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The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Colleen is a student of Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt who created the Imago Theory and have brought this work to over 50 countries around the world. She is profoundly influenced by this belief shared by Dr. Harville Hendrix. He said, "We are born in relationship, wounded in relationship and healed in relationship."
What are you struggling with today? Colleen believes that almost any problem we have began with a broken or unhealed relationship. The anxiety or deep sadness we feel often began with unresolved issues in our relationships with our parents, partner, family or friends. When we have unmet needs we are programed to get those needs met. When we don't get what we need we protest by protecting ourselves. this often looks like defensive, critical, demanding behaviors. these behaviors are most often ineffective. As a result we may develop unhealthy relationship with food, sex, gambling our or a substance.
Colleen invites world renown relationship specialists from all over the world to help her guests explore their own relationships and see their problems through a relational lens. She will help us explore how to create intimacy to deepen our connections. Her listeners will gain insights to create a more joyful life.
Colleen is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of South Carolina, a certified, Advanced Imago Clinical therapist, a clinical instructor for the Imago International Trading Institute while maintaining her clinical practice in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Thank you for joining Colleen today. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. Join her next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
The Relationship Blueprint: Unlock Your Power of Connection
Looking for mom in all the wrong places: The Profound Journey of Internal Mothering with Dr. Nedra Fetterman
What does it mean to mother ourselves, and why might this be one of the most important relationships we'll ever develop? Dr. Nedra Fetterman joins the Relationship Blueprint podcast to explore the profound impact of our earliest experiences with caregivers and how these shape our internal dialogue throughout adulthood.
Dr. Fetterman, a psychologist and Imago faculty member, shares her personal journey of growing up with a teenage mother who, despite physical presence, was emotionally unavailable. Through this lens, she introduces us to the concept of the "mother wound" - the lasting impact of not receiving the nurturing, validation, and empathy we needed in our formative years. This wound affects how we treat ourselves now, often manifesting as harsh self-criticism, difficulty identifying our needs, or using unhealthy coping mechanisms to fill an emotional void.
Drawing fascinating parallels to classic fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, and The Wizard of Oz - stories where mothers are notably absent or inadequate - Dr. Fetterman suggests these narratives may unconsciously prepare children for navigating a world where perfect mothering isn't guaranteed. The real magic happens when she reveals her framework of the "five children within" - distinct emotional parts she identifies as the hurt child, anxious child, angry child, depressed child, and shame child. Her powerful metaphor of keeping these emotional "children" safely buckled in the backseat while your wise, adult self drives the car provides an actionable approach to self-regulation.
Whether you experienced wonderful mothering or carry wounds from childhood, this conversation offers transformative insights into developing a compassionate relationship with all parts of yourself. As Dr. Fetterman beautifully states, "With every step you take, you're with the love of your life—yourself." Listen now to discover how becoming your own good-enough mother might be the most healing journey you'll ever undertake.
Sign up for Nedra's brilliant course for therapists at the Higher Thought Institute's website: htilearn.com
Thank you for joining me today on the Relationship Blueprint. Remember, don't let life happen to you. You can be the architect of your relationships. So join me next time on the Relationship Blueprint; Unlock Your Power of Connection.
Contact Colleen at colleen@hiltonheadislandcounseling.com for questions or to be a guest on the show!
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Relationship Blueprint, where we unlock your power of connection. And today I have with me someone very special to me. Her name is Dr Nedra Fetterman and she is a psychologist, she's an Imago clinician, she's on the Imago International Training Institute as a full faculty member and she plays tennis well, and she's a whole lot of fun. And what I'm most excited about today is being able to explore with Nedra this idea of we look for self-compassion, we practice self-care, we do a lot of things to help mother us, but what if we look a little deeper? And what if we look within?
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I'm so excited to explore this with you today. Nedra, Is there anything that I haven't said in the introduction that you'd like to share with our listeners?
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a big question. There's so much to share. I think the thing I'm enjoying most in my life right now besides my work, which I love is being a grandmother. Yeah, so that's a special kind of mothering and, you know, there's just this unconditional love flowing back and forth between a three and a half year old, one and a half year old and the grandmother. So that's been really fun and I learned so much from them.
Speaker 1:You're sharing, that you know. Your favorite role, in a way, right now is your time with these grandchildren, this role of mothering, and how this is different with a three and a half year old and a one and a half year old, this unconditional love going back and forth between you.
