Understanding the Story Beneath the Stress

Understanding the Story Beneath the Stress

What if your anxiety isn’t random?

What if the worry that keeps circling your mind has a history?

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, I sit down with Joan K. Peters, author of Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis, to explore what it means to think psychoanalytically — not as a therapist, but as someone who lived it.

Joan shares how recurring night terrors in her twenties led her into psychoanalysis, where she uncovered buried childhood trauma surrounding her father’s death, emotional abandonment, and generational survival patterns.

This conversation is not about blame.

It’s about curiosity.

It’s about asking:

• What’s underneath this reaction?
• Where did this fear first begin?
• What story am I still living inside?

We talk about:

• Why children internalize silence as rejection
• How generational trauma shows up in adult anxiety
• The difference between behavior correction and root healing
• How fear of abandonment can quietly shape parenting
• Why repair — not perfection — builds secure relationships
• The power of revisiting childhood from an adult lens

Joan’s story reminds us that stress is rarely about the present moment. Often, it’s an echo.

And when we trace the echo back, something untangles.

About Joan

Joan K. Peters earned her Ph.D. in comparative literature from The University of Chicago and is professor emeritus of literature and writing at California State University at Channel Islands. She lives in Ojai with her husband, her dogs, and her chickens.

Learn more at:

UntanglingJoan.com

If This Episode Resonated…

If you notice repeating emotional patterns…

If certain fears feel larger than the moment calls for…

If you sense your body reacting before your mind understands why…

That may be your invitation to gently ask:

What’s underneath this?

And you don’t have to answer it alone.

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

[00:00:00] 

This is episode 185. We are talking about thinking analytically to ease, worries, grip.

Welcome to Wellness. In every season, we talk all things wellness, to help you align yourself, align with your goals, find balance in your life, and just recalibrate yourself if you are listening for the first time. Welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here, and let's get started in the rest of the podcast.

I have with me Joan k Peters. She was born in New York City, and got her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Chicago.

She's published a novel and two books about women and work and is a professor of literature and writing at California State University at Channel Islands. She lives on Ohio. I think I said that did I say that Joan? [00:01:00] With her husband, dogs, and chickens. Her new book is Untangling a Memoir of Cycle Analysis and you can learn more@untanglingjoan.com.

Joan, I'm excited for this conversation because it sounds like a journey and I can tell you care very much about people thank you for being on 

where would you like to start 

most people are curious about, who I am, I'm retired, a professor of literature. I ended up writing a book about psychoanalysis, so I can begin by telling you a little bit about that. 

I'm sure there's a journey and a story 

absolutely why would anybody go into psychoanalysis? I didn't even know what it was when I stumbled in, but I was in my twenties, which is a rough time it's when you confront yourself in the world. No more blaming anybody else for what goes wrong.

[00:02:00] And I had always had these just big nightmares. And my partner at the time, we were new, lovers and she said. People don't wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and I think you ought to see somebody. And that was how I began. I didn't know what I was getting into.

I saw a therapist who turned out to be a psychoanalyst and many psychoanalyst see people in, in regular old therapy. And then if it turns out that somebody wants and needs a deeper and more complicated dive into themselves and their background, it'll turn into psychoanalysis, which happened with me.

Shortly after I started with her [00:03:00] we began to talk about the nightmares. And again, I just, I was just telling her my problems and one of them were these nightmares and she began to ask me about my childhood. And what, was so strange is I couldn't tell her very much.

I knew nothing about my childhood before I was five because my father died when I was two and my mother remarried when I was five. We moved to a new apartment and my brother and I were not told, but it was clear we were never to mention. Where we lived before, who our first father was, nothing.

It was a sealed mystery, so I didn't know anything to tell her. She sent me to ask people, my brother, my mother, cousins I didn't know I became Watson to her Sherlock [00:04:00] Holmes little by little we uncovered enough for her to say to me at one point, it was one session that changed from therapy to psychoanalysis where she listened to my story insofar as I was reporting back what I had learned that week.

And she said. You were the angel of death. When I was born, the week before I was born, my father had been diagnosed with cancer. And it went from there to this wonderful 26-year-old mother of mine now with two little kids. Gradually moving into, by the time I was two nursing, a dying man

we lived in a three room apartment she didn't [00:05:00] have money to put him in a hospital and had to care for him and the babies. And she became, you know, you can imagine, I could imagine how preoccupied she was. How frightened how all of it. And then in that time, people spared children.

They didn't talk to them about death. Their kids, they'll forget about it as if kids don't forget they need to be told and talked to about their feelings. I knew I had a father who disappeared because he came back in these nightmares.

It all came back and she was able to decipher all of the coded information in this same nightmare I would have over and over. Different, you know, slightly different, but essentially the same. And that was the moment when I [00:06:00] discovered my unconscious. There's another part of me running the show, and I didn't even know.

