noticing how it feels in our system to have for example, not charged on the school run something that was like a real witness morning. I didn't like lose my shit. You know, in the first two hours of the day. Wow.
Fiona Weaver 34:42
pat on the back.
Cath 34:44
Yeah, exactly. And I think that often happens a lot with work actually. So, you know, whatever work we do, we do something. It goes well and then we just ditch that straight off on this and on to the next thing
Fiona Weaver 34:59
I'm thinking of At least hadn't and how it relates to sleep, because that's what I do. And how if we can reframe if we can take the focus off celebrating our babies sleep wins, and celebrate instead, how we respond to them, or how we stop watching the clock, or how we choose to do something that brings us joy, even when it's during nap time, celebrating our flexibility around sleep, rather than celebrating them sleeping, you know, linking sleep cycles, I can't even say that without putting it in air quotes.
Cath 35:36
I think that's a just a brilliant reframe, because we are not in control of that.
Fiona Weaver 35:41
And we are not our celebration.
Cath 35:45
It's not our celebration. And also, we don't know what sort of baby we've got, often only until, like years later, or, you know, we can go Oh, yeah, I got one of those babies that would only ever sleep for 30 minutes during the day. And it was nothing to do with me. It was just their disposition, their nervous system. Whether or not you want to label them know that sleep needs. I don't know, I don't really like any of those labels. But like my brother and his wife got a little girl who just slept for 30 minutes. That was her her longest nap ever during the day. And they they can be like a story of I'm going to toil and toil and toil to like, pat them or rock them or this. And actually, if you can just think, Okay, well, I mean, I think the most important thing is actually surrender. But it takes a long time to get to surrender. But if we can focus on Yeah, I mean, it's such a lovely thing to say what you just said about our winds are? How can we deal with him? How can we see this precious little person in front of us and not think you're manipulating me or you're messing with me, because they literally do not have the capacity to do that.
Fiona Weaver 36:58
They literally do not. And it's interesting what you say about I can't remember what you said, but about not realizing the kind of baby that you've got until perhaps years down the track. And I always say that I wish I had known my son as a five year old when he was a baby, because I would have stood up to him, stood up to him. He's not the boss of me. I would have stood up for him and advocated for him so much more strongly and confidently, because I knew that that that was who he was. But at that time, all I felt like was it was my fault. I wasn't doing it properly. I wasn't reading the right books. I was being too responsive. I was holding him too much feeding him too much all of that it was all my fault. But now I know. That's That's my boy. Of course, he was like that.
Cath 37:53
Yeah, you were absolutely responding to exactly what you needed. I think yeah, to have your boys. Yeah, girls, and the twins. And the twins. And I mean, we rock them to sleep for a long, long time. And then we lay in their room, I sang to them a lot. And it's hard when you think like, I mean, I suppose I still think to myself, am I too nice? Or like am I have I? Because I think that's the societal messaging of you've made a rod for your own back is so sort of ingrained. But yeah, I think we just don't know what we get. And yeah.
Fiona Weaver 38:41
And it all comes back to that behaviorism, doesn't it that if you do this, your child will do that. And that's just not what happens. Of course, we have influence on our kids. Of course we do. You know, we can help to shape their personal personality and their experiences, but they come out already whole, they are already who they are. And it's our job as the grown up to see them for who they are. And to encourage them in a way that works for them. And some babies are happy to be sleeping by themselves when you know, not long into their first year and other babies or kids need a lot more time. Like the variability is so huge.
Cath 39:25
It's so huge. Like it's absolutely massive. And I think that I wish we had more education for mothers prior to having the baby because there is I mean, I also thought, like, what have we done? Is this something we've done wrong? I mean, my husband and I sometimes still have that discussion. We're like, is this something we've missed? And then I would have to come back to No, there's nothing we're being we're responding to them because that is what they need. And it feels important to us to respond to them because that's in line with our values. And I don't want to help them. Because I think when we disconnect from our children, we help them disconnect from themselves. Well, that's exactly what we create, basically. And so by being responsive, we help them have a deeper, more connected, more loving relationship with themselves. I wish we had a society which honored that more and gave mothers and fathers and families more help in that.
