The Motherhood Mentor

Understanding Fawning: Boundaries and Trauma in Parenting with Luis Mojica

• Rebecca Dollard: Somatic Mind-Body Life Coach, Enneagram Coach, Speaker, Boundaries Coach, Mindset • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Ever wondered why setting boundaries feels like an insurmountable challenge as a parent? Join us on the Motherhood Mentor Podcast as we chat with Luis Mojica, a somatic therapist and educator of Holistic Life Navigation about the concept of fawning and its profound impact on motherhood. In this episode, Luis delves into how fawning—an unconscious trauma response—can blur the lines between genuine personality traits and people-pleasing behaviors. Discover how this survival strategy affects your ability to set healthy boundaries and maintain your own well-being.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Understanding Fawning:
  2. Luis explains fawning as a survival strategy that emerges from past trauma, where people-pleasing behaviors become a way to feel safe or maintain attachment.
  3. Learn how fawning can cause moms to overly identify with their children’s experiences while neglecting their own needs and boundaries.
  4. Impact on Personal Relationships:
  5. Explore how intense fawning affects not only parent-child dynamics but also marriages and friendships.
  6. Understand how resentment and anger can be indicators of boundary violations.
  7. Generational Trauma:
  8. Luis discusses how fawning patterns can perpetuate through generations, especially in families affected by domestic violence.
  9. Gain insights into how these patterns can be recognized and addressed to break the cycle of trauma.
  10. Practical Strategies:
  11. Discover practical strategies for self-attunement and maintaining healthy boundaries.
  12. Learn how to reconnect with your body and emotions to better balance your needs with your children’s needs.
  13. Nurturing Yourself:
  14. Emphasize the importance of self-care and emotional regulation for a healthier family dynamic.
  15. Reflect on how nurturing yourself enables you to provide better care and foster resilience within your family.

Episode Highlights:

  1. [10:15] What is fawning and how does it manifest in parenting?
  2. [25:30] The role of fawning in maintaining safety and attachment in relationships.
  3. [40:00] How generational trauma impacts fawning behaviors and family dynamics.
  4. [50:45] Strategies for overcoming fawning and setting healthier boundaries.


Additional Resources:
Podcast with Luis on Madison Morrigan podcast

About Luis Mojica:
Luis Mojica is a somatic therapist, trauma nutritionist, and founder of Holistic Life Navigation, where he teaches thousands of people around the world how to recover from stress and trauma. He uses whole foods, self-inquiry, and Somatic Experiencing as tools to find safety within yourself.

Where to find Luis:
Website
Instagram



Join us next time as we continue to explore the multifaceted journey of motherhood.

Thank you for tuning in to The Motherhood Mentor. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review us.

Stay connected with us on social media and share your thoughts and experiences tagging @themotherhoodmentor

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Motherhood Mentor Podcast. I'm Becca, a holistic life coach, mom of two wife and business owner. This is a podcast where we will have conversations and coaching around all things strategy and healing that supports both who you are and what you do. So grab your iced coffee or whatever weird health beverage you are currently into and let's do the damn thing. Welcome to today's episode of the Motherhood Mentor Podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today I have an incredible guest with me, luis Mojica. Luis is really special to me because he has been a mentor and a teacher in my life for a while now. I took his course and then I ended up being in many of his different small groups. His approach to somatic healing and specifically we're going to talk today about fawning and people pleasing and the experience of codependency and motherhood and just the lived experience of being a parent looking at our nervous systems, looking at our lived experience of being a parent. Looking at our nervous systems, looking at our somatic bodies, like our animal bodies, and how that is impacting our parenting, how it's impacting our kids. This is such a powerful conversation and I'm so excited to bring it to you today. So, without further ado, I hope you enjoy, luis. I am so excited to have you here on the podcast. It's so fun to get to like interview and lead you because I'm so used to have you here on the podcast. It's so fun to get to like interview and lead you because I'm so used to being in your spaces where I get to be led and held by you, and so it's just a really fun little switch up. So I'd love to have you introduce yourself.

Speaker 1:

But I wanted to tell you how I first found you, which I don't think I've been able to tell you, which is on Madison Morgan's podcast. You were on it quite a while ago probably, but I had found you through her podcast and it was a podcast on fawning and specifically you talked pretty deeply. You and her kind of dove into the experience of fawning and sexual relationships and it was one of the first times I had ever heard someone use the languaging of something I've experienced, where all of a sudden my body like oh, I know that, but I've never had the language or the unshaming, and I basically was just like who is this Luis guy? Like I really like his languaging and like it was so different than what I had heard and I just dove into your podcast. Then I took your course and you know now I've been working with you. But I would love for you, for those who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself?

Speaker 2:

I would introduce myself as I guess these days an educator, so nutritionist, then turned trauma therapist through somatics and then education. So I I do a little private practice still, but I mostly do education. Um, but yeah, I'm a smack therapist and a somatic educator and I design courses and groups and posts and podcasts and just to teach people how to really connect to their bodies again yeah, and I wanted to jump in one.

Speaker 1:

I did your parenting slow group and one of the things that you came and talked to my slow group about was fawning and parenting and especially in motherhood and how we can people please with our children, and I think one of the issues not issues, I don't want to use that word One of the things that comes up a lot in the moms and the women that I work with is kind of this over-connecting with their child's experience with the act of parenting, and they've forgotten how to feel the self and relate to their own experience and not just what they're doing. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about fawning and what that might look like in parenting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so, so good. So maybe I should start just with a little education on falling for your listeners. They'll know. And it's so cool you found me that way. It's. It's amazing. When I am on someone's podcast I don't know who's going to hear, where it's going to take them or me. So it's really cool that you've been in our space from that. I didn't know that.