And that began to reveal, untangle the Mystery of Me. There was the added mystery of why they kept it secret, why we never spoke of it why this man did not exist in my life, even as a memory. My brother, who was five years older, was able to tell me much more.

But that began this adventure. 

And with that session I signed on, I wanted to go deeper to find out what I had. Never been told, never understood, and had a sense it was driving my life. Even though I thought I was making all the decisions and doing really well, 

sometimes we, do [00:07:00] things and feel things. I had no idea why I would fall into these terrible depressions. I had a great life. I had a great job. I was getting my PhD. I was just finishing my thesis. I had a wonderful partner. So it began to explain what I couldn't explain to myself and what a relief to have your life make sense.

That's how this adventure began. 

Maybe I can talk about what I mean by thinking psychoanalytically. 

Let's go there and I'll ask my questions. 

Fast forwarding once my life had moved along, I began to see and share that, to go into psychoanalysis you have to be very motivated as I was.

I was waking up at night. I had night terrors if I woke up I was so frightened it didn't make sense. [00:08:00] I didn't understand where my fears were coming from. I began to look at. How we explain ourselves to ourselves. You can take any little thing in your life you can't explain.

When my daughter was a teenager, we used to really get into it. I would be beside myself trying to please her. Not being able to say, no, this is very typical, any mother, could find herself in this position.

I went to a therapist, an expert on teenagers. She would tell me what behavior to change. That was helpful, but. It was never enough. I knew there was something more and it wasn't really changing the situation enough. And little by little in analysis, this was a second analysis, that I had later in my life when I was [00:09:00] now a mother in a whole different time period.

I wanted to explore more 'cause I saw more problems, emerging, that weren't solved. And this was a symptom I started analysis to have a better relationship with my Daughter. and not to fall into these depressions. And in that I began to learn, I really understood how.

My own mother who very much disappeared into her depression and bitterness. And, I think I understand now that she had been through such a traumatic experience in losing my father and in being a 26-year-old with two children and no way of supporting us, she wasn't educated. She couldn't make enough money.

She was a model and couldn't make enough money as a model [00:10:00] to keep the roof over our heads. So she ended up having to marry another man because that's what women did at that time. I think I lost her at the same time as I lost my father. She withdrew into her own desperation and fear, and she wasn't the kind of mom who could enjoy having a 2-year-old.

She was in dire circumstances. My brother who had five years of a normal life with our mother and father, he was able to, I don't know how to put it differently. He was able to love me and be a wonderful brother. In many ways that saved me because he was kind and understanding of course he was a little boy, so he clobbered me every Thursday

but there was real generous love. What I brought to my teenage [00:11:00] daughter and my interactions with her is. A fear. I did not understand that if I didn't indulge her in everything, she might not. That's what came out when my analyst asked me what would happen if you said no?

And this was a circumstance where she was an older teen. She wanted to go to Hawaii for a job that my husband and I figured it probably involved drug smuggling she wouldn't have known she was too innocent. I still couldn't say no. And that was the question, why not?

And what I blurted out, 'cause in analysis you say whatever comes to mind was, I'm afraid she won't love Me. psychoanalytic thinking. It's really about asking yourself those penetrating questions, not how can I [00:12:00] do this better? Not, it's not only about outcomes, it's about where does this inexplicable problem, where does it start?

How can I go back? Stay with what does it feel like? Where does the fear come from? What's the first time I experienced it? Those questions end up being, the most important that's how you get to what you can't by logic it doesn't make any sense.

Why am I so free to say no to my daughter? The analyst had to explain children love their parents. Of course she might get mad at you for not giving her what she wants. 

She's a teenager, so she'll probably say she hates you, but it's not true.

Well, exactly. And enough to know it's not true. I was too insecure and projecting my mother onto [00:13:00] my daughter, all my fears about my mother not loving me it was how I felt as a child and I didn't understand what she had gone through.

I think it's psychoanalytic thinking like that, that was incredibly revealing and gave me more power and control how can you go wrong? It's understanding yourself. Often people are too afraid to look at what causes them pain, or to go into a depression and ask what's underneath it?

What's the sadness at the root of that depression? When did I first feel it? Generally the first time you feel it is as a child.

Why do you think people are afraid to go there? 

Because it's so painful when you and I can say, I was afraid of losing my mother's love. I projected that onto my daughter. But if [00:14:00] you go back into a moment in your childhood where you felt your mother didn't love you or didn't care it's going back into that child's emotional life the child didn't have defenses.

So it was pain and grief and fear greater than what grownups feel. You're going back into that vulnerability and that's frightening. But if you can hold on and let yourself feel it, it will. Bring you treasure.