Speaker 3:And they remind me about who we really are. Before the wounding, before the conditioning, before all the learning and programming, who are we really? And they are open and defended, curious and wonder, joy, playfulness, love. I mean, that's who we are, and I think you and I both know that the journey through childhood and through life can be perilous and we end up, you know, adding so many layers of defenses and self-protection that we lose some of that original joy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they do. Just their spontaneity and openness and honesty is just. It makes me smile, but it is. It's a great reminder of what we could experience, and what I do experience when I'm with my grandchildren as well. It's hard to not be in the moment when you're with little ones.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you just had a new one born, didn't you? Yes, yes, so special.
Speaker 1:Jonah Gray yes, he is a month old now and doing really well. It's really fun. So he was number five, yeah.
Speaker 3:Number five Wow, yeah, yeah. So I think maybe it's this experience of being a grandmother as well as a mother where this has just kind of bubbled up this interest in what does it mean to mother ourselves? Because so many of us are good mothers and good grandmothers. But how do we take care of ourselves? How do we nurture ourselves? Do we have compassion for ourselves? Are we playful with ourselves? Like you know, that whole topic.
Speaker 1:It's a very giving energy right. So the mothering when our kids are little and when we're grandmothers, it's so like I want to. I want to help you tie your shoes. It's so I'm pouring love. Let me show you how to make a cupcake, like we're. There's so much giving in all of that energy, right. And then I think what you're talking about is what would it look like if we could give that to ourselves? It comes so naturally to give to the little people and the big people we love, but I think you're bringing up something so important. So what happens around that mother, energy and the self.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, a lot depends on how you were mothered and how I was mothered and how each of us were mothered. I think something you and I talked about briefly is I consider myself an unmothered child and I was lucky to have a grandmother actually in my life, which might be why I'm enjoying being a grandmother so much, because my grandmother was just an ever-present source of safety and love. So I feel really fortunate. I think it is interesting for each of us to look at the story of our mothering. You know who mothered us, whether it was a biological mother or a caregiving person, whatever gender it was, but there was one person that was there to hold you and feed you and nurture you and you know, gaze at you. Did they gaze at you with love? Was there expectation? Was there judgment? So you know, there's a phrase I heard many years ago if it's not one thing, it's your mother Like. I laughed when I heard it, but it stayed with me. Heard it, but it stayed with me, like I never forgot that one phrase that someone said casually, and you know why did that stay with me. Were we blaming mothers with that phrase If it's not one thing, it's your mother or were we just acknowledging.
Speaker 3:Mothers have such a profound impact. They leave a deep imprint on all of us because as children we're like little sponges and so whatever mom is giving us, we are just absorbing. I was with my little grandson yesterday and I think I said to him something like I like your sweatshirt and he said I know I look so handsome in it. I just thought to myself. His mother probably said that to him. She loves him and adores him and you know he just soaked in what mom gave him. So you know, moms give us a lot of good stuff and maybe some not so good stuff, but we take it all in some not so good stuff, but we take it all in Well.
Speaker 1:You and I both shared, when we did speak briefly last week, about this grandmother influence on your life and on mine, because my grandmother, too, was a major influence in my life. She helped raise me. I really enjoyed being a mom and I'm enjoying being a grandmother, but I too did not get the kind of mothering I needed. I became more of the parent in the relationship and that's a hard situation that I think many, many people really experience but don't talk about, right. I think there's a lot of loyalty to parents. They know that they don't want to talk about mom, dad, because they feel like they did the best they could, which I agree with. However, if we don't really look at what that role, as we're speaking about today, has had, the impact it's had on our life, at least if we don't unpack it, then we really can't understand ourselves or what we need. So I really appreciate this topic for us to really get a little deeper into, not just. You know my mother was critical of me, but it's so much more right, it's so much more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. But criticism is a big one, because imagine living life with mom's voice in your head only becomes your voice and you're always criticizing and judging yourself and feeling like not enough, like somehow not good enough. That's hard to live with that voice.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that it's in there. We have these voices and messages all the time that come from fathers, mothers, all kinds of people, but today we're focusing on that mother energy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think you know we need that mother energy. I mean, when you were growing up, did you have a favorite fairy tale?
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know if I had a favorite, but I loved the fairy tales I loved. As I'm thinking about it, with our grandchildren we love to tell the three little pigs and Red Riding Hood, and Kevin acts it all out and I'm the narrator and it's pretty amusing because he's so big, you know, and he wears the blanket over his head like when he's the grandmother and the big bad wolf and and they love seeing pop-pop in his, uh, in his feminine energy, really really yeah.