Speaker 2:

I love talking about fawning because it's so, it's so covert, because we get it confused with our personality. You know, if someone suddenly gets overwhelmed, they scream and they throw something. They don't tend to liken that to their personality as easily Some people do still, but it's not that common. But when you're acquiescing and you're appeasing and you're people pleasing, you start to think that you're a nice person and you start thinking this is just my niceness, this is how I connect, this is my role in life. When the reality is, fawning is a trauma response that comes from your nervous system, so it's reflexive. The body just does it. And it does it in situations where, essentially, where your expression of your truth, your boundary, won't be met with something kind, positive, even safe. So in a situation where someone is held against their will, let's say you would want to acquiesce and people please and fawn to that person so they end up creating a bond with you and liking you and that lets you get away or escape without serious injury or harm.

Speaker 2:

Then there's situations where your boss is being inappropriate with you and you can't afford to find another job. You don't know how to and you're allowing the inappropriate behavior. You're not saying no, maybe you're laughing instead of saying please stop. You know whatever it is, whether it's touching, being physically touched or something verbal that feels inappropriate. And then there's a following. That's just social, that's just kind of everyday following, where you're just telling someone what they want to hear and you're reflexively agreeing with them. You're pretending to be much more excited than you really are. You're saying yes when you mean no, and this is because either you don't want to be rude and you're afraid of what it will look like, or, even more, for most people, the attachment rupture of the relationship is going to have some kind of break in it, if I'm honest, and that can feel like a threat, even though it's not actually a threat to life.

Speaker 1:

So the fawning reflex is important first, to kind of start there and then we can go more into into the parenting piece yeah, a piece, a piece that I think is really important to slow down on and for people to hear, especially if they're used to hearing people pleasing. I think our culture has kind of made it this like really cute thing where you say I don't think people understand the deep, reflexive and embodied state that it can become. Can you speak more to like that reflexive embodiedness, like it's not like a logical people pleasing, it's something your body's just doing?

Speaker 2:

that's right. So there's two parts to that for me there's embodied fawning and there's a disembodied, dissociative fawning. So the dissociative fawning is the one we tend to do the most and that's what you're speaking to. So I'm just reflexively automatically pleasing you, essentially by mirroring you. Fawning is very much a mirroring strategy and you hear this term especially with autistic kids, like masking. So it's a strategy where I'm pretending to be like you, to kind of be invisible, so you don't notice me or how I really feel about something.

Speaker 2:

And this is when you leave a situation and you think, wow, that person was talking for three hours and I'm exhausted. Yet through the whole three-hour conversation you're laughing, you're leaning in, you're saying, oh wow, yeah, tell me more. Oh, interesting, oh, me too. And so there's never this moment where you're pausing and thinking how do I really feel? What do I really want to say? You're just on this kind of treadmill of reflexively going along with it and it's sending the signal to the other person this person is very interested, I'm going to keep going. So it's not even the other person's fault, without taking advantage of it. It's simply the way fawning is set up is to trick the other person that you're more interested than you are and to trick you that you're more interested than you are, because the real kind of fundamental survival goal is to create a bond that isn't actually real. It's like the mimicking of a bond, so if your life was being threatened by someone, you could bond to them and they could see your humanity and then possibly let you go. That's really the deep root of a fawning response, and some of us will never experience that, but we'll still fawn because it's something that we're taught, it's something that's social and it's really easy to pick up on. Oh, I'm going to pretend to be kind and interested, to maintain this relationship, or how I look.

Speaker 2:

So that's the dissociative fawning. Then there's the embodied fawning, which is okay. I feel my no, I feel my stomach getting tense. I feel my desire. I would just want to walk away. This conversation is boring, it's overwhelming, it's offensive, whatever it is, and I want to move, but I'm not moving. I'm standing here and I'm smiling, to the point where it hurts and like my neck is stiff, and I'm just nodding and pretending to enjoy this. So I'm actually seeing it in real time happen, yet I can't figure out how to get out of it. That's the first step when you're embodying what's your body going through when this happens.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you just gave so much depth. I'm like, oh wait, I'm supposed to ask you questions. I'm just sitting here like, yes, teach me again. I love it.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I see a lot and I've experienced a lot in, especially my parenting role, as a mother, and also in, like, my relationship in my marriage. What's been really hard is noticing it seems like all of a sudden I just started experiencing so much rage and I started experiencing this fight and I started experiencing this resentment and back then it was really scary. Now, when I feel those things, that's kind of my internal. Oh, my body has been fawning, and I didn't, I didn't do it on purpose.

Speaker 1:

It's not something I'm cognitively like, I'm not purposely not telling my husband what I want or need, but my body tends, my body knows that pattern. That's its fastest way to find safety when I'm not embodied, when I'm not taking care of myself, and so I find and feel those signals and it brings me back into movement and agency and choice. But I wonder for people who are still stuck in it, are there some ways that they can feel what it feels like? Because I don't. I don't think people are conscious about it until they have the language for it, and I think you're bringing so much language for it. Does that make sense when I'm asking it?

Speaker 2:

does, and I'm going to say a bunch of things based on what you said as part of this response. The first part is resentment and angst with the person, someone especially that you love and you see a lot, such a great signal that falling is happening, because under the kind of the surface of the fallen expression is a lot of anger and resentment because there's a boundary violation. So what's so important for people to understand is falling is designed to break boundaries. That's why it works. So if someone looks at me and says something really offensive to me and I want to say like you know, f you or stop, or you know, leave me alone, but I think, or my body thinks, that something dangerous will happen, this person will hurt me or something horrible will occur, then I freeze.

Speaker 2:

So the first thing we do is go into a freeze response where my desire to say stop gets frozen and then a performance emerges. So the opposite of what I actually want to do is what emerges. It does that. So I don't have a boundary, because a boundary would equal something unpleasant or dangerous. So whenever our expression of a boundary to someone would equal some some threat to safety whether it's the threat of the relationship, threat of income, threat of life, regardless of what, where the ladder ladder is, we fall in with threat. I'm going to fall, my body's going to fall, to bypass the boundary that would cause a threat to something can we pause there?

