November 26, 2024 • 63 mins
Hey, Fellow Travelers. This week we’re in a mother-daughter couples session with Carol and Michelle, who have a long history of tension in their relationship. We help them explore the deeper issues underlying Carol’s sense of having done her best for her daughter despite suffering from depression, and Michelle’s sense of not being seen and heard by her mom.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapists advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy advice column for Ted.
And this is Deo Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This week, a mother and daughter find it difficult to
reconnect after the mother's year's long struggle with severe depression.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
My body is so full of her triggers that even now,
at thirty five, I'll see something that I know she
can't handle and I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I think for a lot of my life, I deluded
myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
First, a quick note, theo therapist is for informational purposes only,
does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and it is
not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:22):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part
or in full, and we may edit it for length
and clarity and the sessions you'll hear. All names have
been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hey Guy,
Hey Laurie. So what do we have today?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So today we have a letter from a mother who's
having difficulty with her adult daughter. And we actually asked
the mother to see if her daughter would come on
with her for this session because we felt that there
was a lot going on with the daughter that we
would want to hear directly from the daughter herself.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And we thought it would be really helpful for the
mother to under stand her daughter better if she could
hear from her in her own words.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, So here's the letter that we got from the mom.
Dear therapists, I have fought depression my whole life. However, I,
with my second husband, managed to raise a daughter, Michelle,
and she and I were very close, traveling together, texting often, etc.
When Michelle had her first child. I cared for him
two to three days a week, but I was still
(02:25):
under a psychiatrist's care for depression, and at one point
I was prescribed a new antidepressant. It turned out to
be what the commercials warned about may cause suicidal behavior.
I became suicidal and became very close to actually doing it.
Michelle was understandably extremely hurt that I would want to
leave her and her son. Now it's two years later,
(02:45):
and I'm doing everything I can to fight my ongoing depression.
I've undergone ECT and TMS, I meditate and exercise regularly.
Michelle and I attended several joint therapy sessions, which, from
my perspective, seemed to consist of the therapist encouraging my
daughter to tell me how much I'd hurt her, over
and over again. It took every ounce of self control
(03:05):
I had to listen and take in what she was
saying and try to understand and apologize, But I did it,
and finally, when asked if Michelle felt heard, she said yes,
And when asked if she needed anything else for me,
she said no. Still, it seems Michelle cannot find it
in her heart to forgive me. She explicitly stated that
she doesn't want to know anything about my mental health
(03:27):
and that my depression was no excuse for my behavior.
Michelle will barely speak to me. She had an adorable
baby girl four months ago, whom I've seen twice. I've
asked several times if I could FaceTime with the five
year old, who I dearly miss and have been told
she'd try to find a time, and it's happened once.
She seems to look for fault with everything I do
and is not shy about letting me know about my
(03:48):
failings in great detail after the fact, in long accusatory texts.
The kicker is that my daughter is a therapist, but
she can't find any compassion for me. Do I keep
hitting my head against this brick wall of rejection, hoping
for an occasional crumb of a new photo or FaceTime call.
Or do I try to maintain my one last little
shred of dignity and wait for her to come to me.
(04:10):
I love her, and I love my grandkids, but I
have to love me too, and this is also horribly
painful and depressing, Thank you, Carol.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
When a parent has depression and they're really trying their best,
to manage it, to treat it, it can still have
an impact on the children, and then the children might
have very strong feelings about it. So it's one of
those that strains both sides, and both might have very
legitimate concerns.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's right, and I'm so glad that we're having them
both on because I can imagine these conversations from each side,
where Carol is saying what she said in her letter,
that I'm doing everything I can to treat this depression.
And when you have depression, it is not your fault,
and sometimes it takes lots of different things to treat it,
and sometimes you go through different phases where the depression
(05:01):
comes back despite the treatment. And so I can imagine
Carol's side of this, which we heard, and then I
can imagine Michelle's side of this, which is, I understand
that you suffer from depression, but it made my childhood
and my adulthood very difficult, and it's very difficult for
me to tolerate it. So I think both things are
(05:23):
going on, and I'm glad we're going to talk to
both of them. So let's go ahead and bring them in.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
You're listening to deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after
a quick break. I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Winch
and this is Deotherapists.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So Hi Carol, Hi Michelle, Hello, Hi Lauri, Hi.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Guy, Hey, and thank you both for coming on our show.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Thank you for having us both.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We read Carol's letter and we've heard a little bit
about the difficulty between the two of you, and so
since we've heard Carol's letter, we wanted to hear from you. Michelle,
can you tell us from your perspective what is going
on between you and your mom right now? What's the difficulty?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The difficulty to me, I think I would characterize a
little differently than my mom did in her letter. I
think in my mind it's obviously layered and more complicated,
But the kind of foundational crux is that we struggle
to resolve conflict. In my experience, my mom is prone
(06:39):
to hearing feedback or hearing impact pretty punitively, and so
it's hard for me to get what I need. If
she says or does something that hurts me, it's hard
for me to get a healing experience out of that.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
It's hard for me to resolve that.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Can you give us an example of how that plays
out in a recent example.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
So, one example that she tapped in the letter was
the last time that we were together. I came down
with my son William and my daughter Lynn to spend
an afternoon with my mom and her husband, and in
the process of that day, she made a couple comments,
one in particular that hurt my feelings.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
And I had sort of prepared for our.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Day together with my own therapist, who had said, stay
focused on the goal. The goal is for William to
celebrate his birthday. The goal is for your mom to
get to meet Lynn. You know, don't get derailed by something.
So I stayed focused when the comments were made.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Michelle, can you tell us what the comments were?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, The primary one was that my mom made a
joke to Lynn, who's a baby, that she was going
to be smarter than William because he was just a
dumb boy. And she made that joke a couple of times,
and it's a joke that she's made before about William.
And we had a conversation then when I kind of
reported that that is painful.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
That's a hurtful joke to me.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And so then I came home and I drafted what
I thought was a pretty thoughtful text message to me.
A while to write it, I consulted with various trusted others,
and I wrote back a kind of Hey, that comment
was hurtful. I think it's inappropriate. You can't make jokes
about my kid like that. And in her letter she
kind of tapped that as like I seek things for
(08:27):
her to have done wrong, and then I respond in
these lengthy, vitriolic text messages, And I think that's kind
of an example of like, on my end, I feel
like I'm doing a lot of work to come from
a fairly clear, you know, a position, and then she
chastises me as a pattern. So I think that's, you know,
(08:47):
over the last couple of years since her intense suicidality,
that has to me been the crux of the issue
that I think she characterizes the problem as she was
suicidal and I haven't managed to forgive her for that.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
And from my perception of the.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Landscape, the suicidality was obviously sad and troubling and difficult,
but it wasn't what frustrated me. It wasn't what triggered
me in a conflict way. That was around kind of
other pieces that happened during that period, and the therapy
we did together was to try and resolve those hurts.
(09:32):
And again, even that it sounds like landed with this
kind of punitive you know, the therapist and I kind
of lashing her with her misdeeds.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Michelle, there's so much here that's really helpful. We're going
to get to a lot of this, but I'm wondering
if we can distill this down a little bit. Sounds
like what you're saying is we had these conflicts going on,
and that we characterize what the problem is between us
two differently. That my mom thinks it's because of the
suicidality and what happened around that, but for me, it's
(10:05):
more about these the day to day things that happened
between us and so, Carol, that was a lot to hear,
and I'm wondering if we can just take that one
little piece of when Michelle said to you, when you
say that thing about William, I find it troubling what
(10:27):
happens for you when you hear that. Do you hear
that as you've done something wrong, you're not a good grandmother,
or are you able to hear it as I think
that it sends a message to my son that I
don't think is good for him. How do you hear
that from.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Her in that instance, I'm not sure what Michelle is
referring to.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It was just you and I and Lynn. William wasn't
in the room, and you were talking to the baby,
and I don't remember what precipitated the comment, but you said,
you know, and you're going to be smarter than your
brother because he's just a dumb boy.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I don't disbelieve you. I have absolutely no recollection of
saying that. It would have helped if you'd said something
at the time. It would have helped if maybe when
I asked you what it is that I said that
upset you so much that maybe I could have maybe
remembered at that time. I didn't get any feedback from
you until two days later, and I literally had no
(11:27):
idea what you were talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I think one of the things that happens between the
two of you is that when you give feedback to
the other person, and I think it goes both ways,
that you both feel very hurt by the other person,
that you both hear it as a criticism as opposed
to a bid to be closer, and so I think
what Michelle is saying to you is I want to
(11:50):
have a closer relationship with you. I want us to
feel more at ease when we're together, and that means
that I want to be able to say that something
made me uncomfortable without you being offended by that. I
want to be able to share my experience with you
(12:11):
and have you be able to understand my experience and
not hear it as blame. Let's just say, for the
sake of argument, that you did say something like that.
Can you understand why that hurt her?
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Of course, of course if anybody said anything about her,
I would be hurt, as you know, someone said criticize
my daughter, whom I love more than anything. It would
hurt and make me angry. If at the time I
had been given an opportunity to apologize, I would have
(12:44):
because I had never ever intended to imply. I'm not
doubting that I did it, and I'm sorry. I wouldn't
do it intentionally or even knowingly.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Carol, there's seems to be a difference in how you're
responding now then how you responded to the text message
that you got about it, albeit a bit later. You
mentioned how you experience that text, but how did you
actually respond to it? Was it different than how you're
responding now.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I responded in confusion. I literally didn't know what she
was talking about, So I told her I didn't know
what she meant, and I would need clarification. I think
I was ready to apologize if i'd known what I'd
done wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So things go awry on a pretty common kind of
communication between a mother and her daughter, if it happens
in things that small, and I just wonder how often
that happens. That you each walk away thinking the other
person perceived or understood something in a way that they
actually didn't, and then have a reaction to that. But
all the while you're each making different assumptions about what
(13:53):
actually happened. I'm ordering how common you think there might
be between the two of you.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I would say very common, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
I think it happens a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I think for me that has been the signature of
the last couple of years is that, you know, we
had a hard time recovering relationally from the suicidality. I
think in the past we've had a more functional mechanism
for resolving conflict. I wouldn't say it's ever been great,
(14:27):
but I would say it's been more functional than it
is right now.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Why do you think that changed after your mom's suicide attempt.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I think that for me, my mom's kind of signature
defense to feedback is a kind of collapse into what
looks to me like a sort of victimized state, and
that since the suicidality, that's much faster to show up.
(14:57):
That in the past there's been more resiliency to kind
of hear about what's happened to me, and that since
then it's much quicker to go into a kind of overwhelmed.
And to be fair, I mean, she received extensive electroconvulsive
therapy and her memory was impacted, and so I think
(15:20):
there's a fair I don't remember, And I don't think
I need her to remember so much as I need
her to believe me, and not kind of believe me,
but like actually believe me when I tell her that
something has hurt me. And so for the last couple
of years, it's felt like our machine to resolve these hurts,
(15:41):
these miscommunications was broken, and then it's you know, the
hurts then just stack up.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
And then because of that accumulation of hurts.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's a feedback loop where then I feel broadly wounded
by her. I feel broadly unable to resolve conflict with her.