And the wonderful thing is that you can move beyond it. You can allow it, understand it people talk about this all the time, many men, I'm sure you've heard, talk about their father just never even hugged them [00:15:00] or never said a warm word or was very demanding or something like that.

That's in a way easy to say, but to go back and be that child and look at how painful it is that your father turned away from you or was angry with you all the time, and it's very difficult. It's harder for men. Women can often find comfort in sharing these insights

men often can't, that's not the kind of thing they talk about. My husband's always joking all we do is get together and say, how about those mets? They don't talk about their feelings with one another in that way. So yeah, I think that it is something we can talk about and it's something we can share.

My brother and I, for example, continue to share that in our [00:16:00] lives. And we find great relief in being able to remember some hard things together and understand each other in terms of how, deeply. We felt our intense childhood

with siblings often people don't talk about things they've gone through together but haven't discussed. That's psychoanalytic talk. You don't need an analyst to share that. 

So many comments, so many questions.

If you're stuck after talking to your girlfriends, that's a good indication you need to see a therapist if you're not able to get past a certain point. Because I know so many people that I've coached, that I've been in contact with.

There's one person who comes to mind where every time she gets a chance, she shares about the same thing. [00:17:00] That is an indication that you're stuck. And if you're sharing things that are TMI, dirty laundry. Yeah. Uncomfortable like you tell the other person starting uncomfortable, that's an indication that you're oversharing and you really should be seeing a therapist.

I agree. And a therapist over a life coach. If you are. That kind of stuck and it's like in the past, if you're stuck and it's somewhere where you're trying to go in the future, that's where you can see a life coach. How did that change your relationship with your brother?

And how did what change my relationship with my brother 

the first time you did psychoanalysis and you started questioning and started to uncover and really went on that investigative journey of, why am I having night terrors?

Why am I waking up screaming? Or maybe you're not even waking up the other person is at least, 

yeah. 

How did that change your relationship 

that's a great question. My brother then told me he had been in psychoanalysis. He had [00:18:00] never told me.

That was your indication. I'm on the right path. 

Yeah. And I think we both sought out that path in different ways because we were both traumatized. That's the long and the short of it. And I think, often people don't know. They know what their childhoods were, but they don't realize that they were traumatic.

This is trauma, this is what hurts a person. My brother and I, when I came to him and interviewed him, I said, I need to find out about the past. He would send me out there to interview these relatives. Mind you that some of them we had never met because they were on my dead father's side of the family 

He always, so we helped each other. He would send me out, like the attack dog, and I would find out information, bring it to him, and then we would parse it out together and figure out what it meant. He knew a little bit. [00:19:00] I had brought this new info and we formed a bigger picture of what had happened.

Very recently in a blog, I have a blog for Psychology Today. I wrote about how although we had the same parents and the same situation, we had totally different experiences because it turned out he was able to share with me once we began to really talk and share together that he had been my mother's little man.

She had lost her husband and turned to my brother to pour out her heart. He was seven and not equipped to handle grown up emotions he was expected to be a little man.

The problem for me, as he explained was I was ignored. My mother couldn't cope with me. [00:20:00] My birth was when everything started to fall apart, and she never really, I think, bonded with me, whereas my brother, she had a relationship during a happy time and she was able to really bond with him.

She wasn't focused on me, and she was overly focused on him. His experience was trying to get away and find space for himself, whereas I was just desperate to have, please love me. Please pay attention to me. I was I was in a different position.

I felt alone and most of my problems in life stemmed from feeling so alone or fearing that I would be alone. My partner would leave me. My brother will leave me. You know, I was just scared all the time for good reason, you know, so we had different, [00:21:00] it was like we had different parents, and that's true for most siblings, even if they come from a happy family.

By the time you are born two or three years later, your parents are different people you are a different number in the family, it changes. It's wonderful to share with your siblings your different experiences have been. Then you can formulate a story about who your family is that's more accurate and fuller.

And that's psychoanalytic thinking too. 

I've had this conversation with my oldest, he is going to be 11. So really my daughter's turning eight this year, so I can't imagine pouring all of it out on her. I had that conversation with him maybe last year.

Beginning of this year anyway. Talking about how he was, comment on how I'm different when it's just me and him. Yeah, I can be [00:22:00] different because you understand me well enough. I can be more relaxed when it's just you and me. When you add in different siblings, it's different.

And I am a different mom depending on which child is around and however, stimulated I'm to begin with. And it just changes the dynamics. We were having a conversation about that and I was trying to explain to him how it's different because he doesn't have the same needs that his younger siblings plus he has a different personality than they do. I haven't even gotten into the love language part. I plan on sharing that with him soon. He's at the right age to start understanding and I wanna give him the test because I feel like his love language has changed.