Fiona Weaver 40:27
Yeah, absolutely took the pressure off them was so much information and advice that tells us that we're doing it wrong. And then we need to do certain things by certain age and milestones. And it's just so anxiety provoking. I mean, I searched things sometimes just to see what people are getting, like I searched the four month sleep regression a few weeks ago, and I was flabbergasted at what information people are being presented with. And you know, there's long blogs about you need to, you know, get in before they reach their dreaded four months sleep regression, or they will be stuck in it forever. If you don't sleep, train, and also buy my program, and I'll show you how to do it. It's disgusting. It makes me so mad. You should go into work. See how it makes you feel? Like no wonder people are stressed and? Yeah,
Cath 41:25
no, I mean, that's terrible. Because I think that there's nothing. What absolutely drives me mad about this industry is there's no inclusion of any neuroscience or nervous systems or anything about attachment theory, which says, Oh, by the way, all the stuff that you're saying about self soothing, is like literal rubbish, because they do not have a capacity. And that, like, even if you did try and sleep treadmill for like, less than four months, there's gonna be so much like you're teaching them to just go into shutdown. Basically, it's not that they are self soothed, is that they have to shut down to keep themselves alive?
Fiona Weaver 42:05
Yes, of course. Of course they will. That doesn't mean that you've won,
Cath 42:10
the little system can manage. Yeah, exactly. And I get really annoyed. I mean, I think it's really difficult discussion this because some, some, some of us are so at our wits end, that leaving the baby to cry is the only way to keep the family safe.
Fiona Weaver 42:30
Yeah, that nice,
Cath 42:31
I think it's a really complex kind of topic to discuss. But when there's so much scare mongering around if you don't do this, but the fullness, the progression, like there is not actually a form of sleep provision. It's just that your baby's having lots of developmental changes all of the time, and the first like, couple of years. So that means that sleeping and feeding often go out the window. But there's not enough of a holistic picture around. There's going to be so much change in your first year or two years, the best thing you can do is get used to uncertainty.
Fiona Weaver 43:08
Yes, that's that's the thing, isn't it get used to uncertainty and that is when I put a question box on my Instagram, for example, the questions are always Is this normal? Is this a sleep regression? Why is that? Why are they waking three times and they used to only wake once what's happening help? How do I fix this? My baby has false thoughts, and I just can't solve it. What is happening, fix it. And I just feel so much empathy for all the for all the parents writing in because it's, it's obviously so consuming to people, and it's something to really latch on to and it's taking your way from your baby. It's taking you away from finding your confidence in parenthood, and I am never ever, ever judging the individual who sleep trends, their baby sleep training looks different for everyone. It looks different for all infants. There are so many reasons and everyone has their own history and background and everything. So I really truly empathize with people. But it's the industry that makes me so damn mad because they are preying on people's vulnerabilities preying on people's longing for stability and structure and certainty. Like you mentioned
Cath 44:21
certainty. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I'm maybe said that a bit flippantly that the best thing we can do is get is get comfortable with uncertainty. Because that's actually incredibly difficult. I mean, i i We having a lot of uncertainty about our children, and it's very difficult to sit with and to live through. And in the Twin world, we got fed a lot of stuff about because it's obviously it's, you know, you want your trends to try and sleep at the same time. And so I was astounded by a lot of information that they give you To try and kind of force that, but when you kind of really connect to what it is that you, because once you actually, at some point, I was like, Okay, if I stop imagining what everyone else is doing, and how they think I'm doing something wrong, and just try and respond to what's going on in the moment, and get a bit of help during the day, sometimes if I need to sleep, because, you know, my kids woke up for a long time, and fed for a long time still, and still wake up quite a lot. Sometimes. If I just like, pay attention to the individual stuff that's going on in our family and get help around that. I felt so much better.
Fiona Weaver 45:40
It's taking a couple of layers off, isn't it? And that's a values exercise I often do with parents is if you were on a secluded island, and of course, we're not parenting on a secluded island, but think about it, you know, entertain it for a second. If you're out there without Google without your GP, without your neighbors, you know, the neighbors? How would you instinctively respond or parent your child? And how is that lining up with? What's happening for you now?