Like when I said that text message, I had little
to no hope that I would get a reply that
would feel okay to me. I believed I would get
what I got, which was I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Michelle, how did it feel to get the response that
you got right now?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think in one part of me it felt good
to feel acknowledged and to feel like I got what
I needed. And I think that I would be lying
if I didn't say there was a part that just
feels like it's a drop in the ocean. I mean,
I'm wrestling with my own hopelessness around this issue and
(16:36):
this relationship, and so even getting what I need in
this moment does meet that hopelessness with like, well, maybe
now in this context I can get what I need.
But in anything other than a pretty specific set of conditions,
I'm not going to be able to get what I need.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm wondering if we can go a little farther back.
When you talk about the ocean, I think about the
breadth of your relationship with your mom and the history.
Were you aware of your mom's depression when you were
growing up and at what point did you become aware
of it, and how did the two of you start
(17:16):
talking about that and at what point in your lives?
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Yeah, i' mean certainly aware of it.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I remember now with the vantage point of adulthood, I
can remember when it was probably pretty.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Bad, which is when you were how old My.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Parents divorced at when I was four, And the memories
I have are of like being alone, you know, while
my mom was kind of in her room, and I'm
guessing I was pretty young. She did a good job,
and she did a lot of work I think to
try and parent through it, and I think that depression
(17:52):
is very difficult to power through.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
I think I became more.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Sort of explicit aware of it probably when I was
a teenager. I think we started talking about it more.
I'm guessing as I transitioned into adulthood. But it's certainly
been a part of the story for a long time
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Carol, I want to ask you something. Michelle is saying
that over the past couple of years, there's been a
bit of a change in that. Previous to that, when
she would bring things up to you about things that
might have hurt her or upset her. You had a
bit more resilience to absorb them and then to be
able to respond to them. And she says, now you
might crumble a bit. And while that's completely understandable given
(18:39):
what you've been through, that it leaves her feeling like
it's very, very difficult to bring things up. And I
want to ask you whether you noticed a change in
how much you're able to hear the things Michelle brings
up over the past couple of years.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
I would frame the whole thing much differently. Obviously, feel
that since we had my breakdown, I call it I
came very close to committing suicide. I did not commit suicide,
but and I did go through all the ect I've
been through TMS twice, and I do get overwhelmed easily
as I am now. However, when Michelle and I argue
(19:17):
now or talk now, she tells me that she's not
interested in hearing my explanations, only my apologies. So I
feel very stuck in that I've done something that bothers her.
Bringing over face masks at the beginning of the pandemic,
when they were hard to find after she'd said she
didn't want masks, I brought some over anyway, because I've
made some for all my friends and family, and of
(19:38):
course I would make some for the people that I
love the most. She was very angry with me bringing
over mass but she told me she doesn't want to listen.
That the CDC said this, and that that's an explanation.
That's an excuse. Any explanation is an excuse for inexcusable behavior,
is what she's told me. So I feel very stuck
in that I have no way to rea respond when
(20:00):
she tells me or done something wrong. I can apologize
if I understand what I did and believe it was
wrong and that I need to apologize.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I'm wondering how often you feel you have a clear
understanding of what it is specifically that upset about something.
I think you not very clearly if she gets upset
or angry with you. I'm wondering how much you are
clear about what it is, specifically that what was angering
about you bringing masks over? Even if such and such.
(20:31):
In other words, do you ask questions when that happens?
Do you say to her, you know, Michelle, I can
see her upset I really want to understand it. Could
you please help me understand it, because if I can,
I'll try very much not to do that again. But
right now I'm a little confused, So indulge me. Could
you please explain that to me? Is there a version
of that that you try to use when those things
(20:51):
happen between you?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
I think sometimes yes and sometimes no. She was very
clear that she was mad at me because I disregarded her. No,
I don't want any masks, and that's why she was
mad at me. But I wasn't allowed to explain what
I felt was very reasonable thing to do.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
This reminds me a lot of what happens between couples
where people give and receive love in different ways. And
you are clearly just trying to show her I love you,
I care about you, I want you to stay safe.
This is my way of protecting you. And she was saying,
but I told you that's not the way that I
(21:32):
want to be loved. And when people say this is
the way I want to be loved, and people don't
get that kind of love, and instead they get something else,
they don't feel loved. And so I think what's very
confusing for the person who is giving the love is
wait a minute, I'm giving all this delicious love to
my daughter and I'm getting an angry response. This makes
(21:56):
no sense to me, and so I think what's going
on on is that sometimes it might be hard to
adjust how you give your love to Michelle in a
way that she wants to receive it, and to you.
It starts to feel like, well, I'm walking on eggshells.
I never know what to do. No matter what I
(22:16):
do is wrong. But I also think that she's telling
you what she wants, Like she said I don't want
you to bring masks, and you did anyway. Now I
know it sounds very trivial. The actual event isn't that significant,
but the interaction, the relational piece of it, is a
bigger pattern of can you hear me? Can you see me?
(22:39):
Can you understand me? And when you disregard what I've said,
even though you thought it was a loving gesture, it
feels like you can't see me at all, And so
I wonder what happens for you, Carol. When Michelle says
I don't want you to bring over the masks, I
have a feeling you get angry with her too.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It was a simple. Two weeks earlier, I'd said, hey,
I'm making masks. Do you want some? She said no,
I don't think we need them. Two weeks go by,
CDC says, yes, everybody should wear masks. I'm making tons
of masks. I'm dropping them off. It wasn't a no,
don't bring them. It was a no, I don't think so.
So I didn't feel quite as strong. I brought a
bunch of other stuff too. I brought cookies for the kids,
And the only thing she responded to was the masks,
(23:22):
and that was with anger. So yeah, I did feel
hurt and angry.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
When we go back to the ocean, and I'm referring
again to the ocean as the history between the two
of you. I think one of the things that happens
when you have a family where one of the parents
is suffering from depression is that the child often feels
like my needs are not being seen right now, my
(23:50):
needs are not being met because my parent isn't able
to do that for me right now. And sometimes if
that doesn't get worked through, later lots of things start
to feel like that that maybe aren't the same thing,
but feel like the same thing, or reminiscent of the
same thing. And so Michelle maybe someone who didn't grow
(24:11):
up with a mother who was suffering from depression and
didn't experience that feeling of a loneeness, that feeling of
I'm not sure if she sees me, I'm not sure
she hears me that. Anytime something like that happens, it
becomes very big in your mind, whereas somebody else might
have said, oh, look she brought over cookies and toys,
and yeah, they're a master I don't really need them,
but it's okay. You know, I'm not going to say
(24:32):
anything about that because it doesn't bother me so much.
Look at all the nice things she brought over. But
for you, it was, oh, here's another example of that.
And so I think it's important that we talk a
little bit about how Carol's depression has impacted the two
of you, because I think Michelle, it's clear that it
was lonely and upsetting and scary, and we'll hear more
(24:57):
about that. But I wonder if you you say you
don't want to hear about your mom's experience, and I
actually think that it would be helpful, and I don't
know if you'll agree to do that here on this call.
But my feeling is that if you understood a little
bit more about it, that it wouldn't overpower your needs,
(25:18):
but it would just be something that would sit side
by side with your needs. Are you interested in hearing
more about that?
Speaker 5 (25:28):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I'm not sure, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I can tell that you're someone who's actually spent many, many,
many hours working on your relationship with your mom without her,
in your therapy, in your head with friends, and you
seem to me like you're someone who's done so much
of this thinking and so much of that work that
(25:54):
you're kind of exhausted and you're not sure whether you
have much rope left to make more effort. And so
I want us to try and use this time to
see if we can have a conversation now that would
help you replenish some of those energies and give you
a little bit of hope that it's a worthwhile expenditure.
(26:15):
Is that something you feel that you might be up for?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I do feel I feel exhausted to kind of
weave into Laurie your prompt about what this was like
early on, if I can start.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
There before you start, Michelle, I just want to say, Carol,
whether Michelle can see it or not, Guy, and I
know that you did everything you could to work through
your depression and also be a good mom to Michelle,
(26:52):
and that it was incredibly hard. And so if you
can hear what Michelle is saying, as I want to
hear what my child did experience was because it will
bring me closer to her, not because she's going to
dump all her anger and resentment on me, but because
I want to try to understand. If I were listening
as an outsider and I heard this young woman talking
(27:12):
about her experience, how would I hear that versus hearing
it as her mother. You don't have to agree with
her version of events, meaning the content of it, but
what you can't argue with is how she feels.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's important is that you can see that she feels
this way and understand this is how she feels. And again,
if you are hearing this from somebody else's daughter and
not your own, you would probably have a lot of
compassion for her. Okay, So let's start there.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The memories I have about my mom's depression are less
about the kind of typical presentation of depression, of being
sad or withdrawn or struggling to get out of bed.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
They have more to do with ear ability.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
And a kind of almost explosive withdrawal, like I would
say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And
I have a lot of memories of my mom retreating
to her room and shutting the door when I had
done something.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Now could do anything specific, you could paint a picture
for us with.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
There was a time I remember making some kind of
comment about her appearance and meant it as a like,
look at a thing I noticed, I'm so clever, and
it offended her, and I remember her getting really angry
and like throwing me off of her lap and sort
of going to a room and shutting the door. I
(28:41):
think that the unifying feeling is needing to be a
buffer between my mom and the world. I'm an only child,
and I think that my mom she presents a lot
of helplessness, and she presents a lot of anger towards
the people around her or strangers. I can remember being
(29:02):
young and her being offended by strangers that we would encounter,
and she would sort of start a confrontation with them,
and that being really scary. The feeling of I need
to be between the world and my mom or she's
not going to be okay. And the caretaking and the managing,
(29:24):
the knowing which topics of conversation can't come up, knowing
what content imagery she can't tolerate, knowing my body is
so full of her triggers that even now at thirty five,
I'll see something that I know she can't handle and
I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
What's an example of that?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
These triggers, Oh, like strong smells, loud noises, animals being hurt.
I've had a conversation with any guy I've ever brought
home about the list of things you can't talk about,
you can't bring up because she will do this kind
of explosive withdrawal. And that fragility is a major part
(30:15):
of my childhood and our relationship, and my relationship with
my stepdad too. That I think he has fully embodied
the role of her protector in a way that reinforces
the rules about what I'm allowed to be and what
I'm allowed to say and who I'm allowed to You know,
he does the same thing he's bought in.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
How old were you when your mom married your stepdad?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Seven when we were married for me. That's more of
the thing, is like, not only do I not get
to be the kid who gets to be messy and
get contained, but I have to contain. I mean, even
with the suicide idality, one of the triggers was that
she didn't have her therapist call her husband. She had
(31:06):
her call me to rescue her.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
So, Carol, before you shake your head, because I think
I saw you shake your head a bit, I'm reminding
you of your task right here, and your tasks only well,
not to listen and to understand. And this is what
I want you to do right now. And I'm going
to acknowledge that I'm asking you to do something very
difficult because I'm sure you have a lot to say
about everything Michelle said. But what I think Michelle needs
(31:33):
to hear right now is that you understand what that
experience was like for her. You can explain what it
was about for you, but I don't want you to.
I want you to just keep that part in your head.
What I want you to express is just that you
get that from her perspective as a child growing up
feeling as she did, that you understand what her experience
(31:54):
is like. And I want you to do that in
a way that you can best make her feel understood.
Get that to try, please, Yes, I.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Will, and I apologize for the I thought I was
correcting a misstatement.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I think that every time you correct her, she feels
like you're not seeing me. The disputing of the facts
is always going to happen. So that's not the issue.