So I think it'll be very just huge light bulb for him of understanding, oh, this is how my needs need to be met. This is how other people might need it for her friendships and everything it'll be fun for him, realizing the ages of my children and how my husband and I are very [00:23:00] different when it's just the two of us compared to children.

For one thing we can be more loving, but just in general, we can have a conversation and not be interrupted 20 times for just trying to get one sentence out. So there's that. And then going back, your mother did not have an education whereas you have a PhD. Found that Interesting. 

I realize through psychoanalysis and understanding how much of our lives are in reaction to our Childhoods.

During the height of feminism, everybody would say every woman is one man away from welfare that was true in my household. My mother would never take welfare. Much too proud, but her husband died and she had no means of earning a livelihood.

I saw that and it terrified me. And I was going to [00:24:00] have financial security in my life no matter what, and I was determined. I remember there weren't too many ways for women to earn a living, you could be a teacher or a nurse.

I chose teacher, but elementary school teachers did not earn enough to. Support a household so I had to, up the ante and become a professor. I thought it was the only thing women could do in education. I, figured if I worked hard enough, they wouldn't hold it against me that I was a female, many colleges.

Weren't accepting women, or just a small number, it was very difficult. When I was able to make that decision because at least colleges really opened up in a mass way for women. So that was my, path and it proved to be a good one.

It did give me [00:25:00] financial security and it did, give me a way to lift myself out of, our lower middle class, household, where you had to worry about money 

and then my other question is, you did this regarding your childhood have you done any of this work for family history?

Some of the trauma repeats itself. 

Yes I put together family trees for both my, maternal and biological paternal family. One of my grandmothers was dead, but the other was alive. She couldn't speak English and was illiterate.

These were poor immigrants from Eastern Europe. And, you know, I looked into what their lives were and I was able to find out quite a bit because I had a great aunt who was alive. I interviewed them to find [00:26:00] out, the whole family history.

These people had come over, as immigrants. It was heart wrenching to leave their families in Europe their own mothers and fathers. One of my grandmothers left two buried children they faced prejudice and intense poverty.

My grandmother was, an 18-year-old coming here with a 6-year-old boy and she was pregnant and she didn't speak the language and she didn't know where she was and she just knew she had to get out of Eastern Europe where they were gonna, they'd be destroyed. So they were traumatized people and the siblings helped each other come as is often the case.

There were 10 of them, and they came to New York City and took care of each other. Until they started fighting I only knew half of my family because the [00:27:00] other half wasn't talking. You know, it was like the Hatfield and the McCoys, you know, and families didn't talk to one another.

And I think that happens a lot, that you begin to see family strife as a way of just pouring out emotions that are so great. These are traumatized people who take it out on one another. That's what happened in my family. It accounted for why my biological father's family did not come and help take care of my mother and her children.

They abandoned us. Imagine. They just abandoned us. They told my mother, don't worry, we'll help take care of you. Then they never spoke to her again. Unbelievable. But this is what traumatized people do. They couldn't handle more grief. They had lost so much already.

Dead children, that grandmother [00:28:00] lost, her husband too. They had suffered so much. She made a living, they lived in one room, five children, and she made a living by gluing together. Paper to make bags for the grocery store below. Imagine 

paper to make bags, 

paper bags.

You know, they weren't manufactured at that time. Wow. People made them, and I had a new understanding of trauma my mother didn't know how to ask for help because nobody taught her it's important to look at our family histories and to really start asking the question, not who do I blame for my unhappiness, but how did this impact me?

How did this affect me? How did my father's behavior? His drinking or generosity, affect my life? [00:29:00] And that's the question that's so revealing and that's a psychoanalytic question. 

And I think once you take care of that, it's going further. You went the extra step of understanding where they were and what they were going through.

Yes, absolutely. 

You held your inner child, comforted your inner child, you had that place of being extremely naked of that vulnerability and really having to look at yourself, but then going, hold on. I was a child here, of course this isn't my fault. 

Yeah. 

And then understanding what was my mom going through

what were my grandparents going through? What was the family going through? You took the time to understand them. You were saying with her two children. So you were separating yourself from that so that you could look at it from a different lens here's this person I care about that [00:30:00] went through this.

Instead of putting yourself as that child it makes a difference. It made you have compassion, empathy. 

healing that you needed. I wanted to kind of take this apart for other people who are really stuck for them to understand this. And this is part of why therapists have you do your origin story.

Right. 

It's terrible to do it. It brings up stuff but it's amazing to psychoanalyze it and see. So for me, my mom's side of the family, there's addictions and stuff and I could judge 'em for that.

But when I did my family history I realized my family left right before Nazis were coming in could you imagine the survivor's guilt across the family that was still there and all they went through, that alone would be traumatizing.