Speaker 1:

I think that's such a big the avoidance of the setting the boundary, and it's not this like I can't have bound, bound. You know, so many women are like, oh, I need to have boundaries. And they have this like deep feeling of dread even for very simple not answering the phone when someone calls, saying no to coffee, changing their mind about engagements, like things that are that seemingly, logically, are very low risk, but their body has this avoidance and fear are very low risk, but their body has this avoidance and fear, and some of it's based on reality. Right, there are real consequences for having boundaries and needs, but also it's that it's that pattern that their body is remembering. It's based off of remembered or future. Is that how you would describe it?

Speaker 2:

It's a. It's a huge part of that, especially when we think of bonding. A big part of falling is generational generational trauma as well, because you're raised by people who are fawning as well, because they had to growing up to be safe, especially true with our living ancestors, as they're called. Like our parents and our grandparents, they come from generations where a lot of times exploring a boundary would have meant like physical abuse or being hurt so especially the women in a lot of cases. So you're seeing this survival strategy falling. So people are hearing is a survival strategy. It's not a weakness, it's not some like weak thing. It's a way that you survive a situation where being honest and truthful in your boundary would actually make it worse for you. So a lot of people that were, let's say, raised in domestic abuse or domestic violence, they're going to have learned the fawning response hardcore because they learned that if they were really nice and complimentary and acquiescing to their parents or the people in the house, it settled those bodies down that were getting really activated that could become violent breaking to not having uh boundaries be expressed. Fawning is a way that we actually modulate the other person's body so it helps them feel more settled in themselves and relaxes them so we're safe around them, right? If their dysregulation would equal violence of some kind, or if their dysregulation would equal, they don't want to be married to me anymore. So there's always some kind of threat to the attachment of my security with this person. And fawning completely helps avoid that threat because you never speak your truth. So when you're raised by, let's say, a mother, or you're on an aunt or grandmother who's fawning all the time because of this, you get it in your system that it's really dangerous to be honest. And when you're being raised by someone who fawns so again think about like a mother fawning when you're raised by her she's going to tell you in very explicit and covert ways that your honesty is unwelcome. Maybe you're called rude if you say how you really feel. Maybe you're told like that's really dangerous, no one wants to hear your opinion. Maybe you just see dread and fear on her face when you have a boundary with, like someone in your family or a relative.

Speaker 2:

So these things get passed down in a way through the soma, through the body itself, like we store some of that in our bodies as we're born from their bodies. But they also get formed through our development of watching our parents do it and then mimicking it so we can move into the world without rupturing our attachment styles or rather our attachment, secure attachment needs. So when you say the, the anger part, that's a red flag, a good one for everybody, because it tells you oh, anger, which is a signal of a boundary violation, something's happening. This relationship where a boundary is not being met, it's not even being heard. And again, the fallen strategy, the whole purpose is to bypass and override boundaries.

Speaker 2:

So when you feel the anger, my favorite thing to help people do is to think about the situation with the person where you felt that anger afterwards and put your hand over the anger and feel the constriction and the fieriness and the pressure. And the simple question that really helps people is you ask yourself what did I really want to say or do? And the anger, the thing we call anger, is actually our action. It's like the energy that wants to come out and say stop, or I don't want to, or not today, or I can't see you today. You know whatever, even not aggressive, horrible things, just simple action of expressing what you need. So the anger becomes a catalyst for movement and expression when we understand it through this lens.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that, and there's something that I want to name that I heard in your process is there's a pause. One of the big things when I was working on fawning, when I was intentionally trying to move out of this stuck state, is the pausing before responding to actually check into, instead of going into freeze and respond. It was just like this pattern. It was this can I pause before I respond to actually find out in my body is this a yes, Is this a no, Is it a maybe? Is this something I want to do? But I don't have the capacity for that's half my boundary violations in my life. Right, they're good invitations from my kids or from my work that I want to want to do, but I don't have the capacity right now and feeling the nuance of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think understanding the peace but not having the capacity is important because if you think about not falling which is very hard to do when you've been doing it for a while your relationships are born on people or your relationships are built from people being really soothed by your reflexive agreeing with them and you're reflexive reflecting them. They feel really seen because you're just going along. That's what fawning has you do. So when you suddenly stop doing that, there's going to be a rupture of some kind. It doesn't even have to be a huge one, but there's going to be a moment where you disappoint them because now you're being honest for the first time and that creates a major charge in the body of the person being honest and the person experiencing the disappointment and honesty for the first time, and that takes capacity to really feel that charge, takes a lot of capacity to withstand it. So if you don't have the capacity for your own honesty, you don't have capacity for the potential rupture from your honesty.

Speaker 2:

Your body is definitely going to fawn. So the pausing is super important and people that always say I wanna stop fawning, I say well, you can't just stop fawning, you have to start by feeling how the phone feels. So then you get that sense of what the body goes through, and then the pausing is is absolutely vital, so you can notice the somatic experience of it, but you can also pinpoint the moments where a boundary was repressed, you know, by the fawning expression itself. And another way I like to help people do that is just to think of someone who exhausts you. You just think someone you love who also exhausts you because I can love someone for kids 100, absolutely yeah, okay, all right, and there's a bunch of mothers listening to this.

Speaker 2:

kids are going to exhaust you and the way we fall in our parenting because we want our kids to like us and we want them to be happy and we might want to avoid the rupture of them having a meltdown of some kind. Is we just give them what we want, what they want, we just let them have exactly what they're asking for, whether it's food or screen time or a material thing that you buy them, and that reflexive trying to please them without checking in with yourself is a big part of how the fawning response shows up in parenting.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that's so good. I my brain is kind of going on a sidetrack. So let me know if you follow this. You mentioned that when we fawn it makes us feel a little more at ease and the other people like it's kind of soothing to them when we fawn. But I've had that experience. But I've also had a contradictory experience, you know, because nuance of I really think that people in my life didn't trust me and didn't feel good around me because I think at one point my fawning was so intense that I don't think I was coming across as genuine or authentic because I wasn't like there wasn't a self there. There wasn't there.