The main message, if I could put it in one sentence,
would be I have felt this burden of not being
able to be a kid as I was growing up
(32:28):
because I always worried about you. I loved you and
I resented you because I was so worried about what
would trigger you. I wonder how you might respond to
her just knowing that was how she felt, whether or
not you agree that that was the message that you
were sending her, and it has really affected her well
(32:52):
into her adulthood, and so I wonder if you could
just respond from a place of love.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Right now, I think for a lot of my life,
I deluded myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you.
But I mean, it makes perfect sense to me that
even if I thought I was doing great, you know,
taking you to your dance lessons and stuff, I don't
remember ever pushing you off my lap. I can't imagine
(33:19):
that happening.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
But I want to stop here because I think this
is what happens between the two of you.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
You were talking about you, and I want you to
talk just about Michelle.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
When you add things like well I was taking you
to dance lessons, you're trying to say I wasn't a
horrible mom. I tried my best. I was doing these things.
And I don't want you to have to feel like
you're defending yourself right now, because she's not asking you
to defend yourself. She's saying, can you see me? And
so I think what she's wanting is to know that
(33:49):
you took in what she said and that you have
some kind of compassion for her without disputing anything she said,
but stay with her feeling.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
What I kind of started to say was that I
deluded myself into thinking I had protected you from that,
but I know that's not true, and.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Tell her in which ways it's not true.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I would have this explosive whatever you called it, I
didn't withdrawal.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
An explosive withdrawal.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I mean that sounds like something I would do, and
I'm sorry for that. I know, a couple of the
instances that you were talking about with strangers were bad
for you. They were mitigating circumstances. But that's not the point.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Okay, wait, hold on, So you're right, that's not the point.
And so that's where you, guys get tripped up, is
every time you're able to connect with her, you start
to feel shame. And so we want you to just
take the shame out of this, because I don't think
that Michelle is here to say you were a bad mom.
That's not what she's here to say. She's trying to say,
(34:53):
our relationship is impacted by what happened between us. And
the reason that I get so upset when I say
don't bring the masks and you bring the masks is
because of this stuff that hasn't been acknowledged before. And
so every time you add a comment like there were
mitigating circumstances or I took her to dance class, you're
(35:14):
missing the point that she's making. And I can see
on her face she talked about the word exhaustion, where
she's like, here we go again. And so it's really hard.
But if you can just work through this one conversation
in a different way, I think it will give you
a template for something different to happen between the two
of you, and I think that if you can't, you
(35:36):
won't be able to make much progress.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
I don't know how I cannot feel shameed that my
depression impacted you the way it did.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh okay, so Carol, you want to put yourself in
Michelle's place as a child, and you want to revisit
the experiences that you remember through Michelle's eyes.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
This is hard because I, for a lot of reasons, there's.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
So much noise in your head about trying to defend yourself.
Michelle has not forgotten that you took her to dance class.
So if you think about the difference between a raw
egg and a hard boiled deck, when someone is depressed,
they're like a raw egg. You drop it, it cracks open.
It's that explosive withdrawal that Michelle's talking about. Is about
that very knee jerk reaction. You get injured very easily
(36:28):
because you're like a raw egg. Okay, when you're not
feeling so depressed, you're like a hard boiled deck. You
drop it might get a little dinged up, but it's
not going to crack open. Like the raw egg. And
what Michelle's trying to describe to you is the times
when you were like a raw egg. Can you respond
to what that must have been like for her?
Speaker 4 (36:49):
I can try, Michelle. I'm just I'm very sorry that
it was like the for you. Everything that you set
sounds completely right. The list of things you'd have to
talk to your boyfriends about, I'm sorry about that. I'm
(37:11):
sorry you had to protect them from me, or me
from them, or however it was. I'm sorry. You shouldn't
have had to protect me. I should have been protecting you. Yeah,
my second husband was and still does do that protecting thing,
(37:35):
and that's made it harder for you. I just feel
bad that. I'm sorry. I could have been the best
mom for you that you deserve to have had. I
wanted to be the best mom for you, and I
know I wasn't. I know that there are hard times
(37:57):
for you because of my depression, and I'm very very
sorry results.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Carol. Were you aware that Michelle felt throughout so much
of her childhood that responsibility to protect you, to buffer,
to look out for you and your interactions with the world.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
No, And that's what's been so weird for me is
it's been learning just in the last few years. I think,
as I was saying, I deluded myself thinking that I
had kept her safe from that from my depression. But
it's been something that I've lived with, so therefore she
has lived with, you know, her whole life, and I
(38:41):
like to think past Hans liked that it wasn't impacting her.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And that's the thing. I don't know a situation in
which a parent had really significant depression that did not
have an impact on the child. And I'm suggesting that
going forward after today, the more you become curious about
Michelle's experience, the more it'll seem to her that, Okay,
you're really listening to her now rather than explaining you.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I also want to say that at the beginning of
this conversation, Carol, you didn't think you could put yourself
into that mindset, and what just happened. I'm actually tearing up.
I'm going to have to take my glasses off because
it was so beautiful. Michelle. I don't have the history
with your mom, so I think you may have heard
it differently than I did. But to me, it was
(39:34):
an act of profound courage that it was so hard
for her to put aside all of the shame she feels,
all of the ways that she did not want to
hurt you, and to really be able to let that
go and say, wow, I did hurt her, even though
(39:54):
it was the last thing I wanted. I hurt Michelle
in a lot of ways. I hope that you can
let this in a little bit without imagining what's going
to happen next or how much you trust it, but
to take that experience for what it was. I don't
know if your mother has ever said that to you
in that particular way, and I'm wondering if that felt
(40:18):
different to you in some way.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, I would say it did feel different, and I
would say there's a small part that kind of relaxes
a little bit when I get to hear that. I'd
be overstating it to say that it has a big impact.
I think that I'm wrestling with those pieces that don't
trust it, or that hooked into what landed as undermining
(40:44):
statements that were woven in there.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I think that the two of you both have these
impulses that are very old and very hard to kind
of contain. Right now, your mom's impulse is to justify
why would happen and happened. But in that last bit
of the conversation, she was so raizor focused on you
(41:08):
and how sorry she is and how she could see
what that was like when you brought your boyfriends over.
She acknowledged all of that without qualification. That was her
containing that impulse but also really seeing you and I
think that you have the same thing where you say, well, yes,
I heard that, and yet your impulse is but I
(41:29):
don't trust it, so you won't let it in. That's
your impulse, and you're going to have to contain your
impulse if you're going to be able to really connect
with her, if you're really going to be able to
take in what she's offering.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
I just want to say, it's so hard for me,
alb cuts. You are the most important thing in my life.
Like if I were to do one thing in my life,
it would be raised a happy person. I want you
to happy and healthy. And when I hear about the
things that I have toot that have hurt that prospect,
(42:11):
that have hurt you and not helped, it's just it's
the worst thing for me, Carol.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
But you have to understand, you see that you can't
go back and change those things. But you have immense,
immense power right now to do something that's exactly in
line with what your aim is to do. You want
a happy daughter. You have a power now to help
(42:45):
your daughter become happier, at least happier in your relationship
with her. And really it's simple and straightforward. You have
to find a way to really be able to talk
about her without talking about depression, and talking about her
without talking about you, and not all the time, but
(43:06):
some of the time, because when things go wrong, especially
between the two of you, it's two seconds before depression
comes into the picture. On both sides, Michelle's walking on
extshells because she doesn't want to trigger something, and you're
trying to explain why you did or didn't or don't remember.
You were just accessing the fact that you care about her,
and you were working really hard to keep the explanations
(43:28):
and the excuses out so you were able to stay
for a little bit with just just her. And I
know that was difficult because you're not used to doing that,
but that's what you have the power to offer her
going forward. So rather than dwell on the missus, I
would love for you to focus on the opportunities you.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Have now, and I think part of doing that is
that you're going to need to forgive yourself for what
happened in the past. It doesn't matter whether Michelle forgives
you for that, but you need to be able to
forgive you yourself so that you won't keep launching these defenses.
In these conversations. You're wanting something from her, and she's saying,
(44:08):
I don't want you to want those things from me.
I spent my whole childhood feeling like you needed things
from me that were not mine.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
To give Michell one thing that was very important here
is your mom saying that she used to think, she
used to hope that she had somehow shielded you miraculously
from the depression that really is impossible to shield a
child from, but only very recently she realizes she hadn't.
(44:35):
That's a very new development. Now you have a mom
who acknowledges that it wasn't all fine and is just
starting to come to terms with what that actually means
and how that actually happened. So with that in mind,
I want you to have a slightly different perspective of
hopefulness in terms of how much she can hear and
(44:57):
how much of a different perspective she might have.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Yeah, I think I can lean into opening to the
possibility that something new is going to happen. I want
to acknowledge my own limitation around that.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
I my well.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Of compassion is tapped, and I do really struggle. I
think you named resentment early on, and I notice it
pop right up. I'm wondering how to sidestep it, Carol.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
If you can continue to express compassion to that experience
Michelle had when she was younger, that's what will fill
her will of compassion for you. You have to have
it for the child that she was in the reality
that she had, and then it fills up for her
as an adult a little bit. But that's how that
gets fixed.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
And also we see this a lot with couples who
come in where somebody says, I'm just tapped out. I
can't have any compassion for you because I felt like
I've done that for so many years and now you
have to do this for me. And it doesn't work
that way. One person can't do this. It has to
be a team effort.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I think it's not that I can't feel compassion, it's
that I have felt like the messaging has been that
I owe her compassion, that the compassion is a requirement,
that I lead with it at all times. You know
that that was my childhood mentality was I have to
always be in her experience and be cutting her slack
(46:31):
and be giving her grace and not holding her accountable
and not reporting hurts, and compassion for mom has had
to be the title of the book. Of course, I
have compassion, And I think that's you know, it's so
easy for me to imagine her as a child herself
and what I know she didn't get and what she needed,
(46:53):
and you know why she has the limitations I think
that she has, you know why this depression is and
so intractable, Like I can tap all of that. It's
when it shifts to the interpersonal of like, this is
your job is to be compassionate. And I feel like
that's where I bump up against something.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
I think you're confusing feeling genuine compassion with you need
to take care of me. Yeah, and so you're going
to have to really separate those two things out because
they're conflated. Yeah, but they're very different. You talked about
her explosive withdrawal. You have an explosive reaction too. You
have an explosive withdrawal. You're like, I'm out, she couldn't
(47:37):
stay there long enough. I'm out. You do the same thing,
and so instead of having that explosive withdrawal, you can say, Okay,
that was as long as she could stay in it
right now, and just have some compassion for that experience.
Do you see the difference?
Speaker 5 (47:51):
Yeah, that I feel capable of.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
It's a feedback loop. We're going to be giving each
other different responses. Maybe when she comes over with the mass,
I'm going to be able to tell her how I
feel about it, but in a different way. Oh and
you also brought cookies and toys, Thank you so much.
And Mom, I said I didn't want the masks. It
really means a lot to me when you hear me
and don't bring over the masks. And then Carol, you
(48:15):
don't say, oh, but the CDC says, and you say,
you're right, I'm sorry. I should have just brought over
the cookies and the toys. I'm sorry that I brought
over the mask. You guys are done and your day
is saved right there. See how different that interaction is Carol,
does that make sense to you.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Too, Yes. A lot of times the reaction is delayed.