There's generational trauma from that alone. Let alone everything else in my family. 

Even though the terror [00:31:00] took place, at your grandparents' or great grandparents' level, that terror is passed down

it's sitting inside you this is part of your family history. It doesn't just disappear. My family fled earlier, but the rest of their family was there and was destroyed by the Nazis. And also just to, they learn to survive some of them by abandoning one another.

That abandonment in my family history is part of my fear. This sense that people don't take care of one another. I think my mother was alone, but so was her mother. Her mother, also, she had a drunk for her husband.

And he abandoned her because he didn't work enough. Didn't bring home enough money. Didn't [00:32:00] care about her. He slapped her around. You know, that's abandonment. That's somebody who said they were gonna love you and stopped. 

And you can sit there and judge him.

But if you take it back what was his childhood like? Where do you put blame? Maybe the answer is there's compassion, but also boundaries. So for me, with my family, they're abusive and I did not realize how much it was abuse until I had to read a child called it in order to pass one of my classes.

Yes. That was awful. When I would finish, my required reading, my husband's like, I'm here. Do you need a hug? Do you need chocolate? Do you need to sit next to me do you need a weighted blanket? He made sure he was available, but he would not touch me or do anything until I'm like, I just need you to hold me, or whatever I needed.

But he was very available. Yeah, but that doesn't mean he is available to you guys. He's mine. Sometimes we need things like that to really help us see. [00:33:00] Wow. We really were abused. Instead of being told the whole time, well, you didn't have as bad as this person or this person.

Abuse is abuse. Trauma is trauma. The way it affects your body is the way that you really know. 

That's 

right. You have things that trigger you, and it's just this visceral reaction that is a sign you have trauma in your body to work through. It doesn't matter if it should not be as traumatic because of blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah.

What matters is it is stored in your body and it needs to get out. Yes. Otherwise, it's going to get out. In the most inappropriate times, you're gonna have trouble holding boundaries. And for me, I can have compassion for my parents while not having a relationship with them because they're still so toxic that I don't want my children around that.

And that is my way of undoing that cycle, right? Maybe over undoing it. We'll see how things turn out. But it's also, I have done the work on myself [00:34:00] done the therapy and I do have those conversations with my children at their level of how come we only have grandparents on this side of the family?

Do you not have parents? You never talk about your parents. My parents weren't great your mommy and daddy really love each other? 

A lot of families don't have that. Your mommy and daddy adore each other that's rare explaining things like this in a childlike way when they see abuse, they can come to me and I can take care of it.

I'm not gonna style here, putting on rings or whatever, but I can do the proper channels and make sure that child's taken care of or the other adult in the relationship. Remembering that compassion and boundaries can really go hand in here, and that when we do the work, we can heal so much.

Could you imagine? Not having done the work. You're repeating these patterns for my family is having children outta wedlock. My husband and I were married for five years before we had our oldest. [00:35:00] 

I made sure I picked a really good one. He is absolutely a winner. I wondered why I always had this deep exhale right after I kissed him.

He does it and doesn't realize he'll do this then kiss me and it forces me to do that too, I'm like no, I feel good when I, give you a kiss. Simple things like that. There are things that we can do for ourselves instead of just staying stuck in this bottled up emotional state.

And what I'm curious from the next part is how did your second psychoanalysis change your relationship with your daughter? We all need this. So if we're on the fence of, do I need therapy? Why do I need to do this? I feel like this will really bring it home

I must comment on your wonderful description of how your husband and you give each other important affection kindness and, love that's expressed in the [00:36:00] body that, many people don't have as children.

No. 

And that's, often not identified as abuse. Maybe abuse is not the word, but it's its own trauma. Children need to be hugged. They experience life through their bodies. They need to find your lap as a safe place when life is hard for them.

You are describing the ways you learned with your husband to appreciate all of that, to understand it. Now you have it to give your children, 

They're starting to be the age where they don't snuggle me. And I'm like, yeah, physical touch was not my love language before, but now it's starting to be 

because I don't have enough.

There's a moment where they, one of my mommy cooties. You're not allowed to touch 'em. But I'm, really talking about small children. 

Even people who've been abused, often [00:37:00] associate affection, the warmth of a hug, a kiss with abuse so I did too until 

therapy. Absolutely. 

you have to understand go back into your childhood and know if you didn't have all the affection you needed, and where that is in your body too. Not to have had what children must have 

And it makes me think the other way with your mom. She needed that and she didn't do that for herself. Taking care of you, snuggling you, comforting you. 

Doing 

the things science tells us we need to do for babies. Absolutely. There's a reason right after labor when the baby's still not totally clean, they're putting them on your chest.

Yes, that's right. There is a reason's. It's for both of you's. 