Cath 46:14
Yes. And I think that it goes back to that thing about permission, because that's something that often we was talking about something similar in therapy about, if someone is very fixated on getting the child to sleep in a certain place, like in a basket, or they have to sleep in this place, not in, not on meal, not in the bed. Often, when you really interrogate it, it's actually not that they really mind they don't mind having a baby sleeping on them, or they don't mind co sleeping, but they feel judged and criticized. And somehow, there's outside experience, like outside opinions. Trump that. But if you just say, but you can actually you're the one who's the who's the boss of this. You can have permission to do whatever works for you and your family. Then, that's what everyone I've ever worked with comes back to a very clear sense of what works for them.
Fiona Weaver 47:10
And that looks so different between families. So somebody messaged him and said, does that count as a contact nap if they're on a pillow on my lap? And I said, why does it matter? I wouldn't even be saying all that's an app, I would just be noticing that they're asleep. And that's fine. Yeah, you don't need to time it. You don't need to track it. You don't need to, you know, say what kind of NAP that is. It was It was like she needed the needed the wind that maybe that wasn't a contact nap. Maybe she maybe she doesn't. Maybe that was an independent nap. Yeah, and I just felt, you know, it was it was hard for me seven years ago as well. But I think it's a lot harder. Now. With all of the increase in social media involvement and all of the slight consultants and things I think there's a lot more that people are up against.
Cath 48:07
Yes, yes, I agree with you. And, and in some ways, what we need more space for is to acknowledge if, for example, you do have a baby who only contact apps, to have space to say, this is so hard. Some days, it feels like it's gonna break me. And I still may want to do it. But please, can I can someone listen to me? And support me in hearing how hard this is for me
Fiona Weaver 48:35
without telling me what I'm doing wrong? Or what I need to do? Yeah, just let me complain. Let me say I'm tired when we say that one of our greatest goals in parenting say is to navigate uncertainty navigate the messiness of motherhood. How do we do that? Where do we start? If somebody's listening like That sounds great. What do I do?
Cath 49:01
Well, I think that it starts with noticing how much we may want to control things. So uncertainty, we typically can't cope with uncertainty when we haven't had our needs met enough in childhood because we didn't learn when we've had situations as a child that felt too big for us to deal with. Because we only had our like our childlike coping mechanisms which has happened to many of us we have like a general panic panic, I'd say around uncertainty. And and so we we often try and lean on control to to make that better. And if you ever I don't know if you ever do worst case scenario planning Fiona, I know that I do. Like if this happened, this happened and this gave me try. And let me try and build my plan for all of those different scenarios now, but that's all about trying to keep Self safe. And so much of this is about looking at wow, you know, a bit like the big things in motherhood that have absolutely blindsided you you never planned for. And you've managed, like, and you've coped. So, you know, dealing with anxiety and getting more comfortable uncertainty is a is a is a process. Things like, generally, having enough sleep, having a good diet, getting exercise, exercise is a huge way to deal with this because we we come to a sort of a calmer place in our nervous system. And we can kind of look at this and think it's okay, I could manage this. But also noticing how you might go into a place of control. Because it's actually it's scary for you. It's like scary fast. And so much of this is actually soothing. Our own our own inner child, and caring for ourselves, like self mothering, and saying, okay, sweetie, like I can see, I get anxious, taking my twins on a big outing, if I haven't been to the place, because I'm like, How will I manage? Like, are there enough lose? What if they need to go to the loo on the highway? What will I do? You know, because I find it difficult to drive. When I've got both of them if they start fighting in the back, and there's no adult with me. And so I have to really like talk to myself and soothe myself and and do small things, small outings. Because if I do like a huge thing, then I like really blow myself out of my window of tolerance, and never want to try something again. So I would say like, start with small things where you kind of give yourself a little bit of exposure therapy to notice Oh, I can manage this. And do tons and tons and tons of self soothing. Like yeah, for ourselves. It's a notice that worst case scenario planning actually just takes us out of the present moment.