Speaker 3:Now, the reason why I ask is as I started thinking about this topic, I realized most of the fairy tales at least the ones that I read when I was little and loved had no mother. Like, cinderella had a stepmother, snow White had a stepmother, an evil stepmother, little Red Riding Hood hey, that mother sent her daughter off into the woods by herself, like what mother would do that, you know? With a little red cape, you know, and a red cape is so provocative. Yes, and you know what other ones? I don't think Beauty and the Beast. Beauty didn't have a mother, it was all about her father.
Speaker 1:Snow White, snow White Right. Bambi even became motherless Right. So you know what was the purpose of that became motherless Right.
Speaker 3:So you know what was the purpose of that. Is there some preparation? You know, as these stories are being told to children like you're going to be disappointed mom's not going to be there in the way that you had hoped, and yet you're going to be okay. You'll find other resources, other friends like take, goldilocks and the Three Bears. Where was Goldilocks' mother when she was visiting the Three Bears? And she's looking for porridge to be fed, a bed to sleep in. So it's kind of like she's looking for things that a mother would normally provide. And yet in each of these stories there's a happy ending. So maybe the message to the child is you're going to be okay even without a mom, to find ways to take care of yourself and survive. There'll be porridge somewhere else. There'll be a bed somewhere else. You'll find dwarves.
Speaker 1:Dwarves will take care of you. You don't have a mother or father, but there you go, right.
Speaker 3:And my favorite was the Wizard of Oz, because Dorothy did not have a mother. She was being raised by Auntie Em and Uncle Henry. And yet, you know, she goes on this journey and I think it's a healing journey for her. She goes over the rainbow to. She was feeling really lonely and threatened by Elvira Gulch, who's going to take away Toto, her dog, which was really her attachment figure, and she found friends the scarecrow, the tin man, the lion but there she met Glinda, the good witch, which I think is that feminine energy that can be so healing. And Glinda gave her the ruby slippers. And Glinda is the one who said at the end you had the power in you all along. All you have to do is click those ruby slippers and you know. I think that's what a good mother does, like a good mother empowers you, protects you, says you can do it. You know you had power inside of you. So, and then Dorothy wakes up and we see it was all a dream.
Speaker 1:So to me it's talking about there's a lot of healing that goes on in the internal world adult children, because the mothering that she's giving is about her needs and not as much about what the adult children need and how that shows up to how, as mothers, we begin with all this loving and giving and we're talking about being grandmothers to these young children, but the preparation is to send them out into the world so that they can take care of themselves, but with our loving support along the way. And when you were talking about Dorothy, I could just see her on that journey and all the obstacles that she encountered along the way how scary they were.
Speaker 1:And then, as you shared, all the characters that came along to help her and help her find that confidence that was inside her all along, that she found in the end, we don't know that while we're going through it, do we?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, it does take courage to leave home and it takes courage to let go. I think that is the hard thing about being a mother in real life is letting go of these children that you put so much into and feeling that grief, you know, I think we could talk a lot about that in terms of how do you manage feelings, as these children were the center of our lives and, as they grow up, the mother's no longer the center of their lives. They were the center of our lives, we were the center of their lives. And then it's just a gradual letting go and there's grief and then a recentering.
Speaker 1:But do you think that people I mean, I don't know that I knew, you know, as a younger mother, that I would one day really feel the grief of loss of that ability to be the center of their world, right, and knowing that that's the right thing to happen and that they have to do that in order to individuate and move on? But I don't know how much we talk about that in our culture, about that grief, because it's such a painful process I talked about the umbilical cord gets cut a little bit more each time. It's like the kindergarten cut. You know they're going off to school and then college and then marriage and life, and each time there's a little pain in that isn't there.
Speaker 3:Which is why I think this, what we're talking about, is so important to shift from being the mother to our children to being the mother to ourselves. Because one of my favorite lines is with every step you take, you're with the love of your life, you're with yourself every step you take. So at some point, that shift needs to happen, from being the mother to others to really taking good care of yourself and developing that internal world that's rich. So, yeah, I think you know one thing I was thinking about in terms of what we were talking about today. I said I've been thinking a lot about my own mother and that the repair that happened with my own mother I'd love to talk about that parallels the repair that happens with the self. Tell us more.
Speaker 3:Well, my mother married at age 18. I didn't realize until I was much older. I had a teenage mother. I was born when she was 19. And when she talks about giving birth at age 19, she said things like I really wanted someone to love unconditionally and someone to unconditionally love me. I really wanted someone, you know, a baby that would never leave me and who would need me.