I'm not trying to lay blame OUTO explaining why it's harder.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Sometimes you would give the same response you need to
go out that in a delay your response is still
you know what. After thinking again about what you said,
I realized that you have a sensitivity to me not
hearing you or listening to you, so that can be annoying.
I'm sorry. I should have listened and not brought the masks. So,
(49:03):
Michelle and Carol, we have some advice for each of you. Carol,
here's your task that we'd like you to do this week.
We would like you to think of three incidents from
Michelle's childhood that you can revisit through fresh eyes, in
which you are going to try and describe that experience
(49:24):
from Michelle's point of view, three incidents that we haven't
spoken about, and really give a narrative of what those
were like for Michelle from this new perspective you have
of I wasn't protecting her entirely, and her experience was
she was trying to protect me, and what that was
like for her to be a child and doing that
(49:45):
now we know Carol, that when you start thinking of
Michelle's perspective, the justifications come to you, Your perspective comes in,
and you start to see things through your eyes again
rather than through hers, in which you see the depression
and the efforts that were required and all of that.
We'd like you to put those in because that's part
of your process, but we'd like you to really try
and focus as much as possible on writing Michelle's perspective
(50:09):
for three different incidents, so that Michelle's experience is, oh wow,
Mom really thought about this from my perspective and kind
of got it. When you're done, we want you to
go through them and take out all your side of things, Carol,
so it just leaves Michelle's side. We would like you
to have at the end a document of three narrative
(50:29):
incidents that you're describing that when Michelle reads, she'll be
able to really feel like, oh wow, Mom is starting
to get it.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
I understand the assignment. I'm just can I ask Michelle
if there are times that she would like me to
do this exercise for that would be helpful.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Let's have a call a friend lifeline and we'll give
you one so Michelle, is the one example that you
can give your mom.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
And I'm guessing that maybe part of the reason that
this is hard is because Michelle, you held it all
inside and you haven't really told her a lot of it. Yeah,
So if you can give her this lifeline on this one.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
Yeah, there was a time that we were in the mall.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
We walked by some people piercing their baby's ears.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Okay, I remember that with this that was probably five
or six.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, and I said something about it.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah, okay, excellent, Michelle. We want you to do kind
of the same thing. But one of the things that
we really want both of you to be able to
do is to hold this idea of both and in
your minds. So your mom did some really good mothering,
and she failed you in other ways both and and
(51:45):
I think sometimes it's hard for you, Michelle, to hold
the both and in your mind, just as it's hard
for your mom. So what we'd like you to do,
just as he's having a hard time getting in touch
with both sides of this, we want you to get
in touch with both sides of it. And so we
want you to write down three things from your childhood,
but three times in which she was a really good
(52:07):
mother three times in which you felt like I felt
mothered in the way that I wanted to be and
I wish that I had had more of that. And
so what we want you to do, just like we
asked your mom, is at first, you're going to write
them with all of the qualifications. Yes, she drove me
to this, or she did this, or there was this
moment when she was really there for me and we
(52:27):
had this great conversation. I felt so loved and seen,
but then she went into her room. So you can
write that the first time with all the qualifications, but
after you write that draft of the letter, we want
you to take out all the qualifications and that's going
to be the letter that you sent to her. And
then you're going to leave us a voice memo and
you're going to let us know a what it was
(52:50):
like to write your letter and b what it was
like to receive the letter that you got.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
And so we really wish you luck and be look
forward to him how this goes.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Thank thank you, thank you very much for having us on.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I think that most parents, to some degree have a
hard time looking at the things that they wish they
hadn't done, or that they wish they had done differently.
But when you layer on a struggle with depression, I
think there's even more tendency to want to think that
you were able to shield your child from this, because
(53:32):
you already feel bad enough about what's happening, You already
have struggled so much alone in your life, and then
to think, and my child's going to be affected by
this too, I think sometimes it just becomes overwhelming to contemplate.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
And I think that because Carol was so convinced that
she had successfully done that, to me, it's an indication
of how much ever she spent trying to do it.
And I think that's really an interesting perspective both of
them to keep in mind, because she put a lot
of effort into that. She thought she was successful, and
of course she could not be entirely successful, but she
was actually really trying.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
And because it was really hard for her to acknowledge
the ways in which Michelle really did struggle with it.
Michelle has a hard time acknowledging the ways in which
Carol was a good parent that she can't hold those
two things together at the same time. So I think
for both of them. It'll be interesting to see how
they do this assignment and whether they're able to do
the both and of it and then offer the other
(54:30):
person the perspective that they've been missing.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
I am curious too.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio. We'll
be back after a short break.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
So, Laurie, we heard back from Carol and Michelle, and
I'm eager to hear the letters they wrote to one another.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Hi, Laurie and Guy. It's Carol reporting back. So writing
my letter to Michelle was difficult, but was also a
huge learning opportunity. Like any parent, of course, it's hard
for me to look back at times when I caused
my child pain. It was terrifying to go back to
those times, but I understand that it's important that I
try to see those times from Michelle's perspective. She needs
(55:23):
to know that I want to understand what it was
like for her growing up with a depressed mom. I
realized that having compassion for Michelle as a child is
key to regaining her trust as an adult. It took
a while, but the more I thought about what it
was like for her, the more I realized how hard
it must have been. I can still picture her little face,
all quiet and scared when I was suddenly angry at
(55:45):
her for no reason. I can try to imagine what
it was like for her when I was locked away
in my bedroom, when I was depressed and couldn't face
the world. Those memories make me incredibly sad, and I
very much want to make it up to her if
I can. I can tell you that it was a
lot more fun reading Michelle's letter to me than writing
mine to her. Her letter was gratifying, for sure. She
(56:06):
started off saying that I had many strengths as a
mom and that it wasn't difficult for her to come
up with specific incidents. Also, the instances she picked were
meaningful and heartwarming to me. They weren't about big vacations
and material things. She picked times that I might have
chosen myself as examples of good parenting. There were times
when she needed her mom and I was there for her.
(56:28):
Of course, that felt great to read. I'm hopeful that
this will lead to many conversations between us. I feel
like we have a lot to talk about. Thank you,
Laurie and Guy for having us on.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
This is Michelle with my reflection on exchanging letters with
my mom. Writing the letters didn't feel hard or painful.
It felt okay, and I felt authentic and what I said.
Receiving the letter from my mom has left me feeling
some tension and anxiety and some dread. I think I
(57:05):
feel anxious that something will be expected of me, like
I got something for me and so now maybe something
will be expected back. I feel there were parts of
the letter that were interesting to me. Things I didn't know,
information about how I showed up as a kid that
was interesting and new to me, and I appreciated that.
(57:29):
And there were a couple moments in her letter where
I felt a part of my body, like a not
in my body, loosen a little. And that makes me
feel a little hopeful that she were able to kind
of stay with that kind of communication, not all the time,
but sometimes that things could potentially get on a path
(57:50):
towards improvement. I was kind of surprised by the impact
of her letter, and I think I'm still processing it.
Speaker 5 (57:58):
So that was are my thoughts.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
Thank you very much for all your time and help.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
We should start by letting people know that we saw
the letters that Michelle and Carroll sent to one another
before they sent them. And Michelle's letter was very sweet
and it was very straightforward. It was three incidents from
her childhood where she really felt like she had the
mother that she wanted, and they were beautiful, sweet They
were meaningful examples of her mother really having her back,
(58:30):
really seeing her, really being there for her. Carol's letter
was extraordinary. It was written in the first person where
she really got into what she imagined Michelle's experience was.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Actually it was a great masterclass in empathy in that way,
in the sense of put yourself in someone else's shoes
and once you're there, you can look around and what
do you see? And you really saw doing that exercise
in the writing, it was so detailed.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
It was so detailed. She painted this vivid picture of
Michelle's against that sounded so much like it reflected what
Michelle talked about in the session. So there's a lot
there with Carol, And even in her reporting back of
what it was like to go through this experience of
writing the letter and receiving the letter, she was really
able to take ownership of what that experience must have
(59:19):
been like for Michelle to have a mother who was
going through depression for the bulk of her childhood. The issue,
I think, in terms of their responses to the letters
has to do with the difference between how Carol and
Michelle interacted in our session with what happens when Carol
has given an opportunity to sit back and reflect and
(59:41):
edit her letter to Michelle and think about what she
wants to say on the voice memo.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
When she can edit out all that pain, then what
you're left with is a really empathetic, well intentioned parent
who really wants the best for her daughter and can
really understand what her daughter's experiences. But in real life,
Carol has a lot of trouble regulating and preventing herself
(01:00:08):
from going to that place. And that's the stuff that
Michelle has a really hard time with. The empathy and
the compassion for Michelle gets scrambled with the pain she
has for her own self, and Michelle doesn't get the
benefit of that pure empathy part.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
And that's why Michelle used the word dread in her response,
because I think that part of her really wants to
trust this, and another part of her knows that when
we actually talk in person, it doesn't go that way.
But she did say that there was a part of
her where she said the not in my stomach loosened,
and I felt hopeful. And I feel hopeful too that
(01:00:46):
Carol now has the experience of doing the exercise of
editing out all of those parts that get in the
way of her really connecting with Michelle, and for Michelle
to be able to say, Okay, I can put my
toe in the water here, I can get a little
bit closer to you. So I think that this exercise
gave Carol the practice that she needs and gives Michelle
(01:01:08):
a window into the fact that Carol really does get
it when she can put the other stuff aside.
Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
If I had one piece of advice for each of them,
it would be Carol, try and edit out the self
referential stuff when you're talking about Michelle's experience as hard
as you can. And Michelle, if you see your mother
do that even a little bit, reinforce it. Let her
know that you really appreciate that she's stuck with your
experience without bringing in hers. If you see incidents of that,
(01:01:37):
even if they're in texts, and maybe text her a
good place to start, because Carol can edit and texts
Michelle if you can reinforce that and bring forth more
of that, and Carol, if you can edit and allow
more of that to come forth, than there is help here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Absolutely. I think that sometimes it's so much easier to
be able to communicate on paper. And what they wrote
to each other was so moving, and if they could
communicate that way in person, I think that they would
see a big change in their relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Next week, a young woman tries to break her pattern
of seeking out relationships with older, unavailable men. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
I was dependent on him because of my dad and
his illness and him dying, and so I came to
rely on him, and I told him how much I
cared about him and how I grew to love him.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I guess I think I said. Hey, fellow travelers, if
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please help support Dear Therapists by telling your friends about
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Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with
us big or Smooth, email us at Lorian Guy at
iHeartMedia dot com.
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Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited
by Mike John's, Bush Fisher and Chris Childs. Our interns
are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton. Special thanks to Alison
Wright and to our podcast fairy Godmother Katie Couric. We
can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Deotherapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, fellow travelers. I'm Lari Gottlieb. I'm the author of
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the
Dear Therapists advice column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid,
and I write the Dear Guy advice column for Ted.