Fiona Weaver 52:01
Yeah, I listened to one of your podcasts ages ago. And it was it resonated for me so much it was when you I think it was about a beach trip with your twins and you thought you would stretch yourself that day and take them both to the beach. And then in hindsight on reflection, you thought maybe that was a bit too much of your nervous system. And I really took so much from it because I I have a sensitive nervous system. And if I honor that more, and say no to things, even if I feel like I should say yes, and do things that are a little bit more supporting of my unique nervous system, then I can thrive. But I tend to bite off more than I can chew. And then resent everyone for it. Because like what's the point? So after that I was having a bad week, pregnancy emotional, and I was supposed to meet some friends. So somewhere that was, you know, a drive away, it was 40 degrees. And I didn't feel like I could handle it like finding a park and then walking along way from the park with the bags and the things and I just felt like it was going to be a disaster. But I felt like I should catch up with my friends because I wanted to. And I thought about that podcast. And I thought about what I could handle that day. And I said, You know what, Friends, I don't think my nervous system can handle this today, I'm gonna leave you to it. We'll catch up next time. And that was it. And I felt so proud of myself for that. So thank you, thank you for giving me some therapy from all that way away. Because I needed it. But
Cath 53:36
I think that and also that's how we that's how we change the world then because you're attending to yourself, which then invites your children by what you're modeling there. It invites your children into overtime, noticing what they can manage. And then I made that you were much more present for yourself and your family. And you could do something like support, you know, and live with ease.
Fiona Weaver 54:00
Yeah. And they were stoked. It was their iPad day. So they got to go on the iPad and watch some TV and I cleaned my house and it was nice, it was what we needed.
Cath 54:09
I love what you just said about that. You know, having a having a dead home and not going to go and meet your friends. And for me, that was also a really important part of my journey of noticing what is manageable, and then at some point, I also had to start extending myself a bit because when we're actually trying to widen our window of tolerance, especially on our children, we need like there's a sweet spot of where we have just enough stress so that we can learn but we're not to stress that we've blown ourselves out of our window of tolerance and kind of either gone into a rage or or kind of convey shut down. And there's something that we there's a concept from Gestalt Therapy, which is called Safe emergencies. And I used to have to think to myself, Okay, because for me, I found I had other twin friends who were much braver than than I thought I was brave. And I remember one of my friends taking her twins on a bus. I think she did have a mother with her. But I was like, Oh my God, why would you do that yourself? That would be like, so stressful for me. And then I did at some points, like, okay, there is a lot of like, kind of joy outside in the world. And so I'm going to do things where I've either been somewhere before with my husband. So I kind of know the lay of the land. And it feels like a little test for me. Because I didn't want to turn into like a hermit or something. But and that idea, I always hold that in my mind, like a safe emergency where it's like, it's an optimal place where you are not too stressed, that you can't learn. But you're kind of just on the edge of your window of tolerance. And that's really how we build our capacity is having those little stretches. I used to have a question, I should go back to this. But I had a challenge on Instagram, which I called, Are you widening your window? Or are you setting yourself up and the setting yourself up was actually are you setting yourself up to be like really, really traumatized, because you've taken on this like outing where you're going to Legoland with your children, by yourself, and it's all gonna be disastrous. And not that failure is bad. But when we have one of those things in motherhood, where it all feels a bit catastrophic, then often we don't want to try anything for a long time. You know? And so I think that we have to find it get our own balance, but we all have our own process around that.