Speaker 3:And I think in the beginning she did her best to love me but realized she was a child raising a child. She dropped out of college. She hadn't really developed herself. She had her own difficult childhood, which is why she married so young to get out of that house. And so eventually, I think when my brother was four and I was eight, she went back to school, got a bachelor's degree, got a master's degree, developed a career, developed a lot of friends through all those college experiences and essentially left my father and me and my brother not physically but emotionally, and so my relationship with her, when I really think about it, for most of my life was distant and tense, and it was really my grandmother and my father who, I would turn to my mother's relationship with me, I think, was she saw me as an opportunity to be everything that she wasn't. On the one hand she abandoned the family, but when she was there she was trying to perfect me. So it was this combination of abandonment but also control, like you know. Like don't wear blue jeans, you don't look good in blue jeans. Wear makeup. You look better with makeup. Do your hair differently. Why you want to be a tennis player? No, you have to go to medical school, you know. So it was. It was like you know message was don't be who you are, be who I need you to be.
Speaker 3:And so I think I was relieved when I went off to college and it wasn't until I was 32, married and expecting my first child that I sat down with my mom and dad and I said to them you know, this new baby is coming into our lives and I really want you to clean up your act. I don't want the baby, this little boy I knew it was going to be a little boy. I don't want him to experience what I experienced. And they were offended. My father said to me my father was a psychiatrist and he said to me I think the hormones of pregnancy are making you crazy. And I don't remember what my mother said, but what she remembers is I said to her you're in danger of losing your daughter. And I remember leaving that conversation, crying, thinking the relationship was over. I had offended them, they weren't going to get help and I was going to set boundaries. But they did get help. They didn't tell me.
Speaker 3:They just went to New York and went to a Getting the Love you On workshop and when Harville Hendricks who you and I both have studied with and know, when he asked for a volunteer couple to demonstrate the dialogue, my mother volunteered the two of them and there were 150 couples. They were on a stage in a big hotel ballroom and my father was the sender and my mother was the receiver and he started talking about how painful it was in our household and my mother turned to Harville and said Harville, stop him. You told him not to talk about the major issue. This is the major issue. You said to him, pick something small. And Harville looked at my mother and said just mirror him Whatever he says, reflect it back. And she did. You know, harville has that way of like, you know, in a very kind of strong tone, setting boundaries and limits. And so she did and they began healing their relationship.
Speaker 3:So I had no idea this was going on, but she called me on the phone and I started talking. She asked me like how am I and how is the baby? And I started talking and she mirrored, validated and empathized with me. So she took everything she learned in that workshop and brought it into our relationship. And the moment she did that, I stopped the conversation and I said something is really different. I feel really listened to what happened and she said well, I went to this workshop and someday I hope you'll go. That's all she said. But that was the moment our relationship started changing so that the Imago dialogue was profoundly healing. I felt, heard and seen and understood and felt in that one conversation that I had never felt, ever in my life, wow.
Speaker 1:So I think it's like what you're saying is so important. I just did a workshop in Florida a couple weekends ago and you know what that's like. We watch those couples come in and sometimes they're very disconnected and leave very connected and I'm thinking about that ripple effect. You know that your parents going to do that work because you really said I want this for my son, right, and then they go away and they do that and then, because they come back with that, moving from that unconscious relationship to such a more conscious relationship that they could, your mom especially was able to finally give you what you'd been so hungry for for so long, right right From her.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow. And I think what I learned is repair of relationship is possible with the right tools and the willingness and the desire to use those tools. And so I did eventually go to a workshop and I think it was. You know, they became trained in Imago, they became faculty members themselves, and my mother worked very closely with Harville for many years.
Speaker 3:But what I eventually learned is that not only could I mirror, validate and empathize with other people, like my husband, my son, my clients, my mother, but I could give that to myself. And that's, you know, the insight that I had recently is that when we teach people to mirror, validate and empathize, we're teaching them how to be good mothers, because that's what a good mother does. A good mother mirrors her child, listens, opens up her heart, validates her child and says you make so much sense. I can see why you see it that way. I imagine what you're feeling. I mean, that's what a good mother does. So as I began to mirror, validate and empathize with parts of myself, I began to repair that mother wound that I carried inside. That was a big insight that I had.