Anyway getting back to my second analysis it made my feeling [00:38:00] about my relationship with my daughter clean. It felt like I wasn't piling on top of her all my own entanglements.

Of course you're never just without your own childhood and so on. Now she's 34, and if I don't hear from her, as often as I want, I still can get scared. Maybe she's not gonna call. I fear I've lost her, but I understand that's my own, projection. I don't let it act out on her. I don't pick up the phone and say, how come you didn't call me? Where are you? What are you doing? Are you okay?

Which would make her feel overwhelmed. So I let her have her space. I'm not reactive in that way. I think I can be more authentic and natural with her. I'm not driven by [00:39:00] fear 

I'm sure it helped your relationship with your spouse with you guys being on different pages about Hawaii

and that's just one example. I'm sure there are many others. 

My husband had a similar past to mine in that he had very, very cold, unresponsive parents. And when we came together, we wanted to give each other what we didn't have as children.

And we're just so like your husband. You know, we hug each other when we need to be hugged. We kiss, we're affectionate, we're very supportive of one another. We're never cruel to each other. 

And that just got so much bigger and better after analysis because after analysis, I could not only do all those things with my husband but many of my compulsions dropped away.

Part of the way I dealt with how frightened a person I have been is. Compulsive behavior. So let's talk about a [00:40:00] vacation. I have to make all the choices. Where are we gonna stay? Where are we gonna go? Because I have to be in control.

We're gonna go to a movie. I have to choose it. And I lucked out 'cause he's incredibly patient you wanna go to that movie, okay, you wanna visit, Cape Cod, we'll go to Cape Cod. He was easy. That wasn't his trouble.

He didn't mind that. But now I don't have to do that. In fact, we just came back from a vacation he planned completely and I got a kick out of it. It didn't matter whether it was perfect or not I wasn't afraid of stepping into a hotel room and feeling like, oh my God, it's the wrong place.

Driven by these fears that didn't have any meaning, but understanding through psychoanalysis that's the way I was controlling what was for me as a child, a life completely out of [00:41:00] control. I didn't know why this man who was my daddy was wasting away. My mother had to give him shots of morphine and he would yell at me.

And then he disappeared and nobody ever talked about him again. I didn't know what was going on. My mother very suddenly went back to modeling 'cause she had to earn a living after my father died. So my mother wasn't there for more than eight hours a day.

She had to take the subway to work and it took a while. So she was suddenly gone there were these babysitters the cheapest she could find. They weren't very good. And I was left with strangers. I think all of these things made me a compulsive control freak.

Which was good for my work because I never had late papers made sure everything was done right, but not so good in a personal life. And [00:42:00] and that's what's so wonderful to, be able to live with so much less anxiety and to just have fun and not worry about whether things are perfect or not.

Not be afraid that maybe something's disappointing. And before I'd feel like if I had a disappointment, like I was falling into a, 50 foot hole and couldn't get out, and now I feel like, oh, it's disappointing. I'll be sad for a couple of days and then I'll figure out what to do.

Very different. 

Normal 

yes, exactly. Normal disappointment. I needed a second analysis because in my twenties. I could only go so far. A lot of what my analyst had to do was just support me because I was fragile and I couldn't really have gone as deep as I did with my second analysis [00:43:00] when I was older and more secure.

You also had to do more investigative work for your first one. Reaching out to people who are total strangers to you that share some blood. 

Yeah. It was exciting I would get more brazen just call people and say would you mind meeting with me?

Blood. 

Yeah, exactly. One was particularly amazing. He was from the side of the family we never talked to on my mother's side. He had a picture of his family.

I brought a picture of mine, we put them together and for the first time had the whole family there. And we didn't even know anything about each other's families. So that was, exciting. You feel like if you can master at least what your childhood was about and who your family is, you have more, of a foundation in life.

Many people come from families where you don't talk about certain [00:44:00] subjects. That's an emotional killer. 

And the funny thing is sometimes they do it because if it's not talked about it won't repeat itself. It does, yeah. Still, which is crazy. I know how that happens.

Where if you're educating people, you can educate them away from it. You can show them what to do instead of never talking about anything useful. 

And when I was a child, it was really believed that if you did not bring children to funerals and you didn't discuss death they wouldn't notice, just let them carry on children like to play and they'll forget about it.

How can you forget about a parent. This is true also when parents got divorced or separated they'd never talk about it. Children will make up stories themselves 

Children are resilient.

No, not true. They will make up [00:45:00] stories much more frightening blame themselves. Daddy left because I'm a bad child. 

They'll take it their whole life unless they receive therapy. 

That practice of not telling children what's going on backfires badly in families they carry

misery self-hatred or hurt, from a child's perspective. Your father didn't die. He, left you. I, didn't know about death. He not only left me, but he didn't even wanna see me when he was very, ill. Of course I didn't understand that either.