Fiona Weaver 56:33
Oh, there's so there's so much to pull apart there. Because there is such a balance isn't there between noticing your nervous system and saying, Okay, what's my resilience level today? That's, that's the question, I asked myself, what's my resilience level today, and on a day where I'm feeling more naturally resilient, I would have not have a problem with that situation. But on a day, where I am just a ticking time bomb, and I am a rubber band that can snap, I know that that's not going to serve me that day. However, something I've worked with parents around is not waiting till you feel better to do the thing. Because if we wait to work, we feel better. And we're in we're in a place where we consistently don't feel better, because we're not out there and enjoying things, and pushing ourselves that little bit. So we have to be really, we have to be really aware of our own unique nervous system and tuning into that rather than Yeah, I love that are you widening your window of tolerance, we're re traumatizing. And just to tell another story, because we're just in storytime today. My husband has anxiety, quite significant panic disorder. And he went camping with his with our best mate and the boys. So the boys were five and three or something. And it was remote. It was on Fraser Island and West Coast Fraser, so they went to Fraser Island, and then they drove for three hours across the mainland to a very remote place. And that is so anxiety provoking for my husband. And I have regrets because I encouraged him so much. It'll be good for you, you know, I had in my head that if he does this, he can do anything. And he's safe with our friend who is very good at camping, and it'll be amazing for my son, it completely traumatized him. And he had a panic attack on the way home in the car. And he has anxiety every time he like he has PTSD from it. And he can see that it was a beautiful experience in lots of ways. But he couldn't enjoy it because all of all he was thinking was I can't get out of here. If there's a medical emergency, I can't protect my son, I can't protect myself. There's no one here, I'm away from my family. It was really hard because and then he had a little lot of guilt and shame about feeling that way and not appreciating it, because what an experience. But yeah, that was too far too far, like way too far out of his comfort zone that it traumatized him. And it was a real it was really sad. Yeah, so I love that reframe.
Cath 59:14
Yeah, we need so much gentle tending because we have the anxiety for a reason. You know, it's not it's, it's, it's, it's something that's, you know, there because of other things that have happened, but we don't sort of heal from that really by trying to do too much. And I think that specifically anxiety is a really, because there's so much in like in the world about that. We don't actually talk about how debilitating it actually is to experience living with the anxiety. Yeah. And that concept of really just the tiny slug safe emergencies is how we really do I'm gonna help ourselves.
Cath 1:00:04
And he will pleased to hear his anxiety is well managed at the moment. And he went camping with his mates away for a night, which was closer to home. He didn't have any kids. So that is a massive, you know, overwhelming responsibility for him to keep his kids safe. Yeah, so he that was a nice little challenge, but it was a tolerable challenge. And that will make him one step closer to feeling okay to do something like that again. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Cath 1:00:38
Because I think that we all need all of us. You know, I go into shame comparing myself to other mothers who I think are like braver, bla, bla, bla bla, but it does none of us any good when, because we all each only exist within our bodies.
Fiona Weaver 1:00:55
Yes, yeah. Absolutely. And
Cath 1:00:57
of our own experiences and, and what's created us, you know, in terms of variances,
Fiona Weaver 1:01:03
I was at the beach the other day, and I saw a mum who was quite fit and beautiful. And she was carrying her baby and carrying all the beach stuff and carrying her toddler and I looked at her and I compared myself and I thought, I always just feel too overwhelmed to take I can now take both kids to the beach. Now they're seven and four. It's always a little bit of chaos, but I'm happy to do it. But back then I was like, Oh my God, that just looks like a nightmare. What an amazing woman. And then as she got closer, I heard her say, if you don't stop if you don't stop crying, we are never coming to the beach ever again. Okay, that was like, there she is. It was it was so grounding. You could take a picture and be like, Well, what a woman. And then she gets close to you like wow, you're human. I love that
Cath 1:01:53
all right. That's like not punish ourselves with our humaneness anyway. Yes, exactly. Have a miss, ya know, it was really thank
Fiona Weaver 1:02:00
you so much. Oh, I could keep talking to you for so long. I feel like I need to have you on at least 20 to 30 times with a different topic each time because there's so much underneath everything isn't there? Wow. What a world. Thank you so much for your time today. Care. Where can people find you?
Cath 1:02:18
Thanks a lot. Oh, yeah, I'm on Instagram. My handle is psychotherapy, Mum. And I've got a podcast called grow yourself up.
Fiona Weaver 1:02:30
Your podcast is incredible house places. Yeah, lots of lots of nice little nurturing self compassion strategies as well that you can take away with you. So I highly recommend your podcasts. Thank you so much for your time today and we'll chat soon. Thank you so much for listening to mama chatters if you enjoyed this episode, let's continue the conversation on Instagram at MAMA matters.au. Be sure to share this app with your family and friends. And don't forget if you liked it, please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again and I will see you next time.