Speaker 1:What I wanted to kind of highlight, then, when we talk about the mother wound for our listeners, I think what you might be referring to is that that part of you that wanted so much that your mom to mirror, validate, understand you like that you were you not she wanted you to be growing up, but that, although you had that healing with your mom later in life, that still within you you still had that mother wounding Right? Could you tell us more about how you did that, the process of that? Yeah?
Speaker 3:So yeah. So what is the mother wound? It's exactly what you said, and I would add that we've internalized the shadow aspects of mom. So if, what a good mom is? That they listen and they nurture and they, you know, are there when we scrape our knee or our feelings are hurt and we go to mom for comfort, the shadow side of that is the mother that criticizes and judges and has expectations, and we can never, you know, quite live up to those expectations. So we're a disappointment or we're too much, we're a burden. That's the shadow side of the good mom. And then we internalize that. So then we're, you know, we don't take care of ourselves.
Speaker 3:Like I didn't have a mom who was interested in did you brush your teeth? What did you have for breakfast? How did you sleep last night? Like there was no bedtime story, no kiss goodnight. So I was missing that kind of attention to myself. And then it's hard to give attention to myself. My attention is always going out there rather than to myself, or I would comfort myself with food and overeat rather than comfort myself in a healthy way. So that's what I mean by the mother wound. I'm not able to really give to myself attention, care, support, comfort, love, compassion if I didn't get it from someone love compassion if I didn't get it from someone.
Speaker 1:And you said earlier I want to circle back to it that often the same people like yourself and myself that carry this mother wound, that we're very good at giving it to other people when someone else makes a mistake, so much compassion, I don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:It's not that big of a deal, the softer sort of acceptance, right. But when you're carrying this with you and you're having experienced this mother wound very unconsciously, we're doing things like overeating, overspending, trying to find something to fill that place that feels pretty empty and sad. But I don't want to look at it. So I'm going to really distract myself with all these other, maybe even achievements. Whatever it does, some of these things look really good that we do to hide from our pain. We get reinforcement in the world for doing some of these things because in our culture we reward the achievements versus the internal motivators, the things you can't see in me that need to be healed. If I cover it up enough with achievements and this and that you'll never see it, you'll never see it, but I'll be carrying it like a big old piece of luggage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and look good while you're carrying that luggage, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the conversation then with ourselves. Maybe we've identified as, listening to this podcast, that I too really didn't get the kind of mothering I needed, for whatever reason. Maybe people have seven children, maybe they work three jobs and they just couldn't be available. My mother suffered from depression and anxiety and was very preoccupied with herself most of my life and developed a food addiction and was actively in her addiction all of my life. And so, while it's not alcohol, it really doesn't matter, because the addiction became the primary focus and I, like you, was secondary until I needed to be her show and tell doll.
Speaker 1:And, as you said, it's so interesting how much we have parallels. And then I kind of liked playing baseball with my cousins, but she had me in modeling school where I felt very uncomfortable, it didn't work for me, didn't feel good, but I want to please mom, yeah. And so then I started to not trust myself, because if she says I like it and I'm good at it, then maybe I shouldn't trust my own feelings. I know, so I hear that a lot with people is really that difficulty identifying their own feelings and then difficulty really like trusting them. Mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:When you're told how you should feel, think, act, behave.
Speaker 3:Mm? Hmm, exactly, yeah, and so as a young person, you know she's big, she's smart, she's my mom. Do I trust her? Do I trust me? And it just throws you into doubt and second guessing yourself a lot. Yeah, so I think a Mago is really a helpful pathway for me, because Mago helped me get the story straight.
Speaker 3:What happened to that little girl, what was the story? And then what was the corrective emotional experience that that little girl needed? Well, she needed someone to mirror, validate and empathize with her. That is a corrective emotional experience. And what was helpful about that was getting this idea that the wounded child is not me and therefore that begins an internal differentiation process. So we talk a lot about being differentiated from your partner, you know, ending the symbiosis, and there's two people in the relationship, not just you. So it's like coming out of self-absorption to see, oh, there's another world. Well, internal differentiation is realizing that there's you, and then there is a wounded child, an adaptive child, a defensive child, but that's not you. You acquired that along the way. But that original soul, that original self, is different than the wound.
Speaker 3:And I actually have expanded what Harville talks about in terms of the wounded child. I think there's at least five children. There's the hurt child, the anxious child, the angry child, the depressed child and the shame child, and the reason why I think they're different is, at least, in myself. They each have very different energies, like my hurt child is very different than my angry child and the energy of my anxious child is very different than my depressed child, which is very different than the shame child. So, energetically, they each have their own emotional signature, and when I'm triggered, what usually happens for me is that the hurt child and the angry child team up and can hijack me.