And you were so young, you were needy and cry and whi you that age. Natural. Exactly. But not helpful with somebody in a lot of pain. 

[00:46:00] Yeah. My brother, who was seven. It was thought that he should visit with my Father's. my father was in the only bedroom in the apartment, after school every day.

And that turned out, he told me not too long ago in our lives, that was very frightening and upsetting to him. My father was very ill. And, it was not a sight a child should be alone with. 

That's not how you remember your parent.

Nobody thought to, put their arm around him, explain what it was about, and spare him if it was too upsetting, how different would 

If your mother had a village? Yeah. Had a support system. It would've been completely 

Completely different because being alone, she had nobody to soothe her. She was making decisions out of frantic desperation. 

And she needed somebody with her [00:47:00] husband while she's taking care of you and herself. 

That's right. And how about somebody just to talk to she did have her sister, they talked on the phone and my aunt would periodically take us to give my mother a break.

But even with her sister, it wasn't enough. 

Person's never enough you need a village. 

Yeah. And her sister was far away. 

She wasn't next door to talk to 

I just think the bottom line is, they call it talk therapy. We all need talk therapy talking to one another. The way we're talking your stories about your own childhood and your own boundaries and the way you explain to your son that your relationship is unique as it is with each of your children.

All of this is putting words, sometimes things people feel very [00:48:00] alone with. 

Because he feels like he's not seen when all his siblings are around. I said, I absolutely understand and agree sometimes it is really that red ticket holder thing.

Take your number. It's not your right now. Your number's not been called or I already took care of you. Get back in line because we have four children. Sometimes I'm the only one because there's that gap in time if my husband is running late because of traffic, that's usually, he is home like right before they get home from school.

But sometimes he's not home. I'm the only one, you gotta take a number if you all need me at once. Otherwise none of you are getting me. I'm overwhelmed, so I can't always be the mom I want to be that's just reality. 

Yeah. I could 

feel guilty about it, but human not a robot.

And we're all that way. 

And you're talking with him about it. It's not something that he's lone with. That to me is the most important thing, 

I think, with [00:49:00] all of it in repair because when I am repairing it with him, he's learning how to repair with other people and repair with himself. That's right. That really is what makes a relationship is how well do you repair things. 

That's right. 

mess up. 

Yeah. 

If I was the perfect parent, would he wanna be a Parent? if I had the perfect parent, I'd be afraid to be a parent because I was gonna do it wrong.

I had these high standards from this perfect parent, no, it's the repair that matters. 

Sometimes things don't get a hundred percent repaired. But most of the time when it's repaired. That itself is enough. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent.

I agree. Please share this episode. For those saying, okay, I can see how it worked for them, I'm not sure if it works for me, what would you say to them? Or maybe [00:50:00] what would you say to the past version of yourself who wasn't quite ready, but you needed to get there?

You have to want to get to a more comfortable place with yourself. 

I think what happens is that we get to some place that is too difficult to continue on without changing our pattern. For me, that happened when looking ahead. The next thing that was gonna come up in my life that was a challenge outside of my relationship with my daughter was retirement.

And I was scared because I had a whole identity. I had a busy life. And I was afraid I would be stepping off a cliff into nothingness. And I felt like I needed help. [00:51:00] My own resources seemed not to be enough. I didn't want to be so frightened.

Here I go again with the same pattern, a boyfriend who, doesn't have enough time for me, another failure at work. Why do I keep on messing up at work? Or why do I keep having bosses I don't get along with? Or, you know, whatever it is. When you see that pattern as you point out and you feel stuck or you are anticipating something difficult, and this time you'd like to do it better, with less anxiety and unconscious acting out, maybe it's worth giving it a try.

Giving psychoanalytic, thinking a try, a coach, a therapist, a psychoanalyst. I think it's worth everything to be happy to [00:52:00] enjoy every day of your life. They don't have to be, filled with wonderful events. It can be a quiet day. You can have a cold, it doesn't matter.

It's your life. You don't have to experience it with fears anxieties and unhappiness. You really don't. 

I love that, and I think it's really funny. Not in the haha way, but you and I went to therapy for the same reason. 

For Dreams. 

For Dreams. 

I was having night terrors every night and just wanted to sleep.

I was afraid to sleep, so I'd stay up later and then they came. Now I have interesting dreams where I don't need to watch tv. I already got my own action adventure going on where there's times where's I'm not ready to wake up yet. How's that gonna end?

I could write a book on that. It's fun to have different dreams now and just be like, wow, [00:53:00] what did I eat before bed? Or what was I thinking it goes back to that our dreams are telling us something. For me, I can tell I needed to use the bathroom sometime during the night where it's super funny.