And this is Deo Therapists.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Each week we invite you into a session so you
can learn more about yourself by hearing how we help
other people come to understand themselves better and make changes
in their lives.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
So sit back and welcome to today's session.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
This week, a mother and daughter find it difficult to
reconnect after the mother's year's long struggle with severe depression.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
My body is so full of her triggers that even now,
at thirty five, I'll see something that I know she
can't handle and I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
I think for a lot of my life, I deluded
myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
First, a quick note, theo therapist is for informational purposes only,
does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and it is
not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician, mental health professional,
or other qualified health provider with any questions you may
have regarding a medical or psychological condition. By submitting a letter,
(01:22):
you are agreeing to let iHeartMedia use it in part
or in full, and we may edit it for length
and clarity and the sessions you'll hear. All names have
been changed for the privacy of our fellow travelers. Hey Guy,
Hey Laurie. So what do we have today?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So today we have a letter from a mother who's
having difficulty with her adult daughter. And we actually asked
the mother to see if her daughter would come on
with her for this session because we felt that there
was a lot going on with the daughter that we
would want to hear directly from the daughter herself.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
And we thought it would be really helpful for the
mother to under stand her daughter better if she could
hear from her in her own words.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, So here's the letter that we got from the mom.
Dear therapists, I have fought depression my whole life. However, I,
with my second husband, managed to raise a daughter, Michelle,
and she and I were very close, traveling together, texting often, etc.
When Michelle had her first child. I cared for him
two to three days a week, but I was still
(02:25):
under a psychiatrist's care for depression, and at one point
I was prescribed a new antidepressant. It turned out to
be what the commercials warned about may cause suicidal behavior.
I became suicidal and became very close to actually doing it.
Michelle was understandably extremely hurt that I would want to
leave her and her son. Now it's two years later,
(02:45):
and I'm doing everything I can to fight my ongoing depression.
I've undergone ECT and TMS, I meditate and exercise regularly.
Michelle and I attended several joint therapy sessions, which, from
my perspective, seemed to consist of the therapist encouraging my
daughter to tell me how much I'd hurt her, over
and over again. It took every ounce of self control
(03:05):
I had to listen and take in what she was
saying and try to understand and apologize, But I did it,
and finally, when asked if Michelle felt heard, she said yes,
And when asked if she needed anything else for me,
she said no. Still, it seems Michelle cannot find it
in her heart to forgive me. She explicitly stated that
she doesn't want to know anything about my mental health
(03:27):
and that my depression was no excuse for my behavior.
Michelle will barely speak to me. She had an adorable
baby girl four months ago, whom I've seen twice. I've
asked several times if I could FaceTime with the five
year old, who I dearly miss and have been told
she'd try to find a time, and it's happened once.
She seems to look for fault with everything I do
and is not shy about letting me know about my
(03:48):
failings in great detail after the fact, in long accusatory texts.
The kicker is that my daughter is a therapist, but
she can't find any compassion for me. Do I keep
hitting my head against this brick wall of rejection, hoping
for an occasional crumb of a new photo or FaceTime call.
Or do I try to maintain my one last little
shred of dignity and wait for her to come to me.
(04:10):
I love her, and I love my grandkids, but I
have to love me too, and this is also horribly
painful and depressing, Thank you, Carol.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
When a parent has depression and they're really trying their best,
to manage it, to treat it, it can still have
an impact on the children, and then the children might
have very strong feelings about it. So it's one of
those that strains both sides, and both might have very
legitimate concerns.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's right, and I'm so glad that we're having them
both on because I can imagine these conversations from each side,
where Carol is saying what she said in her letter,
that I'm doing everything I can to treat this depression.
And when you have depression, it is not your fault,
and sometimes it takes lots of different things to treat it,
and sometimes you go through different phases where the depression
(05:01):
comes back despite the treatment. And so I can imagine
Carol's side of this, which we heard, and then I
can imagine Michelle's side of this, which is, I understand
that you suffer from depression, but it made my childhood
and my adulthood very difficult, and it's very difficult for
me to tolerate it. So I think both things are
(05:23):
going on, and I'm glad we're going to talk to
both of them. So let's go ahead and bring them in.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
You're listening to deotherapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after
a quick break. I'm Lori Gottlieb and I'm Guy Winch
and this is Deotherapists.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
So Hi Carol, Hi Michelle, Hello, Hi Lauri, Hi.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Guy, Hey, and thank you both for coming on our show.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Thank you for having us both.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
We read Carol's letter and we've heard a little bit
about the difficulty between the two of you, and so
since we've heard Carol's letter, we wanted to hear from you. Michelle,
can you tell us from your perspective what is going
on between you and your mom right now? What's the difficulty?
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The difficulty to me, I think I would characterize a
little differently than my mom did in her letter. I
think in my mind it's obviously layered and more complicated,
But the kind of foundational crux is that we struggle
to resolve conflict. In my experience, my mom is prone
(06:39):
to hearing feedback or hearing impact pretty punitively, and so
it's hard for me to get what I need. If
she says or does something that hurts me, it's hard
for me to get a healing experience out of that.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
It's hard for me to resolve that.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Can you give us an example of how that plays
out in a recent example.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
Perhaps, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
So, one example that she tapped in the letter was
the last time that we were together. I came down
with my son William and my daughter Lynn to spend
an afternoon with my mom and her husband, and in
the process of that day, she made a couple comments,
one in particular that hurt my feelings.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
And I had sort of prepared for our.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Day together with my own therapist, who had said, stay
focused on the goal. The goal is for William to
celebrate his birthday. The goal is for your mom to
get to meet Lynn. You know, don't get derailed by something.
So I stayed focused when the comments were made.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Michelle, can you tell us what the comments were?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, The primary one was that my mom made a
joke to Lynn, who's a baby, that she was going
to be smarter than William because he was just a
dumb boy. And she made that joke a couple of times,
and it's a joke that she's made before about William.
And we had a conversation then when I kind of
reported that that is painful.
Speaker 5 (08:02):
That's a hurtful joke to me.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And so then I came home and I drafted what
I thought was a pretty thoughtful text message to me.
A while to write it, I consulted with various trusted others,
and I wrote back a kind of Hey, that comment
was hurtful. I think it's inappropriate. You can't make jokes
about my kid like that. And in her letter she
kind of tapped that as like I seek things for
(08:27):
her to have done wrong, and then I respond in
these lengthy, vitriolic text messages, And I think that's kind
of an example of like, on my end, I feel
like I'm doing a lot of work to come from
a fairly clear, you know, a position, and then she
chastises me as a pattern. So I think that's, you know,
(08:47):
over the last couple of years since her intense suicidality,
that has to me been the crux of the issue
that I think she characterizes the problem as she was
suicidal and I haven't managed to forgive her for that.
Speaker 5 (09:05):
And from my perception of the.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Landscape, the suicidality was obviously sad and troubling and difficult,
but it wasn't what frustrated me. It wasn't what triggered
me in a conflict way. That was around kind of
other pieces that happened during that period, and the therapy
we did together was to try and resolve those hurts.
(09:32):
And again, even that it sounds like landed with this
kind of punitive you know, the therapist and I kind
of lashing her with her misdeeds.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Michelle, there's so much here that's really helpful. We're going
to get to a lot of this, but I'm wondering
if we can distill this down a little bit. Sounds
like what you're saying is we had these conflicts going on,
and that we characterize what the problem is between us
two differently. That my mom thinks it's because of the
suicidality and what happened around that, but for me, it's
(10:05):
more about these the day to day things that happened
between us and so, Carol, that was a lot to hear,
and I'm wondering if we can just take that one
little piece of when Michelle said to you, when you
say that thing about William, I find it troubling what
(10:27):
happens for you when you hear that. Do you hear
that as you've done something wrong, you're not a good grandmother,
or are you able to hear it as I think
that it sends a message to my son that I
don't think is good for him. How do you hear
that from.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Her in that instance, I'm not sure what Michelle is
referring to.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
It was just you and I and Lynn. William wasn't
in the room, and you were talking to the baby,
and I don't remember what precipitated the comment, but you said,
you know, and you're going to be smarter than your
brother because he's just a dumb boy.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
I don't disbelieve you. I have absolutely no recollection of
saying that. It would have helped if you'd said something
at the time. It would have helped if maybe when
I asked you what it is that I said that
upset you so much that maybe I could have maybe
remembered at that time. I didn't get any feedback from
you until two days later, and I literally had no
(11:27):
idea what you were talking about.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
I think one of the things that happens between the
two of you is that when you give feedback to
the other person, and I think it goes both ways,
that you both feel very hurt by the other person,
that you both hear it as a criticism as opposed
to a bid to be closer, and so I think
what Michelle is saying to you is I want to
(11:50):
have a closer relationship with you. I want us to
feel more at ease when we're together, and that means
that I want to be able to say that something
made me uncomfortable without you being offended by that. I
want to be able to share my experience with you
(12:11):
and have you be able to understand my experience and
not hear it as blame. Let's just say, for the
sake of argument, that you did say something like that.
Can you understand why that hurt her?
Speaker 4 (12:23):
Of course, of course if anybody said anything about her,
I would be hurt, as you know, someone said criticize
my daughter, whom I love more than anything. It would
hurt and make me angry. If at the time I
had been given an opportunity to apologize, I would have
(12:44):
because I had never ever intended to imply. I'm not
doubting that I did it, and I'm sorry. I wouldn't
do it intentionally or even knowingly.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Carol, there's seems to be a difference in how you're
responding now then how you responded to the text message
that you got about it, albeit a bit later. You
mentioned how you experience that text, but how did you
actually respond to it? Was it different than how you're
responding now.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I responded in confusion. I literally didn't know what she
was talking about, So I told her I didn't know
what she meant, and I would need clarification. I think
I was ready to apologize if i'd known what I'd
done wrong.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
So things go awry on a pretty common kind of
communication between a mother and her daughter, if it happens
in things that small, and I just wonder how often
that happens. That you each walk away thinking the other
person perceived or understood something in a way that they
actually didn't, and then have a reaction to that. But
all the while you're each making different assumptions about what
(13:53):
actually happened. I'm ordering how common you think there might
be between the two of you.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I would say very common, wouldn't you.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
I think it happens a lot.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
I think for me that has been the signature of
the last couple of years is that, you know, we
had a hard time recovering relationally from the suicidality. I
think in the past we've had a more functional mechanism
for resolving conflict. I wouldn't say it's ever been great,
(14:27):
but I would say it's been more functional than it
is right now.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Why do you think that changed after your mom's suicide attempt.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I think that for me, my mom's kind of signature
defense to feedback is a kind of collapse into what
looks to me like a sort of victimized state, and
that since the suicidality, that's much faster to show up.
(14:57):
That in the past there's been more resiliency to kind
of hear about what's happened to me, and that since
then it's much quicker to go into a kind of overwhelmed.
And to be fair, I mean, she received extensive electroconvulsive
therapy and her memory was impacted, and so I think
(15:20):
there's a fair I don't remember, And I don't think
I need her to remember so much as I need
her to believe me, and not kind of believe me,
but like actually believe me when I tell her that
something has hurt me. And so for the last couple
of years, it's felt like our machine to resolve these hurts,
(15:41):
these miscommunications was broken, and then it's you know, the
hurts then just stack up.
Speaker 5 (15:48):
And then because of that accumulation of hurts.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's a feedback loop where then I feel broadly wounded
by her. I feel broadly unable to resolve conflict with her.
Like when I said that text message, I had little
to no hope that I would get a reply that
would feel okay to me. I believed I would get
what I got, which was I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Michelle, how did it feel to get the response that
you got right now?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think in one part of me it felt good
to feel acknowledged and to feel like I got what
I needed. And I think that I would be lying
if I didn't say there was a part that just
feels like it's a drop in the ocean. I mean,
I'm wrestling with my own hopelessness around this issue and
(16:36):
this relationship, and so even getting what I need in
this moment does meet that hopelessness with like, well, maybe
now in this context I can get what I need.