Speaker 3:And so what I've learned to do is I've strengthened my internal mother is, when I'm triggered, to acknowledge the hurt child and the angry child are both there, they both have something to say, but I'm going to like keep their seatbelts on to say but I'm going to like, keep their seatbelts on. I'm not going to let them hijack the bus or the plane or the car or whatever vehicle you think you're driving. Keep them in the back seat with their seatbelts on, talk to them, find out why they're upset, ask them what they need, but be really clear with them. I'm not giving them the steering wheel. They're not driving.
Speaker 3:Because when my hurt child and my angry child drive. There are dead bodies all over the place, there are collisions and dents and I have seen the damage that they can cause, like when the wise woman, you know, and the good mom the good mom is able to calm them down and soothe them and talk to them and problem solve with them, and then the wise part of me is driving the car, can speak on their behalf, but I'm not really giving them the microphone. I love that. So my life has gone much better.
Speaker 1:And when those children act up, we have so much cleanup to do, don't we Exactly? There's so much cleanup and I love the metaphor of you know you've got their seatbelts on, you know they're there, the sad and the angry child, and you're not trying to squash them down, not going to go eat a pizza to make it sort of numb out, right, but then really being able to talk to them like what is it that you need? Why are you hurt? What story did it put you in about your relationship with that person? And then you're the wise person, the good enough mom driving the car, and you're able to speak for them, but you're not letting them drive. And that really saves the collisions and the mess that all of us have experienced, creating a mess because of our reactivity. But I think that I've never heard this before, nedra, about the five different children within us, and I feel like that's really a key issue. Here You're right the energy of my sad child is very different from my angry child.
Speaker 3:Right and from your anxious child. Like when I get anxious it's a whole different kettle of fish than angry or hurt. But it seems like my hurt and anger really have quite a team going together, like if I get hurt the anger comes right along with it.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 3:Probably to protect the hurt one. So yeah, so that's kind of what I mean by becoming a good mother, you know, like really taking care of these younger emotional parts of myself.
Speaker 1:Men are listening to this. What do we want them to hear? Because this is important.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, that's a whole nother topic. You know, we really shame men around their feelings, so it's not okay to be vulnerable. If you're a man, you can't be hurt. Big boys don't cry. You can't be fearful. If you're a boy growing up, you have to be tough and brave and strong. It's like you know we're teaching them how to be young warriors, and so when it comes to feelings, it's like the only feeling we allow men is anger.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Aggression and anger and maybe sexuality, we allow them to have that feeling. So you know when I'm working with men so deeply compassionate about how hard it is to acknowledge vulnerable feelings, so they're hijacked by anger a lot, and then finding out those other ones are underneath. It is really important because you know we're working with couples, usually you and I, and intimacy is all about vulnerability. And so helping a man understand there's more than just an angry boy or an angry teenager in there. There's also a hurt child, an anxious child.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like really it's the same process. It's just a real sensitivity for men to realize you know you were not if you're a man listening to this, or even a woman who was really not allowed to have your feelings. It's important to just realize that in the culture, not just from our mothers but from our culture, we in our society, we get these messages about who we are, how we show up in the world, and that we really know from the research that men are very taught from an early age not to really feel their big feelings. It's okay for the girls, but it's really not okay for the boys, and so for them to get in touch with those feelings other than anger, right or other than sexuality, may take just a little more time.
Speaker 1:To stop numbing right, yeah, or distracting right, numbing, distracting. We do all kinds of things. I was playing tennis this morning and I thought of you in our episode we were doing today and I was listening to all of us on the court and I was thinking about the messages that we say to ourselves out loud, internally, playing the game of tennis right. Here we are, you know, women in their 60s having fun on the court and yet the negative messages. Playing a game about whether we miss a ball or whatever the thing is.
Speaker 1:Yet if we can become more aware of those subtle messages that show up in all these smaller places that may not have as big of an impact, but to really start to pay attention to how am I talking to myself? Where did that come from, and would I like to look at that differently?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know, I say you weren't born saying that to yourself somewhere along the way. Yeah, whose voice is that in your head? And is it true? And if it's not, should we hand it back to the person who gave it to us to?