When I dream about having to go to the bathroom, but the toilet's broken, or disgusting, I'll wake up and really do have to go pee. Or whatever. Yeah. But it's just that reminder that our dreams do have meaning and that absolutely is when our conscious is going offline and our subconscious is trying to tell us something.

That's right. So what I love about wellness, is tune in with yourself. How are you feeling right now? What is coming up? With compulsions or addictions, we are trying to make up for something.

What is the something, what's underneath that? And keep what's underneath until there's nothing else you can dig up. 

Hit the words that are most important. What's underneath. [00:54:00] 

Yeah. 

And remembering through all of this, you're worth it. A lot of this came back to your worth.

We all struggle with that even if we have a big sense of worth, we will have little moments and we are here right now on purpose. Maybe we need to find our purpose, but we have worth. We are worthy, which can be so hard to remember and feel and embody, especially when we've had stuff in our life trying to tell us differently, 

right?

Yes. It's so simple. Good parents, communicate to even the smallest baby how worth it they are. They're happy they gave birth to them, they're happy to have them and they make their lives better, richer, more wonderful.[00:55:00] 

And if you have that as a child you can see people who seem much happier, more at ease less driven or upset or reactive. And it's because they really did get that first message, of how love they are. That's the whole, it boils down to, feel loved as a child and to feel like you belong 

You can still do the work don't feel like, it's too late for me.

No, 

it's not. 

Never too late. 

you can do the work on yourself. Some call it re-parenting. 

Yes, exactly. A good therapist does. Really teaches you how you can trust people and you can, as you say, repair relationships and rely on a connection 

repair, is the one with yourself.

It's not Yeah. The person who hurt you. It started to take that tether [00:56:00] away, 

right? 

tell us about your book, because this conversation is based on the book, we'll let people look into it

great conversation. I thank you for it. And I thank you for the opportunity of talking about this subject. I'm passionate about it. As you can see, I feel like I have a mission to let people know. My book is called Untangling a Memoir of Psychoanalysis, and it's really about, most people don't know anything about psychoanalysis.

How it works. I give my own life story as an example and there's so much people can use in their own lives. Revelation. That's what people tell me who've read it. That, it made them turn around and look at their childhoods in a completely different Way.

they were thrilled to have that new look. So I invite you to that. I have a blog for Psychology Today and you can find [00:57:00] my website at, joan k peters.com or untangling joan.com. And you can also get in touch with me through the website if you have any questions or if there's any way I can be helpful.

People do say sometimes I'm interested in psychoanalysis, but it's so expensive. That's true for me. My insurance covered it. It might be worth looking at your insurance policy or it covered 85% of it, which was enough. But also, there are institutes throughout the country in every major city, where they train psychoanalysts and you can have a psychoanalyst and pay much, much less who's in training.

They're gonna help you. And they have a supervisor who helps them. And my first analyst was exactly that. She would record our sessions so that she could talk them through with her [00:58:00] supervisor. She asked my permission and I said, great. Now I have two experts helping me. And I think I did.

And also it ended up costing $25 a session because she was just in training. If you're interested in psychoanalysis, go to one of the institutes. And see if they have someone for you. 

Some insurances cap how many times you can see a mental health specialist a year.

Yeah. 

You don't do that for medical. 

Yeah. 

Some don't even have it included in their plant. It makes it the have and the have nots. And it should not be that way. So I love that you're helping us to find that bridge across.

Thank you for that. 

Yeah. There are psychoanalysts who keep spots for people on Medicaid. And I know I have a friend who is on Medicaid and found a wonderful analyst in our area, but you don't have to limit yourself to your area

Now that Zoom has changed our lives.

Yeah. I'm in Maryland. You're in [00:59:00] California, be hard has this conversation without a plane ride for sure. I love that part about COVID how easy it is to meet with professionals through video thank you for your time. This has been amazing because you are not a mental health therapist 

you're an expert in a different field. And you are talking about this in a, this worked for me and that is what I want on my show I wanna have experts, but I wanna have people who are here saying, this worked for me.

Yeah. Because so many of us are stuck and we see other people having success, but that's, that's them. That, that's too far from where I am. And this is that reminder that no, no, no, no. You can absolutely have this. Especially with what you shared that we can have it at a cost that matches our budget.

Yeah. 

Thank you this is amazing. 

Thank you this was a pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. [01:00:00] I hope that you found the answers that you needed, and you had some amazing aha moments. Please share this episode with others because it helps us align ourselves and then better align the world so that we can seek the healing that we really are looking for as part of the legal language.

I am a certified life coach with a Bachelor's in Applied Health. That is what I am leaning on for this. This is general advice. Take it as such. See you in the next episode.