Speaker 1:

I was fairly disassociated at that time in my life and so things looked really good but there was no congruence in my body and I think people could feel that I think there was this like they stopped trusting me.

Speaker 1:

And I think at some point I remember being able to look at my husband and it was really easy to think he's the problem when I was responding and then there was this like wait, I'm not even giving him the chance to respond to what I want or need, I am just giving what I think he wants or needs from me. I'm just mirroring everything I think I'm supposed to be and not being where I actually am. There was a lack of honesty. I came into this place where I was like I'm out of integrity and it's creating these relational ruptures that other people don't even have the opportunity to respond to, because here I am hurt and sad that other people aren't liking me or loving me, and then all of a sudden there's this like well, they don't even know me to like or love and you know, a lot of that was my own story and not from them, but I wonder if you've noticed that with fawning too, that it does. There's this surface level ease, but there's also this tension.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so. That's a I'm glad you took us that direction, because if we think of fawning, absolutely so. I'm glad you took us in that direction, because if we think of fawning and we think of lying.

Speaker 1:

We want to think of withholding.

Speaker 2:

Fawning is a withholding of a truth, so it's not a total lie, even though, if I don't like what you're saying and I there thinking I'm gonna manipulate this person in a malicious way, you're just reflexively nodding, even though what you prefer to do is say I don't want to talk right now. So there's a withholding of the truth and that works in two ways people who are really perceptive, like you're speaking about your husband and different people in your life they pick up on something's being withheld. Like I'm not able to go deep or connect to this person, I don't feel like they show up. That's rare, you know that's a rare thing. Usually, fawning works really well and we attract people who are less perceptive because we don't want to be seen. You know it's a strategy of being invisible and I had this exact experience with my wife because, you know, men fawn just as much as women do, just in different ways, and I was a massive fawner and I remember, um, I remember her saying to me I don't feel like I really know you.

Speaker 2:

And then this other experience happened, where it's one year I had 10, 12, maybe 13 people, um, call me their best friend and I didn't think they were even close to being good friends and I started getting fascinated. Okay, my wife says she doesn't know me. All these people are saying I'm their best friend. Does anyone actually know me? And the common denominator is me. What's happening here? And it was that withholding of me. You know, intimacy. You can't have intimacy without conflict, you just can't. And so when fawning is the way you live, because there's the going into it when you really need it to save your life, and then there's like functional, reflexive, personality-based fawning, which it just becomes the way you relate, which sounds like it was you and definitely was me. Um, that's a, that's a whole different experience. And then you are withholding a part of yourself and people can't connect to you because you're avoiding conflict, which is avoiding intimacy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, man, which brings me back to parenting. I realized I started seeing that big when my daughter was a toddler. I was so enamored with like attachment, parenting and conscious parenting and you know, it's really what kind of brought me into the holistic healing and health world really was all of a sudden looking at my daughter and being like, wow, the way that I thought I would parent. Actually I had this different way of wanting to parent and then all of a sudden she became a toddler and there was conflict there. There was there was this idea in my head of like, what I'm doing isn't working. I need her to behave this certain way for me to be okay. And I really saw how much her dysregulation created my dysregulation and I wanted. There was this like part of me that wanted to just make it go away that I was. I didn't want her to cry or be angry because I was still kind of being able to feel those things in my body and create capacity in my body for my dysregulation.

Speaker 1:

But witnessing hers, it was so easy to like wait, how do I respond to this conflict? Do I fawn? Early motherhood all of a sudden brought out the fight in me of like, oh, all of a sudden I'm yelling when, like that wasn't my intention to yell at as a parent. And then all of a sudden I'm like, wait, why am I yelling? I'm not actually an angry person, yet I find myself yelling. How does that show up with fawning? And then you know, I'm bringing in fight too. But I think they're all ways that we're trying to regulate in the moment.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. The thing about being a parent that's more than anything else is your attachment traumas and your attachment needs get. They just explode. They're like on steroids. So when you have those kids you're actually seeing parts of yourself in them and you're feeling the pressure of making it for them the way it wasn't for you. You know, almost every parent had this pressure of I have to do this right and part of that pressure creates literal biochemistry of stress. So excess adrenaline, tension, a lot of activity in the nervous system. Whenever you have that inner state of stress and then think about parenting, especially mothering, nursing, so you're losing a lot of nutrients.

Speaker 2:

Usually there's a fit talk about boundary violation, like constantly being grabbed at and pulled and the screaming, constantly changing diapers, getting up through all different hours of the night, not getting a lot of sleep or rest, the entire body transforming hormonally, sometimes for years. It never goes back to how it was hormonally speaking. So there's so many shifts that happen that are kind of inherently stressful to the body and can become traumatic on their own, not to mention the birth itself. And then you're just diving into parenting this child, most of us for the first time ever, not knowing what we're doing. So the whole experience is just a formula for trauma. And so you go into your trauma responses as your way of parenting trauma, and so you go into your trauma responses as your way of parenting. And, as you know, in the group, what we were really learning is, wow, the way I parent I thought was my parenting style was actually my reflexive trauma response. My parenting style is when the trauma response isn't online. So when you're in that fight or in the flight, or you're freezing or you're falling with your child, these are all signals that my body's so at capacity that the animal body is taking over. So the mind is gone. My agency like you said earlier, choice is gone. It's reflexive strategy because my body is seeing my child like there's a fire in the room, like their scream is, like a wild animal is here to kill me. That's how the body feels. So it's super stressful.