Speaker 1:begin with, I like that. I also like the way you're talking about the fairy tales and thinking about how parents now could be really using as they're sharing the fairy tales with the kids to have this kind of insight that you shared with us today, and thinking about how they can incorporate that. As you read your grandsons a story now, like Goldilocks, what does that? Has that changed at all for you, since you love fairy tales?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, you know, I don't know if I have this I'd love to play this song for you if I can. But I've been thinking about the ugly duckling story. You know, in the ugly duckling story there was a mother and the ugly duckling was actually a swan. So somehow a swan's egg somehow rolled into her nest and she knew that this egg was different. It was bigger, it took longer to hatch and when the swan hatched late, like the other ducks were already hatched, it was different. But she still loved it and she tried to groom this funny looking duck to make it look like the others.
Speaker 3:But it was the others who were relentlessly teasing the ugly duckling and so the mother collapsed. There was no support for the mother to keep loving this funny looking duck and so she ends up rejecting the duck just because it was creating such havoc in the nest. You know the bullying, the anger, the rejection of this. So this was a collapsed mother. So the reason why I'm telling you this is because in my reading of this story and my research on this story, I came across the most delightful little YouTube. I'd love to play it for you. Yes, I'd love to hear it. I would love every child actually to hear this here it is.
Speaker 2:Have you ever felt different than everybody else? Well, here's a little story and I hope that it will help. A little duckling is born totally unique, from the tip of his beak all the way to his feet. He liked being different. He thought that it was neat, so he waddled to the sound of his own heartbeat. All the other ducklings tried to tell him how to be. Well, why should I be you, he thought, when I like to be me? He loved that he was special. It made him stand out, so it was worth it. Even when he felt a little left out, he didn't copy others or hide who he was. And when they asked him why, he said because it's good to be me.
Speaker 4:It's good to be me. We, it's good to be me. We can all shine differently. It's good to be. It's good to be me. It's good to shine differently. It's good to be.
Speaker 2:The little duckling isn't wrong. It's a way of life, not just the chorus of a song. It's cool to be yourself, so keep keeping on, because that's how your personality grows. Strong Kids, you can be anything that you want, but you have to start out with the things that you've. I love that. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:I love it every time I hear it, so you know I must need to hear it. But it's good to be me and we can all shine differently, you know, and it turned out you were a swan all along.
Speaker 1:I just love it and how important for us to give our children and ourselves this message that, like, I'm not like everybody else, and how okay that is Not just okay, but let's celebrate it, especially in a world right now where we have lots of you know, you're this, you're that, you belong, you don't belong. I can't accept you because you believe this. You can't accept me because I believe that. And this idea that our differences actually make us stronger yeah, that's for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they often say, wow, it's a good thing you didn't marry your twin. Like you know, we marry people who are different than us because it's like on a baseball team, you don't all play the same position. You need different skills and different strengths to really make up a team, but we make up that.
Speaker 1:we need someone just like us, because if we had someone just like us then we'd be happy, and how misguided that is. I've enjoyed having you on the show today. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to just highlight for our listeners that you feel is important? Just that two things.
Speaker 3:One is, you know, we're relational beings inside and out. You know, when we think about relationship, we often think about it with another person. We don't really think about having a relationship with ourselves. And yet we do. And you know, I hear people say to me well, I said to myself, or I thought to myself and I say to them, well, who's the I and who's the myself? Like you really do have a relationship between the I and the myself. What are you saying to yourself? So I really hope people take that idea home with them and then, looking at the quality of the relationship, you know, Can we give to ourselves curiosity about the different parts of ourselves, acceptance, empathy and, I even think, problem solving, that the different parts will have different points of view and sometimes be triggered and you can collaborate and cooperate internally with yourself.
Speaker 1:So this internalization, realizing that, yes, I'm in relationship with you right now, I'm in relationship with Kevin, my grandchildren, but really what you're highlighting is this internal relationship that we have with ourselves. Can you name those five parts of ourselves, the children within us? One?
Speaker 3:more time. Yeah. So I mean, if we talked about the brain science, you would see that it's a relational brain. So there's a part of our brain where empathy lives and then there's a part of our brain where the emotions live. So when we talk about limbic reactivity, what we're talking about the emotions in the limbic system, and those emotions are hurt and sadness and grief. They're all kind of the same sad feeling, and then fear and anxiety, and then anger and frustration, and then hopeless and helpless is like depression, and then shame and guilt. So I just talk about it as hurt, anxiety, anger, depression, shame, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's so wonderful because I think, when we can look at our feelings in that way, I think it's so helpful then to have that discussion with ourselves about what is this about. Like you said, what am I telling myself? And if that's not true, can I give that back to whoever sent that to me, even if I don't remember who they were, something that I took away as a childhood that I don't need right now. I really think that's something that we could all leave with today and practice on our own, so I value what you've shared so much. Thank you.