But in anything other than a pretty specific set of conditions,
I'm not going to be able to get what I need.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
I'm wondering if we can go a little farther back.
When you talk about the ocean, I think about the
breadth of your relationship with your mom and the history.
Were you aware of your mom's depression when you were
growing up and at what point did you become aware
of it, and how did the two of you start
(17:16):
talking about that and at what point in your lives?
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Yeah, i' mean certainly aware of it.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I remember now with the vantage point of adulthood, I
can remember when it was probably pretty.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Bad, which is when you were how old My.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Parents divorced at when I was four, And the memories
I have are of like being alone, you know, while
my mom was kind of in her room, and I'm
guessing I was pretty young. She did a good job,
and she did a lot of work I think to
try and parent through it, and I think that depression
(17:52):
is very difficult to power through.
Speaker 5 (17:55):
I think I became more.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Sort of explicit aware of it probably when I was
a teenager. I think we started talking about it more.
I'm guessing as I transitioned into adulthood. But it's certainly
been a part of the story for a long time
in my mind.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Carol, I want to ask you something. Michelle is saying
that over the past couple of years, there's been a
bit of a change in that. Previous to that, when
she would bring things up to you about things that
might have hurt her or upset her. You had a
bit more resilience to absorb them and then to be
able to respond to them. And she says, now you
might crumble a bit. And while that's completely understandable given
(18:39):
what you've been through, that it leaves her feeling like
it's very, very difficult to bring things up. And I
want to ask you whether you noticed a change in
how much you're able to hear the things Michelle brings
up over the past couple of years.
Speaker 4 (18:54):
I would frame the whole thing much differently. Obviously, feel
that since we had my breakdown, I call it I
came very close to committing suicide. I did not commit suicide,
but and I did go through all the ect I've
been through TMS twice, and I do get overwhelmed easily
as I am now. However, when Michelle and I argue
(19:17):
now or talk now, she tells me that she's not
interested in hearing my explanations, only my apologies. So I
feel very stuck in that I've done something that bothers her.
Bringing over face masks at the beginning of the pandemic,
when they were hard to find after she'd said she
didn't want masks, I brought some over anyway, because I've
made some for all my friends and family, and of
(19:38):
course I would make some for the people that I
love the most. She was very angry with me bringing
over mass but she told me she doesn't want to listen.
That the CDC said this, and that that's an explanation.
That's an excuse. Any explanation is an excuse for inexcusable behavior,
is what she's told me. So I feel very stuck
in that I have no way to rea respond when
(20:00):
she tells me or done something wrong. I can apologize
if I understand what I did and believe it was
wrong and that I need to apologize.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
I'm wondering how often you feel you have a clear
understanding of what it is specifically that upset about something.
I think you not very clearly if she gets upset
or angry with you. I'm wondering how much you are
clear about what it is, specifically that what was angering
about you bringing masks over? Even if such and such.
(20:31):
In other words, do you ask questions when that happens?
Do you say to her, you know, Michelle, I can
see her upset I really want to understand it. Could
you please help me understand it, because if I can,
I'll try very much not to do that again. But
right now I'm a little confused, So indulge me. Could
you please explain that to me? Is there a version
of that that you try to use when those things
(20:51):
happen between you?
Speaker 4 (20:53):
I think sometimes yes and sometimes no. She was very
clear that she was mad at me because I disregarded her. No,
I don't want any masks, and that's why she was
mad at me. But I wasn't allowed to explain what
I felt was very reasonable thing to do.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
This reminds me a lot of what happens between couples
where people give and receive love in different ways. And
you are clearly just trying to show her I love you,
I care about you, I want you to stay safe.
This is my way of protecting you. And she was saying,
but I told you that's not the way that I
(21:32):
want to be loved. And when people say this is
the way I want to be loved, and people don't
get that kind of love, and instead they get something else,
they don't feel loved. And so I think what's very
confusing for the person who is giving the love is
wait a minute, I'm giving all this delicious love to
my daughter and I'm getting an angry response. This makes
(21:56):
no sense to me, and so I think what's going
on on is that sometimes it might be hard to
adjust how you give your love to Michelle in a
way that she wants to receive it, and to you.
It starts to feel like, well, I'm walking on eggshells.
I never know what to do. No matter what I
(22:16):
do is wrong. But I also think that she's telling
you what she wants, Like she said I don't want
you to bring masks, and you did anyway. Now I
know it sounds very trivial. The actual event isn't that significant,
but the interaction, the relational piece of it, is a
bigger pattern of can you hear me? Can you see me?
(22:39):
Can you understand me? And when you disregard what I've said,
even though you thought it was a loving gesture, it
feels like you can't see me at all, And so
I wonder what happens for you, Carol. When Michelle says
I don't want you to bring over the masks, I
have a feeling you get angry with her too.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
It was a simple. Two weeks earlier, I'd said, hey,
I'm making masks. Do you want some? She said no,
I don't think we need them. Two weeks go by,
CDC says, yes, everybody should wear masks. I'm making tons
of masks. I'm dropping them off. It wasn't a no,
don't bring them. It was a no, I don't think so.
So I didn't feel quite as strong. I brought a
bunch of other stuff too. I brought cookies for the kids,
And the only thing she responded to was the masks,
(23:22):
and that was with anger. So yeah, I did feel
hurt and angry.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
When we go back to the ocean, and I'm referring
again to the ocean as the history between the two
of you. I think one of the things that happens
when you have a family where one of the parents
is suffering from depression is that the child often feels
like my needs are not being seen right now, my
(23:50):
needs are not being met because my parent isn't able
to do that for me right now. And sometimes if
that doesn't get worked through, later lots of things start
to feel like that that maybe aren't the same thing,
but feel like the same thing, or reminiscent of the
same thing. And so Michelle maybe someone who didn't grow
(24:11):
up with a mother who was suffering from depression and
didn't experience that feeling of a loneeness, that feeling of
I'm not sure if she sees me, I'm not sure
she hears me that. Anytime something like that happens, it
becomes very big in your mind, whereas somebody else might
have said, oh, look she brought over cookies and toys,
and yeah, they're a master I don't really need them,
but it's okay. You know, I'm not going to say
(24:32):
anything about that because it doesn't bother me so much.
Look at all the nice things she brought over. But
for you, it was, oh, here's another example of that.
And so I think it's important that we talk a
little bit about how Carol's depression has impacted the two
of you, because I think Michelle, it's clear that it
was lonely and upsetting and scary, and we'll hear more
(24:57):
about that. But I wonder if you you say you
don't want to hear about your mom's experience, and I
actually think that it would be helpful, and I don't
know if you'll agree to do that here on this call.
But my feeling is that if you understood a little
bit more about it, that it wouldn't overpower your needs,
(25:18):
but it would just be something that would sit side
by side with your needs. Are you interested in hearing
more about that?
Speaker 5 (25:28):
I'm not sure.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
I'm not sure, Michelle.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I can tell that you're someone who's actually spent many, many,
many hours working on your relationship with your mom without her,
in your therapy, in your head with friends, and you
seem to me like you're someone who's done so much
of this thinking and so much of that work that
(25:54):
you're kind of exhausted and you're not sure whether you
have much rope left to make more effort. And so
I want us to try and use this time to
see if we can have a conversation now that would
help you replenish some of those energies and give you
a little bit of hope that it's a worthwhile expenditure.
(26:15):
Is that something you feel that you might be up for?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, I do feel I feel exhausted to kind of
weave into Laurie your prompt about what this was like
early on, if I can start.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
There before you start, Michelle, I just want to say, Carol,
whether Michelle can see it or not, Guy, and I
know that you did everything you could to work through
your depression and also be a good mom to Michelle,
(26:52):
and that it was incredibly hard. And so if you
can hear what Michelle is saying, as I want to
hear what my child did experience was because it will
bring me closer to her, not because she's going to
dump all her anger and resentment on me, but because
I want to try to understand. If I were listening
as an outsider and I heard this young woman talking
(27:12):
about her experience, how would I hear that versus hearing
it as her mother. You don't have to agree with
her version of events, meaning the content of it, but
what you can't argue with is how she feels.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
What's important is that you can see that she feels
this way and understand this is how she feels. And again,
if you are hearing this from somebody else's daughter and
not your own, you would probably have a lot of
compassion for her. Okay, So let's start there.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The memories I have about my mom's depression are less
about the kind of typical presentation of depression, of being
sad or withdrawn or struggling to get out of bed.
Speaker 5 (27:56):
They have more to do with ear ability.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
And a kind of almost explosive withdrawal, like I would
say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And
I have a lot of memories of my mom retreating
to her room and shutting the door when I had
done something.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Now could do anything specific, you could paint a picture
for us with.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
There was a time I remember making some kind of
comment about her appearance and meant it as a like,
look at a thing I noticed, I'm so clever, and
it offended her, and I remember her getting really angry
and like throwing me off of her lap and sort
of going to a room and shutting the door. I
(28:41):
think that the unifying feeling is needing to be a
buffer between my mom and the world. I'm an only child,
and I think that my mom she presents a lot
of helplessness, and she presents a lot of anger towards
the people around her or strangers. I can remember being
(29:02):
young and her being offended by strangers that we would encounter,
and she would sort of start a confrontation with them,
and that being really scary. The feeling of I need
to be between the world and my mom or she's
not going to be okay. And the caretaking and the managing,
(29:24):
the knowing which topics of conversation can't come up, knowing
what content imagery she can't tolerate, knowing my body is
so full of her triggers that even now at thirty five,
I'll see something that I know she can't handle and
I will have a reaction to it.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
What's an example of that?
Speaker 3 (29:48):
These triggers, Oh, like strong smells, loud noises, animals being hurt.
I've had a conversation with any guy I've ever brought
home about the list of things you can't talk about,
you can't bring up because she will do this kind
of explosive withdrawal. And that fragility is a major part
(30:15):
of my childhood and our relationship, and my relationship with
my stepdad too. That I think he has fully embodied
the role of her protector in a way that reinforces
the rules about what I'm allowed to be and what
I'm allowed to say and who I'm allowed to You know,
he does the same thing he's bought in.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
How old were you when your mom married your stepdad?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Seven when we were married for me. That's more of
the thing, is like, not only do I not get
to be the kid who gets to be messy and
get contained, but I have to contain. I mean, even
with the suicide idality, one of the triggers was that
she didn't have her therapist call her husband. She had
(31:06):
her call me to rescue her.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
So, Carol, before you shake your head, because I think
I saw you shake your head a bit, I'm reminding
you of your task right here, and your tasks only well,
not to listen and to understand. And this is what
I want you to do right now. And I'm going
to acknowledge that I'm asking you to do something very
difficult because I'm sure you have a lot to say
about everything Michelle said. But what I think Michelle needs
(31:33):
to hear right now is that you understand what that
experience was like for her. You can explain what it
was about for you, but I don't want you to.
I want you to just keep that part in your head.
What I want you to express is just that you
get that from her perspective as a child growing up
feeling as she did, that you understand what her experience
(31:54):
is like. And I want you to do that in
a way that you can best make her feel understood.
Get that to try, please, Yes, I.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Will, and I apologize for the I thought I was
correcting a misstatement.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
I think that every time you correct her, she feels
like you're not seeing me. The disputing of the facts
is always going to happen. So that's not the issue.