Speaker 2:

And the fascinating thing about women in particular is your bodies are hormonally wired for hypervigilance the moment you give birth. So you have these hormone levels that go. They just go out the roof. Because just a century ago you were in situations that were much less safe with your kids. You were outside gardening, you were walking long ways and roads that didn't have electricity, where there could be predators and people and situations that were dangerous. So the body the female body is is made to be extremely hypervigilant. And when that female body is in a tribe with 30 other female bodies that are together, there's a co-regulation, there's like a weaving without hypervigilance that settles you. But the modern mother is completely isolated with all that hypervigilance by herself, without the co-regulation of other adults and women. So it just it's like, as I'm saying it, you know, it's like a pressure cooker for the body. So all you need is the child to grab you the wrong way or spill something or make a sudden shriek and there you are in trauma response.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, what you said I just feel like is so unshaming, because I think there's so many women who who enter into motherhood so sure of themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So sure of themselves as people, in their relationships and their business and as a person, and they get into motherhood and it's just like what the fuck just happened Like. What is like literally what is happening to me. And I think what's so fascinating is, even when I see mothers who are connected, they still have that feeling of isolation, because even our connectedness in this modern culture it doesn't look like 30 bodies all together. It's like your body can't feel their body, your body doesn't have them looking out for you and I think just naming it is so powerful and then also bringing in where can you let other people weave that man, that that thought?

Speaker 1:

of seeing that hypervigilance together is just such a beautiful portrayal of it. I wonder for people who maybe don't associate with the word trauma, because I've worked with a lot of women who will say, like I'm not in trauma or the thing I'm experiencing doesn't seem related at all to their trauma. Or you know, there's someone who maybe looks at their upbringing and says, okay, maybe I have some little T stuff, but I don't feel like I'm in big trauma. How would you describe those trauma responses for those people? I just wonder if that would be helpful?

Speaker 2:

That's an excellent question, because people listening might think I don't relate to any trauma. Why am I yelling to my kid?

Speaker 1:

Why am I yelling at them?

Speaker 2:

We have to understand is let's get into the biology of that for a minute. So let's just think of stress. Let's think of anxiety, overwhelm, exhaustion, fatigue, all those stress, uh, symptoms and expressions. Those come from a body that has a high amount of adrenaline higher blood pressure, faster heart rate and more muscle tension. So that's the. This biochemistry of stress is essentially moved by adrenaline. It's created by an adrenalized system, so the adrenal glands are working over time and adrenaline is the catalyst for that. High blood pressure, the constriction of veins, constriction of muscles and a lot of neurotransmission, so a lot of energy moving through the nerves.

Speaker 2:

That state that biochemistry of stress is the same biochemistry of trauma. The only difference is trauma is when the stress builds up so much it gets to the point where you can't process or metabolize it. So if you think about like I was driving and a deer ran out in front of my car and I slammed on the brakes, like that rush came up and then, like a couple minutes, I settled. Maybe I had a cry, maybe I had a laugh, I ate something, got a hug, something happened and my body settled again, that was a stressful event. It's not a traumatic event. Some people call it traumatic, it was stressful, it created a huge amount of stress hormones and then the body metabolized it. Now that same event can cause a huge amount of stress hormones and that person's body, for a cascade of reasons, was not able to metabolize those hormones. So they just kept building in the body and the stress just kept building and by the end of the day you're going into what we would call trauma, which isn't event based, it's response based.

Speaker 2:

So when people say, well, my parents never yelled at me, that doesn't mean anything. You could watch a movie when you're a kid. That was really scary and you went to bed with the fear of the movie and you were up for four hours thinking about it as a four-year-old. That can literally traumatize your system, not in a way of being abused, but in a way of there's so much charge in my body that had nowhere to go, and so my body starts to go into this reflexive mode of trying to remediate that. So when we're in that traumatized space, we're kind of beyond our window of tolerance to metabolize the stress and then it turns into trauma, which means the body takes over, we lose the mind, we lose the connection to where we are now and we have this reflexive response which we call trauma response, which is fight flight, freeze or fawn, and we have this reflexive response which we call trauma response, which is fight flight freeze or fawn, which what you just said there I think is so powerful, especially for parents to witness.

Speaker 1:

I just lost it, I was about to repeat it and I was like where'd it go? That moment of you lose context for where you are and I think for a lot of women, they lose context to how old they are.

Speaker 1:

I've witnessed like they lose context to where and when I guess you could say they are and all of a sudden, when we slow down what was happening, it's like okay, are you actually angry at this? Or was your body triggered into this emotional reaction that actually wasn't from now. It was this past, remembered state that hasn't been updated, that didn't have the chance to resolve, to move to regulate into the present moment, when it's fawning. How do people notice where they are and when they are? How do you help people when they're outside that context? They're dysregulated, they're in that trauma response.

Speaker 2:

I always start with the feet, almost always when it comes to fawning, because what makes fawning very specific and unique is it's a social engagement response, and our social engagement is our face. You know almost entirely. So when you're sitting with someone, you're talking, you're fawning. You're usually fawning with your face. You can also be fawning with. You know almost entirely. So when you're sitting with someone, you're talking, you're fawning. You're usually fawning with your face. You can also be fawning with, you know, your shoulder can kind of turn in and be closer to them, or your hips can swing toward them, or maybe you can move your hands in certain ways, but not so much. It's usually your face. You're looking more interested than you really are. You're saying things out of your mouth that are totally opposite of what you really want to say. You're smiling when you really feel disgusted. So the social engagement system of the face is what performs heavily when you're fawning. So that means the part furthest from the head are the feet, the toes. So it's really fun to notice what are they doing. And the one thing that sometimes the feet will do when you're fawning is they're clenching, they're like gripping, because the body wants to run, but the freeze response takes over and holds you still and then the performance emerges. So fawning is a hybrid you freeze what you want to say and then you perform something secondary that isn't actually what you're feeling, to please the other person, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so when you're noticing your feet, I usually have people just start by kind of like walking their feet in place, which no one notices, especially if it's on zoom, or you're noticing your feet. I usually have people just start by kind of like walking their feet in place, which no one notices, especially if it's on zoom, or you're at a table or you're standing and talking. No one's looking at your feet while you're talking to them, especially if you're wearing shoes, you can wiggle your toes, you can move your feet up and down, and that starts to remind the body. Oh, I'm not actually held here Because, like I said, the animal body knows I I mean, this is like ancestral it knows if you're held against your will, if you're in an inescapable threat and your life depends on another person, you've fallen with them, you make them like you and then you escape the threat versus.