Speaker 3:One last thing. I mean we could probably talk about this for longer, but people will frequently say I don't like my anxiety, I wish it would go away, and I actually think the opposite is important, like the definition of self-love is being able to have compassion or empathy or love for every part of the self. So can you love that anxious child? Can you put your arm around her and, rather than banishing her to the basement or putting her in the trunk of your car, can you say I'm putting you in the backseat of my car. I see you, I can turn around and talk with you, but I'm not going to let you drive the car, but I can still really care for you. That's really beautiful.
Speaker 1:That's really beautiful, and so the topic that we talked about to name this podcast I'm looking for. I wrote this down because I really liked it.
Speaker 3:Looking for mom in all the wrong places.
Speaker 1:Yes, looking for mom in all the wrong places, because as long as we stay external about mom, there's really not a whole lot many of us can do about our relationships with our moms. Maybe they've passed, maybe they're not really willing to do the work the way your mom was willing to do that All kinds of reasons right, but we do get to look at this mother relationship with ourselves and I think it's beautiful, just beautiful, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's been a joy for me to be with you. I didn't get to say that. I was really looking forward to it and I wish we could play tennis together.
Speaker 1:I wish we could play tennis and then talk about this, because it's so stimulating really, Nedra, to really think about what we're talking about. And then I love the connection with the fairy tales and the stories, just even if we just thought about the stories that we received as children about mothering without our mothers, but just that is a huge impact and that stepmothers were evil. You know so many messages that are just in our literature that we can all begin to just sort of huh, what was the message I took from that?
Speaker 3:story. Yeah, and I think that means there's something universal about this topic, since so many of the fairy tales are either about a neglectful mother, a mother that's not there at all, or a collapsed mother like the ugly duckling's mother. And I don't know if you read this book as a kid, but there is like a little like almost kindergarten book called Are you my Mother? Do you know? Yes, man, as a kid I read all the time. I think that began looking for my mother Are you my mother. Are you my mother?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, the story that you're sharing with us. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I did. I mean, I am fortunate my mother was willing to do the work. We repaired that relationship, but the real work was repairing the internal mother that I internalized when I was a young girl and a teenager.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope that you'll come back because you have so much wisdom and I hope, because I enjoy you immensely Selfishly, I enjoy Nedra immensely. I wanted to ask you do you have any workshops or things coming up that you can tell our listeners about that they could possibly get to really know Nedra in a different way, a deeper way?
Speaker 3:I am doing a workshop May 10th for therapists and it's called the Perfect Duck or the Ugly Duck, Stepping Beyond Familiar Love and Becoming Whole. And so I'm going to be talking to therapists about how to help their clients repair that inner mother.
Speaker 1:Okay. So for therapists, what we talked about here today, this is a great teaser for that May 10th course that you're offering, and so I will be sure to put that on our shared listserv so that therapists and you don't have to be an imago therapist really to sign up for it. Right, they could. Just anyone who is working with clients and would like to know more about this work that Nedra has developed so brilliantly should really look into that, and where would they find that? It's the Higher Thought Institute is sponsoring this. Okay, higher Thought Institute. And do they have a website? Sure, yes, they do. Okay, so look for Higher Thought Institute and I will put that in our notes, okay.
Speaker 3:And it's three hours on a Saturday morning and right before Mother's Day. That's what inspired it. They asked me to do this on May 10th and I thought, wow, that's right before Mother's Day.
Speaker 1:So what if Mother's Day this year? You know many of us can think about what do we want to give ourselves so that we can really further deepen our relationship with ourselves and heal that mother wound within us? I'm so excited. I hope that I get to take it, because I really love studying with you, nedra, and we are going to end our show today with thanking Nedra for her brilliant work. And the Relationship Blueprint is going to take two weeks off. I am taking a vacation and so look for us in two weeks and we're going to sign off now the relationship blueprint, where you unlock your power of connection. I can't think of a better way to begin is thinking about our own relationship with ourselves and how we can become better mothers to ourselves, the kind of mothering that we each need individually. And this is a practice, and we can be gentle with ourselves as we practice these new skills. Thank you everybody for being with us today. Thank you, nedra, and we'll see you next time on the Relationship Blueprint. Bye, everybody.