The main message, if I could put it in one sentence,
would be I have felt this burden of not being
able to be a kid as I was growing up
(32:28):
because I always worried about you. I loved you and
I resented you because I was so worried about what
would trigger you. I wonder how you might respond to
her just knowing that was how she felt, whether or
not you agree that that was the message that you
were sending her, and it has really affected her well
(32:52):
into her adulthood, and so I wonder if you could
just respond from a place of love.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Right now, I think for a lot of my life,
I deluded myself into thinking that my depression wasn't impacting you.
But I mean, it makes perfect sense to me that
even if I thought I was doing great, you know,
taking you to your dance lessons and stuff, I don't
remember ever pushing you off my lap. I can't imagine
(33:19):
that happening.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
But I want to stop here because I think this
is what happens between the two of you.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
You were talking about you, and I want you to
talk just about Michelle.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
When you add things like well I was taking you
to dance lessons, you're trying to say I wasn't a
horrible mom. I tried my best. I was doing these things.
And I don't want you to have to feel like
you're defending yourself right now, because she's not asking you
to defend yourself. She's saying, can you see me? And
so I think what she's wanting is to know that
(33:49):
you took in what she said and that you have
some kind of compassion for her without disputing anything she said,
but stay with her feeling.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
What I kind of started to say was that I
deluded myself into thinking I had protected you from that,
but I know that's not true, and.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Tell her in which ways it's not true.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
I would have this explosive whatever you called it, I
didn't withdrawal.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
An explosive withdrawal.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
I mean that sounds like something I would do, and
I'm sorry for that. I know, a couple of the
instances that you were talking about with strangers were bad
for you. They were mitigating circumstances. But that's not the point.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Okay, wait, hold on, So you're right, that's not the point.
And so that's where you, guys get tripped up, is
every time you're able to connect with her, you start
to feel shame. And so we want you to just
take the shame out of this, because I don't think
that Michelle is here to say you were a bad mom.
That's not what she's here to say. She's trying to say,
(34:53):
our relationship is impacted by what happened between us. And
the reason that I get so upset when I say
don't bring the masks and you bring the masks is
because of this stuff that hasn't been acknowledged before. And
so every time you add a comment like there were
mitigating circumstances or I took her to dance class, you're
(35:14):
missing the point that she's making. And I can see
on her face she talked about the word exhaustion, where
she's like, here we go again. And so it's really hard.
But if you can just work through this one conversation
in a different way, I think it will give you
a template for something different to happen between the two
of you, and I think that if you can't, you
(35:36):
won't be able to make much progress.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
I don't know how I cannot feel shameed that my
depression impacted you the way it did.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh okay, so Carol, you want to put yourself in
Michelle's place as a child, and you want to revisit
the experiences that you remember through Michelle's eyes.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
This is hard because I, for a lot of reasons, there's.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
So much noise in your head about trying to defend yourself.
Michelle has not forgotten that you took her to dance class.
So if you think about the difference between a raw
egg and a hard boiled deck, when someone is depressed,
they're like a raw egg. You drop it, it cracks open.
It's that explosive withdrawal that Michelle's talking about. Is about
that very knee jerk reaction. You get injured very easily
(36:28):
because you're like a raw egg. Okay, when you're not
feeling so depressed, you're like a hard boiled deck. You
drop it might get a little dinged up, but it's
not going to crack open. Like the raw egg. And
what Michelle's trying to describe to you is the times
when you were like a raw egg. Can you respond
to what that must have been like for her?
Speaker 4 (36:49):
I can try, Michelle. I'm just I'm very sorry that
it was like the for you. Everything that you set
sounds completely right. The list of things you'd have to
talk to your boyfriends about, I'm sorry about that. I'm
(37:11):
sorry you had to protect them from me, or me
from them, or however it was. I'm sorry. You shouldn't
have had to protect me. I should have been protecting you. Yeah,
my second husband was and still does do that protecting thing,
(37:35):
and that's made it harder for you. I just feel
bad that. I'm sorry. I could have been the best
mom for you that you deserve to have had. I
wanted to be the best mom for you, and I
know I wasn't. I know that there are hard times
(37:57):
for you because of my depression, and I'm very very
sorry results.
Speaker 2 (38:02):
Carol. Were you aware that Michelle felt throughout so much
of her childhood that responsibility to protect you, to buffer,
to look out for you and your interactions with the world.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
No, And that's what's been so weird for me is
it's been learning just in the last few years. I think,
as I was saying, I deluded myself thinking that I
had kept her safe from that from my depression. But
it's been something that I've lived with, so therefore she
has lived with, you know, her whole life, and I
(38:41):
like to think past Hans liked that it wasn't impacting her.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And that's the thing. I don't know a situation in
which a parent had really significant depression that did not
have an impact on the child. And I'm suggesting that
going forward after today, the more you become curious about
Michelle's experience, the more it'll seem to her that, Okay,
you're really listening to her now rather than explaining you.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
I also want to say that at the beginning of
this conversation, Carol, you didn't think you could put yourself
into that mindset, and what just happened. I'm actually tearing up.
I'm going to have to take my glasses off because
it was so beautiful. Michelle. I don't have the history
with your mom, so I think you may have heard
it differently than I did. But to me, it was
(39:34):
an act of profound courage that it was so hard
for her to put aside all of the shame she feels,
all of the ways that she did not want to
hurt you, and to really be able to let that
go and say, wow, I did hurt her, even though
(39:54):
it was the last thing I wanted. I hurt Michelle
in a lot of ways. I hope that you can
let this in a little bit without imagining what's going
to happen next or how much you trust it, but
to take that experience for what it was. I don't
know if your mother has ever said that to you
in that particular way, and I'm wondering if that felt
(40:18):
different to you in some way.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, I would say it did feel different, and I
would say there's a small part that kind of relaxes
a little bit when I get to hear that. I'd
be overstating it to say that it has a big impact.
I think that I'm wrestling with those pieces that don't
trust it, or that hooked into what landed as undermining
(40:44):
statements that were woven in there.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
I think that the two of you both have these
impulses that are very old and very hard to kind
of contain. Right now, your mom's impulse is to justify
why would happen and happened. But in that last bit
of the conversation, she was so raizor focused on you
(41:08):
and how sorry she is and how she could see
what that was like when you brought your boyfriends over.
She acknowledged all of that without qualification. That was her
containing that impulse but also really seeing you and I
think that you have the same thing where you say, well, yes,
I heard that, and yet your impulse is but I
(41:29):
don't trust it, so you won't let it in. That's
your impulse, and you're going to have to contain your
impulse if you're going to be able to really connect
with her, if you're really going to be able to
take in what she's offering.
Speaker 4 (41:45):
I just want to say, it's so hard for me,
alb cuts. You are the most important thing in my life.
Like if I were to do one thing in my life,
it would be raised a happy person. I want you
to happy and healthy. And when I hear about the
things that I have toot that have hurt that prospect,
(42:11):
that have hurt you and not helped, it's just it's
the worst thing for me, Carol.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
But you have to understand, you see that you can't
go back and change those things. But you have immense,
immense power right now to do something that's exactly in
line with what your aim is to do. You want
a happy daughter. You have a power now to help
(42:45):
your daughter become happier, at least happier in your relationship
with her. And really it's simple and straightforward. You have
to find a way to really be able to talk
about her without talking about depression, and talking about her
without talking about you, and not all the time, but
(43:06):
some of the time, because when things go wrong, especially
between the two of you, it's two seconds before depression
comes into the picture. On both sides, Michelle's walking on
extshells because she doesn't want to trigger something, and you're
trying to explain why you did or didn't or don't remember.
You were just accessing the fact that you care about her,
and you were working really hard to keep the explanations
(43:28):
and the excuses out so you were able to stay
for a little bit with just just her. And I
know that was difficult because you're not used to doing that,
but that's what you have the power to offer her
going forward. So rather than dwell on the missus, I
would love for you to focus on the opportunities you.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Have now, and I think part of doing that is
that you're going to need to forgive yourself for what
happened in the past. It doesn't matter whether Michelle forgives
you for that, but you need to be able to
forgive you yourself so that you won't keep launching these defenses.
In these conversations. You're wanting something from her, and she's saying,
(44:08):
I don't want you to want those things from me.
I spent my whole childhood feeling like you needed things
from me that were not mine.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
To give Michell one thing that was very important here
is your mom saying that she used to think, she
used to hope that she had somehow shielded you miraculously
from the depression that really is impossible to shield a
child from, but only very recently she realizes she hadn't.
(44:35):
That's a very new development. Now you have a mom
who acknowledges that it wasn't all fine and is just
starting to come to terms with what that actually means
and how that actually happened. So with that in mind,
I want you to have a slightly different perspective of
hopefulness in terms of how much she can hear and
(44:57):
how much of a different perspective she might have.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Yeah, I think I can lean into opening to the
possibility that something new is going to happen. I want
to acknowledge my own limitation around that.
Speaker 5 (45:12):
I my well.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
Of compassion is tapped, and I do really struggle. I
think you named resentment early on, and I notice it
pop right up. I'm wondering how to sidestep it, Carol.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
If you can continue to express compassion to that experience
Michelle had when she was younger, that's what will fill
her will of compassion for you. You have to have
it for the child that she was in the reality
that she had, and then it fills up for her
as an adult a little bit. But that's how that
gets fixed.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
And also we see this a lot with couples who
come in where somebody says, I'm just tapped out. I
can't have any compassion for you because I felt like
I've done that for so many years and now you
have to do this for me. And it doesn't work
that way. One person can't do this. It has to
be a team effort.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
I think it's not that I can't feel compassion, it's
that I have felt like the messaging has been that
I owe her compassion, that the compassion is a requirement,
that I lead with it at all times. You know
that that was my childhood mentality was I have to
always be in her experience and be cutting her slack
(46:31):
and be giving her grace and not holding her accountable
and not reporting hurts, and compassion for mom has had
to be the title of the book. Of course, I
have compassion, And I think that's you know, it's so
easy for me to imagine her as a child herself
and what I know she didn't get and what she needed,
(46:53):
and you know why she has the limitations I think
that she has, you know why this depression is and
so intractable, Like I can tap all of that. It's
when it shifts to the interpersonal of like, this is
your job is to be compassionate. And I feel like
that's where I bump up against something.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
I think you're confusing feeling genuine compassion with you need
to take care of me. Yeah, and so you're going
to have to really separate those two things out because
they're conflated. Yeah, but they're very different. You talked about
her explosive withdrawal. You have an explosive reaction too. You
have an explosive withdrawal. You're like, I'm out, she couldn't
(47:37):
stay there long enough. I'm out. You do the same thing,
and so instead of having that explosive withdrawal, you can say, Okay,
that was as long as she could stay in it
right now, and just have some compassion for that experience.
Do you see the difference?
Speaker 5 (47:51):
Yeah, that I feel capable of.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
It's a feedback loop. We're going to be giving each
other different responses. Maybe when she comes over with the mass,
I'm going to be able to tell her how I
feel about it, but in a different way. Oh and
you also brought cookies and toys, Thank you so much.
And Mom, I said I didn't want the masks. It
really means a lot to me when you hear me
and don't bring over the masks. And then Carol, you
(48:15):
don't say, oh, but the CDC says, and you say,
you're right, I'm sorry. I should have just brought over
the cookies and the toys. I'm sorry that I brought
over the mask. You guys are done and your day
is saved right there. See how different that interaction is Carol,
does that make sense to you.