Speaker 2:

I'm in a grocery store and I see someone I'm trying to avoid. They're not going to hurt me, there's no threat to my life there. Those are the moments we've fallen the most right. That's where functional, personality-based falling comes in, versus this one five, 10 minute experience where I could have lost my life and I didn't. So I start with the feet so people can feel, oh, I'm allowed to move.

Speaker 2:

And then I tell people look around the room, take breaks from eye contact when you're falling Two second breaks. Look beyond the person for a second contact when you're falling Two second breaks. Look beyond the person for a second. Look up and around, look at your hands. Taking breaks from them means you stop attuning to them and your body gets a sense of where just how you said where you are and you realize, oh, I'm in the grocery store. Here are my hands, I see the vegetables behind them. I feel my feet moving. And when you get a sense of your environment that you're not actually under real threat, I feel my feet moving. And when you get a sense of your environment that you're not actually under real threat, then your body gets to mobilize in a different way and can go into a simple fake truth, even Like I'm sorry, I have to go pick up my kid in an hour, even though you don't, just so you can get away, and it's the beginning of playing with interrupting that freeze. That happens when we're feeling like we're stuck there, acquiescing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, I'm going to have to try that. One of the things that I've practiced, especially in my home, but anywhere I am, is a lot of times my posture is like this, leaning forwards, right, like fawning. Is this like aggressive energy towards you, but it's like this graspy, like fighting would be like coming at you with a fist. Fawning for me is like coming at you with these, like look at me, this is so nice, how do I help you, how do I attune to you? And I've just learned with a smile.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So, especially like when it's happening in conflict or when it's happening in a time where, like, all of a sudden, I can like feel in my body, I'll just lean back and I'll energetically just like picture my spine and feel my back body of like where am I? And attuning back to self and that practice especially, you know, bringing it back to parenting. It's my reflexive is to attune to my children. It's not anymore, I've learned to not do that, but I think it's so. I mean one.

Speaker 1:

It's biologically hardwired that I attuned to my children. They don't survive if I'm not attuned to them, and I think a lot of women. It's interesting when they find me for coaching they're in this toddler phase where all of a sudden they're saying I want to attune to something other than my toddler and I have this space but like I don't know how to feel me anymore, I don't notice my feelings. So when you're attuned to the other person, how do you bring that attunement back to you, back to feeling your own self, your own body? Because if fawning is attuning to other, the opposite of fawning is is not never pleasing people or being kind or nice, it's attuning to yourself yes and your honest expression and experience is how I would describe it like my own embodiment.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes that embodiment is positive and sometimes it doesn't feel so great so there's so much uh importance that you're bringing to that there's so many important things. You said um, just so people understand. With attunement we think of like vibrations. So when you're tuning guitar strings, you're tuning them so the vibrations work together in a way that feels pleasurable to hear versus dissonant, right. So attunement is the same with nervous system. When I look at you, parts of me match your posture, match the way you nod your head like, match your smile when you smile.

Speaker 2:

We are naturally attuned creatures, most of us. There's a very rare amount of us that literally can't feel other people and I think that's even protective. I think it's under there somewhere. But we attune very quickly. We match the person's energy in front of us. What we said earlier when I was talking about weaving with the tribe of women, that's an important part here because all those things helped you attune to other than your child. So when you were harvesting in the field, you were attuning to the plants. When you were singing songs, you were attuning to the group singing. When you're weaving baskets, you were attuning to the basket weaving and then moments of breastfeeding and, you know, changing diapers and washing and helping walk and laughing and bonding, but it wasn't this full on attuning to the child.

Speaker 2:

That is very new and it's often kind of over, coupled with the gentle parenting movement which is, I find, as actually the whole movement is a trauma response, an understandable one from kids that came from an era where they were completely neglected and some even abused. So they have this swing in the other direction of. I have to be so hyper-focused and again fawn to my child to make sure they are never unhappy or uncomfortable because we over coupled their discomfort and their stress with them being traumatized or abused or neglected yes, so to me.

Speaker 2:

That's the juice of it.

Speaker 2:

Right there is.

Speaker 2:

I need my capacity as a parent to build so I can handle my child's disappointment, because if I, if their disappointment triggers me, you bet I'm going to be falling the entire time with them and then I'm going to be really mean and cold to them because I'm going to be so exhausted from fawning.

Speaker 2:

So you see yourselves usually going back and forth from I'm going to meet every need, then I'm going to suddenly blow a fuse and shut down because you just it's not a real relationship. You're not actually relating to the child, you're soothing the child. So the child never learns how to ride the wave to disappointment because they're used to a parent that's just meeting all their needs and that creates a whole other imbalance. So we swing over here to this gentle parenting style from being abused or neglected and then that parenting style creates kids that are kind of narcissistic and so self-focused and don't know how to feel discomfort so they look to soothe. We have screens. You can do the formula and see how you become these children really dependent on having your needs met and mothers who are codependent on the children's needs being met.

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent Like I can't feel good unless my child feels good right now, and I think even people hearing you you say the codependence and me saying that that can sound like well, of course, because it's so normalized that you shouldn't be okay unless your kids are. But what you do to your kids from that unconsciously is is less than kind, because you get in a place where you're trying to control their experiences and their emotions by giving them what they want or by expecting them to be a certain way because of how you're treating them. When, when you're just relating to them, they're allowed to be upset, they're allowed to cry, they're allowed to be really angry with your boundaries, which they should be. It's their job to fucking hate your boundaries. You know it's like they're supposed to, so it's not our job to be like oh, you hate what I said, I'm gonna make this better. It's like no, you're allowed to hate what I said and I love you and I'm still holding this.

Speaker 2:

So when you say that piece, you know about the codependence. I find that to be the ultimate and what I'm getting to, based on your question, is practicing self-attunement practicing within the day of parenting, within the hours of parenting, which for most of us, is every moment or every day. Even when you're not with them, you're thinking of them. So within the moments of parenting, do I have a practice of swinging back to myself Because they need to be fed, they need to be washed, they need to be changed and they need love. They don't need anything else after that.

Speaker 2:

You know, if they really want you to play with a toy with them after you've been holding them for 30 minutes and you need like five minutes of stretching, you're allowed to stretch for five minutes. While they're really upset and crying, you're not gonna play with a toy. It's like how do I vacillate between here's the bonding moment, I'm meeting your needs, and then I'm checking in with myself and I would. I would be curious to hear from you, from the, the parenting group, that we did. How have you found that pendulation of I'm attuning to them and then I interrupt that to attune to myself, so that I can attune to them? Because the one thing I just want to add is the self-attunement is not selfishness, it's fulfilling your need so you have the capacity to parent even more deeply, so it actually benefits them by self-attunement. Maybe you can give an example of that Well.

Speaker 1:

I would just add to what you said. When I attune to myself and then go into parenting my children, my children have a parent to attune to.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 1:

Because they're no longer attuning to someone who's fawning to them, which is chaotic at best.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't create safety for either of our bodies. So suddenly I'm looking at a toddler for regulation. Toddlers are dysregulated about everything. I can't be looking to a toddler for dysregulation. For regulation I have to look within my own body and I have, I think, through our group. It really helped me witness even you know, this is a thread that I've been weaving and healing in my parenting for quite a while.

Speaker 1:

This, this tendency towards that codependency of witnessing the healthy unattachment, is what I have really really played with this healthy detachment from their emotions, their experience, their responses, their reactions, and witnessing that the more attuned I am to myself and the more I'm caring for my needs, the more selfish, if you will, I become, the more selfless and honoring and healthy I become for them. Because now, all of a sudden, when you're coming to me dysregulated, I can feel the difference of that's your dysregulation. I'm okay, I can feel safety in my body and the things that used to dysregulate me and my husband and my kids and my friends I no longer did get dysregulated from, because I have a healthy distance. I can feel the separateness and it allows me to be more connected because there's two parties. Again, it's like codependency, feels like this melding of I don't know who is who and who needs what and who feels what it's like. That's what you're feeling and experiencing and it's valid and I'm here to hold it. And also it's not my responsibility, it's not my job.

Speaker 1:

I think codependency in me at least created this over-responsibility as a mom, and it's uncomfortable for me to sit on my hands sometimes and witness like you don't need my help with this, you've got this. Sometimes, when I'm a really, really good mom, it doesn't feel great. It's not this like positive. You know, I think so many people are looking for this positive, good, happy parenting experience or you know, name it whatever you want. Even with business, it's like I see this reflected in so many ways. Discomfort is not always a bad thing. This like pressure or tension. They're telling me something and they're wise, and I've learned to attune to it and be aware of myself at a deeper level, other than just my behaviors, because I think it's so easy to look at. Oh, I'm yelling at my kids too much, which is where I started right, like why am I yelling at my toddler? What do I do? So you know, I learned all of these lessons on what I do and then I was like but it's not fixing what she's doing Right. And then I had to learn wait, it's not I.

Speaker 1:

I kind of have taken on a different approach to parenting. I call it leadership, parenting of it's. It's what I do. It's being in attunement with my values and my safety. Because when I have that, that's when I can relate to them in a healthy, connected, regulated way. And even when I'm dysregulated, I'm a way better mom because I'm able to say hey, I'm dysregulated, here's what I'm going to do to go take care of that. There's language for the human experience, right, like? My kids are watching me have a human experience and I'm not panicked when they're having a human experience.

Speaker 1:

I'm not trying to take them out of it.

Speaker 2:

That part's very important, that part and what you said about. There's two people now in the room, because when you're enmeshed and you're codependent, there's not, so the boundaries are so bad actually. And so when you're dysregulated in response to their dysregulation and you're trying to soothe it with phoning, then you have co-dysregulation, where the child's body is looking to the parent for attunement but all they're seeing is stress. Even though there's a smile, even though there's cookies being baked, they're seeing and feeling the stress and the urgency, so there's nothing for them to settle to. So the the not fawning with your kids, the self-attunement to fill yourself up and then be with them, gives them another body, like you said in the room, to look at. And then their body starts to settle when they see your settled body. And what's interesting about that is you lose control as a parent. In those moments you can't choose how quick they regulate. It might be 15.

Speaker 2:

Actually earlier, earlier today, my daughter had this major attitude with her mom and um and I said can you just apologize to your mom when you're ready, because I've learned you can't just make someone apologize. It's also a fawning response. Say you're sorry, I'm not. Say you're sorry, sorry, like they're not really sorry, they're just performing. So we went for a walk and 10 minutes into the walk my wife and I were holding hands and talking and laughing and we weren't like attuning to her stress and she was stomping and upset behind us. 10 minutes later she walks up. I'm really sorry, mama, I slapped your butt so hard, it was like something like that and um and and she was so sweet and we just walked down a great time.

Speaker 2:

But I know in the past, before I knew about this mechanism, this falling response and how to be with it, there would have been this kind of stress for her to apologize in this way, to make it up to my wife.

Speaker 2:

So everyone was happy yeah, but instead we just attuned to each other, co-regulated, and then she attuned to our co-regulation. Then we all had this amazing walk but it took 10 minutes and so you have to be okay with and which I think is actually pretty quick, but we have to be okay with, like, the other body has to catch up.

Speaker 1:

We can't make it get there yeah, I think the message it sends to our kids is I've got you because I've got me that's right right and that's the message I hope to send to my kids.