Speaker 4 (48:31):
Too, Yes. A lot of times the reaction is delayed.
I'm not trying to lay blame OUTO explaining why it's harder.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Sometimes you would give the same response you need to
go out that in a delay your response is still
you know what. After thinking again about what you said,
I realized that you have a sensitivity to me not
hearing you or listening to you, so that can be annoying.
I'm sorry. I should have listened and not brought the masks. So,
(49:03):
Michelle and Carol, we have some advice for each of you. Carol,
here's your task that we'd like you to do this week.
We would like you to think of three incidents from
Michelle's childhood that you can revisit through fresh eyes, in
which you are going to try and describe that experience
(49:24):
from Michelle's point of view, three incidents that we haven't
spoken about, and really give a narrative of what those
were like for Michelle from this new perspective you have
of I wasn't protecting her entirely, and her experience was
she was trying to protect me, and what that was
like for her to be a child and doing that
(49:45):
now we know Carol, that when you start thinking of
Michelle's perspective, the justifications come to you, Your perspective comes in,
and you start to see things through your eyes again
rather than through hers, in which you see the depression
and the efforts that were required and all of that.
We'd like you to put those in because that's part
of your process, but we'd like you to really try
and focus as much as possible on writing Michelle's perspective
(50:09):
for three different incidents, so that Michelle's experience is, oh wow,
Mom really thought about this from my perspective and kind
of got it. When you're done, we want you to
go through them and take out all your side of things, Carol,
so it just leaves Michelle's side. We would like you
to have at the end a document of three narrative
(50:29):
incidents that you're describing that when Michelle reads, she'll be
able to really feel like, oh wow, Mom is starting
to get it.
Speaker 4 (50:38):
I understand the assignment. I'm just can I ask Michelle
if there are times that she would like me to
do this exercise for that would be helpful.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Let's have a call a friend lifeline and we'll give
you one so Michelle, is the one example that you
can give your mom.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
And I'm guessing that maybe part of the reason that
this is hard is because Michelle, you held it all
inside and you haven't really told her a lot of it. Yeah,
So if you can give her this lifeline on this one.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
Yeah, there was a time that we were in the mall.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
We walked by some people piercing their baby's ears.
Speaker 5 (51:16):
Okay, I remember that with this that was probably five
or six.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, and I said something about it.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Yeah, okay, excellent, Michelle. We want you to do kind
of the same thing. But one of the things that
we really want both of you to be able to
do is to hold this idea of both and in
your minds. So your mom did some really good mothering,
and she failed you in other ways both and and
(51:45):
I think sometimes it's hard for you, Michelle, to hold
the both and in your mind, just as it's hard
for your mom. So what we'd like you to do,
just as he's having a hard time getting in touch
with both sides of this, we want you to get
in touch with both sides of it. And so we
want you to write down three things from your childhood,
but three times in which she was a really good
(52:07):
mother three times in which you felt like I felt
mothered in the way that I wanted to be and
I wish that I had had more of that. And
so what we want you to do, just like we
asked your mom, is at first, you're going to write
them with all of the qualifications. Yes, she drove me
to this, or she did this, or there was this
moment when she was really there for me and we
(52:27):
had this great conversation. I felt so loved and seen,
but then she went into her room. So you can
write that the first time with all the qualifications, but
after you write that draft of the letter, we want
you to take out all the qualifications and that's going
to be the letter that you sent to her. And
then you're going to leave us a voice memo and
you're going to let us know a what it was
(52:50):
like to write your letter and b what it was
like to receive the letter that you got.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
And so we really wish you luck and be look
forward to him how this goes.
Speaker 4 (53:01):
Thank thank you, thank you very much for having us on.
Speaker 2 (53:04):
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
I think that most parents, to some degree have a
hard time looking at the things that they wish they
hadn't done, or that they wish they had done differently.
But when you layer on a struggle with depression, I
think there's even more tendency to want to think that
you were able to shield your child from this, because
(53:32):
you already feel bad enough about what's happening, You already
have struggled so much alone in your life, and then
to think, and my child's going to be affected by
this too, I think sometimes it just becomes overwhelming to contemplate.
Speaker 2 (53:47):
And I think that because Carol was so convinced that
she had successfully done that, to me, it's an indication
of how much ever she spent trying to do it.
And I think that's really an interesting perspective both of
them to keep in mind, because she put a lot
of effort into that. She thought she was successful, and
of course she could not be entirely successful, but she
was actually really trying.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
And because it was really hard for her to acknowledge
the ways in which Michelle really did struggle with it.
Michelle has a hard time acknowledging the ways in which
Carol was a good parent that she can't hold those
two things together at the same time. So I think
for both of them. It'll be interesting to see how
they do this assignment and whether they're able to do
the both and of it and then offer the other
(54:30):
person the perspective that they've been missing.
Speaker 2 (54:32):
I am curious too.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
You're listening to Dear Therapists for my Heart Radio. We'll
be back after a short break.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
So, Laurie, we heard back from Carol and Michelle, and
I'm eager to hear the letters they wrote to one another.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Hi, Laurie and Guy. It's Carol reporting back. So writing
my letter to Michelle was difficult, but was also a
huge learning opportunity. Like any parent, of course, it's hard
for me to look back at times when I caused
my child pain. It was terrifying to go back to
those times, but I understand that it's important that I
try to see those times from Michelle's perspective. She needs
(55:23):
to know that I want to understand what it was
like for her growing up with a depressed mom. I
realized that having compassion for Michelle as a child is
key to regaining her trust as an adult. It took
a while, but the more I thought about what it
was like for her, the more I realized how hard
it must have been. I can still picture her little face,
all quiet and scared when I was suddenly angry at
(55:45):
her for no reason. I can try to imagine what
it was like for her when I was locked away
in my bedroom, when I was depressed and couldn't face
the world. Those memories make me incredibly sad, and I
very much want to make it up to her if
I can. I can tell you that it was a
lot more fun reading Michelle's letter to me than writing
mine to her. Her letter was gratifying, for sure. She
(56:06):
started off saying that I had many strengths as a
mom and that it wasn't difficult for her to come
up with specific incidents. Also, the instances she picked were
meaningful and heartwarming to me. They weren't about big vacations
and material things. She picked times that I might have
chosen myself as examples of good parenting. There were times
when she needed her mom and I was there for her.
(56:28):
Of course, that felt great to read. I'm hopeful that
this will lead to many conversations between us. I feel
like we have a lot to talk about. Thank you,
Laurie and Guy for having us on.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
This is Michelle with my reflection on exchanging letters with
my mom. Writing the letters didn't feel hard or painful.
It felt okay, and I felt authentic and what I said.
Receiving the letter from my mom has left me feeling
some tension and anxiety and some dread. I think I
(57:05):
feel anxious that something will be expected of me, like
I got something for me and so now maybe something
will be expected back. I feel there were parts of
the letter that were interesting to me. Things I didn't know,
information about how I showed up as a kid that
was interesting and new to me, and I appreciated that.
(57:29):
And there were a couple moments in her letter where
I felt a part of my body, like a not
in my body, loosen a little. And that makes me
feel a little hopeful that she were able to kind
of stay with that kind of communication, not all the time,
but sometimes that things could potentially get on a path
(57:50):
towards improvement. I was kind of surprised by the impact
of her letter, and I think I'm still processing it.
Speaker 5 (57:58):
So that was are my thoughts.
Speaker 3 (58:01):
Thank you very much for all your time and help.
Speaker 1 (58:08):
We should start by letting people know that we saw
the letters that Michelle and Carroll sent to one another
before they sent them. And Michelle's letter was very sweet
and it was very straightforward. It was three incidents from
her childhood where she really felt like she had the
mother that she wanted, and they were beautiful, sweet They
were meaningful examples of her mother really having her back,
(58:30):
really seeing her, really being there for her. Carol's letter
was extraordinary. It was written in the first person where
she really got into what she imagined Michelle's experience was.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
Actually it was a great masterclass in empathy in that way,
in the sense of put yourself in someone else's shoes
and once you're there, you can look around and what
do you see? And you really saw doing that exercise
in the writing, it was so detailed.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
It was so detailed. She painted this vivid picture of
Michelle's against that sounded so much like it reflected what
Michelle talked about in the session. So there's a lot
there with Carol, And even in her reporting back of
what it was like to go through this experience of
writing the letter and receiving the letter, she was really
able to take ownership of what that experience must have
(59:19):
been like for Michelle to have a mother who was
going through depression for the bulk of her childhood. The issue,
I think, in terms of their responses to the letters
has to do with the difference between how Carol and
Michelle interacted in our session with what happens when Carol
has given an opportunity to sit back and reflect and
(59:41):
edit her letter to Michelle and think about what she
wants to say on the voice memo.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
When she can edit out all that pain, then what
you're left with is a really empathetic, well intentioned parent
who really wants the best for her daughter and can
really understand what her daughter's experiences. But in real life,
Carol has a lot of trouble regulating and preventing herself
(01:00:08):
from going to that place. And that's the stuff that
Michelle has a really hard time with. The empathy and
the compassion for Michelle gets scrambled with the pain she
has for her own self, and Michelle doesn't get the
benefit of that pure empathy part.
Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
And that's why Michelle used the word dread in her response,
because I think that part of her really wants to
trust this, and another part of her knows that when
we actually talk in person, it doesn't go that way.
But she did say that there was a part of
her where she said the not in my stomach loosened,
and I felt hopeful. And I feel hopeful too that
(01:00:46):
Carol now has the experience of doing the exercise of
editing out all of those parts that get in the
way of her really connecting with Michelle, and for Michelle
to be able to say, Okay, I can put my
toe in the water here, I can get a little
bit closer to you. So I think that this exercise
gave Carol the practice that she needs and gives Michelle
(01:01:08):
a window into the fact that Carol really does get
it when she can put the other stuff aside.
Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
If I had one piece of advice for each of them,
it would be Carol, try and edit out the self
referential stuff when you're talking about Michelle's experience as hard
as you can. And Michelle, if you see your mother
do that even a little bit, reinforce it. Let her
know that you really appreciate that she's stuck with your
experience without bringing in hers. If you see incidents of that,
(01:01:37):
even if they're in texts, and maybe text her a
good place to start, because Carol can edit and texts
Michelle if you can reinforce that and bring forth more
of that, and Carol, if you can edit and allow
more of that to come forth, than there is help here.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Absolutely. I think that sometimes it's so much easier to
be able to communicate on paper. And what they wrote
to each other was so moving, and if they could
communicate that way in person, I think that they would
see a big change in their relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Next week, a young woman tries to break her pattern
of seeking out relationships with older, unavailable men. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:02:15):
I was dependent on him because of my dad and
his illness and him dying, and so I came to
rely on him, and I told him how much I
cared about him and how I grew to love him.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
I guess I think I said. Hey, fellow travelers, if
you're enjoying our podcast each week, don't forget to subscribe
for free so that you don't miss any episodes, and
please help support Dear Therapists by telling your friends about
it and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Your reviews
really help people to find the show.
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
If you have a dilemma you'd like to discuss with
us big or Smooth, email us at Lorian Guy at
iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited
by Mike John's, Bush Fisher and Chris Childs. Our interns
are Dorit Corwin and Silver Lifton. Special thanks to Alison
Wright and to our podcast fairy Godmother Katie Couric. We
can't wait to see you at next week's session.
Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Deotherapist is a production of iHeartRadio.
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