Speaker 1:

And also, when I don't have me, I lean into more resourced humans, not my children, like I. I go wrap myself in a weighted blanket, I go take a moment. It's like I want my kids to not fear the human experience, to not feel like they have to restrict, against restriction or be angry when you know it, taking out the shame of just. We're going to have a human experience which on both sides parent, child spouses, businesses, friendships we're going to have ruptures, but what does it look like to repair? What does it look like to see those ruptures and not make them always mean something?

Speaker 1:

It's like I think that for me has been so powerful and fawning is to witness. I can have activation and still feel safe. I can have this feeling in my body and feel it and know how to relate to it, know how to hold it. And one of the things I think the language of urgency in your group was really powerful for me, of noticing when I feel really urgent to fix something in my kids, of that kind of became my clue to Ooh, this is actually not when I respond, I might slow down. I might slow down and attune back to myself and where I am and what's happening, because then I'm not reflexively parenting. I'm parenting from choice, and I think that especially applies in any type of conflict. But I think parenting is a very intense, intimate type of conflict that our bodies experience.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah yeah. Anything else you want to name or circle back to? That feels like an incomplete loop on what we just were talking about. Anything else coming up with it?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I think what I would just highlight all this that we're talking about for parents, mothers in particular self-attunement serves your children. It serves the whole family. There's so much negative over coupling with attuning and orienting to the self, especially when you come from parents that were extremely self-involved to the point of your exclusion and neglect. You're going to think that if I'm focused on myself I'm going to hurt people or it's wrong. But self-attunement, when you're focused in a way of giving yourself pleasure and delight and joy and interest and you're kind of following your own musing outside of the role of mother, brings so much the role of mother, so much resourcing.

Speaker 2:

Just how you said, I don't go to my kids for resourcing. When you are attuned to them, you will end up going to them for your resourcing, which is a really big boundary violation and it's completely innocent most of the time. We don't know we doing it, but they're the humans in our life that we're attuning to, so we're also looking to them for our joy and our ease. So I just can't say enough how much self-attunement as a parent deeply serves the child deeply. Even parent instincts will come through when you're self-attuned rather than attuning to them and losing your consciousness because you're so triggered you can't be instinctual. You'll be parenting from a fear response. So that's what I would want to close it with. The self-attunement piece is so important.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so good. I think it's interesting. Our culture loves that whole little catchphrase like self-care isn't selfish.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but it and like it's always, like on a, like a massage ad or like getting your nails done and it's like that's great, like I'm all for all of those things, but I think the self-care isn't selfish, like doesn't hit what's actually happening, because for so many moms they're not experiencing on like, they're not being unselfish, there isn't a sense of self. They haven't attuned to themselves in so long and so I don't think self-care isn't selfish. Is how we help moms come out of this martyrdom and codependency of not taking care of themselves as human beings before they take care of themselves as a role, a parent, a mother. I think you have to take care of that human being, the attunement, and you have to mother her first. Because whatever you give, the beautiful thing that I have seen over and over and over again is when the mother is cared for, when she is nourished, when she has regulation, when she has this sort of level of self-leadership.

Speaker 1:

That isn't just this cutesy self-care of like I'm taking breaks. Breaks are great, but are you actually taking care of the dysregulation, the trauma that's coming up, the fawning, the fighting? There's a lot of shit coming up. When you're a parent, there's a lot of it, but when you're attuning to that and caring for yourself and nurturing, that instinctively flows to your children that's a good way to to end it or to add to that piece.

Speaker 2:

I like that distinction between self-care and self-attunement yeah self-care is so often marketed kind of behind a paywall. It's like this thing you have to buy, you have to plan it for the right day. You have to make sure you have nothing to it for the right day. You have to make sure you have nothing to do.

Speaker 1:

Your kid has to be somewhere else.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, and so it's so stressful and so impossible for some people that it doesn't even happen, whereas to me, self-attunement is like a lifestyle change. It's not this thing you do once every month and it maybe can be, but self-attunement might lead to that. But self-attunement is I'm washing the dishes and as I'm washing them I feel my feet and I take a breath into my belly and I just noticed what's my body needing right now. It's like a one minute practice and if you can just remind yourself, you know on the hour I always.

Speaker 2:

I think what I said in the parenting group is use transitions. Use like dinner ending, waking up, the child goes to bed, you're taking a shower, like moments you're transitioning from one thing to the next. Use that as a reminder just to literally spend two minutes just to breathe, feel your body, sometimes hug a pillow and ask yourself what do I need to support this body right now? And that changes your entire life, because then your day will change, as you're self attuning rather than I have no sense of self and I have this one kind of stamp of self care I do every week. That's not going to touch any of this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so powerful and I love it too because it helps with the funding. Even when you go in an environment like you go to a social environment, you're tuned to what's been going on through your day. You felt your body and my. My cue that I always give moms is whenever they have to go pee, because how many times as adult people we are listening to our one of our most biological needs? That has a pretty clear like some people have a hard time with hunger or whatever Most people know, like when you have the bathroom. So it's like whenever that happens, notice yourself, notice your body, notice where you're holding tension.

Speaker 2:

That's a great one. I love that.

Speaker 1:

This was so much fun. It was so great to like dive into this and tease it out with you. Um, where can people find you? Where's like your favorite place to to interact with people?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think the easiest place to go to to see what I'm doing is holistic life navigationcom. It's the website. If you want some kind of daily work, go to my Instagram same same name, but that's where I have everything. And 2025, we'll be doing another slow group for parents.

Speaker 1:

And it was. I recommend your, your seven week course, as well as, like everything you do. It has been so powerful to me and I love seeing the way that it has dripped and rippled into, like the people I'm working with and the people I know. So just thank you for being you and thank you for the work you do, but the way that you do it is just really powerful.

Speaker 2:

So thank you for being with me today. Yeah, this is good, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for hanging out today on the motherhood mentor podcast. If you love today's episode, share it with a friend or tag me in your stories on Instagram so that we can connect. Take up audacious space in your life and I'll see you next time.

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Luis Mojica

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