Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Women Are Scared To Be Alone With Kids

Transcript

When Women Are Scared To Be Alone With Kids · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi everybody, and welcome to the Doctor Psych Mom Show.
• 0:08
  Today I'm going to be talking about something which is really
• 0:11
  common, and I'll talk about why when women are scared to be
• 0:15
  alone with their kids and how you could recognize that and
• 0:19
  what it's due to and why. You know why that happens?
• 0:23
  Before that, I must tell you to subscribe.
• 0:25
  We have a lot of awesome subscriber episodes coming out,
• 0:29
  and, of course, ones that were already there.
• 0:33
  But the next one coming out is, remember, there's a little
• 0:36
  honeymoon stage every month. And to see what that is and how
• 0:39
  to make the best use of it, please subscribe.
• 0:42
  All right. So there are a lot of women
• 0:45
  nowadays that are, you know, much more isolated than women
• 0:50
  ever were. Now, it's not as bad as it used
• 0:53
  to be because even when I was started private practice, like
• 0:56
  14 years ago, there were many, many more women whose husbands
• 1:01
  did not help out at all. Now, thankfully, that is not the
• 1:04
  case. Guys are really supposed to be
• 1:06
  involved fathers, and largely they are becoming more and more
• 1:10
  involved fathers, you know, And that's great.
• 1:12
  And that's great for the kids and it's great for the women.
• 1:15
  There was a little downturn, you know, of a couple decades there
• 1:21
  where women were both not living near family of origin and also
• 1:27
  the husband wasn't involved, you know, so that like sucks all
• 1:30
  together. But so basically within the
• 1:33
  entire history of our species, women used to women and men,
• 1:37
  everybody used to live in extended family networks.
• 1:40
  And so having help with the kids in your family, your sister,
• 1:45
  your mother, your grandmother, even like everybody could help
• 1:47
  you with your baby. And then it happened that people
• 1:51
  started moving away a lot, going to College in a different place,
• 1:54
  getting jobs in different places and didn't necessarily live near
• 1:58
  anybody, you know, and and our culture prizes, independence and
• 2:02
  do what what you want, do what you want is great until you end
• 2:04
  up screwed because you're completely isolated and people
• 2:08
  don't really think about that. Obviously, young people idealize
• 2:11
  a lot. And one of the things they
• 2:13
  idealize is starting fresh in a new city.
• 2:15
  And that's fun. Yeah, it's fun until there's
• 2:18
  nobody to help you, you know, And if you don't have the
• 2:20
  financial resources or if you don't want.
• 2:23
  And I'll talk about this too. If you don't really like having
• 2:26
  like a nanny or somebody that is that you have to kind of manage
• 2:32
  yourself around because they're not family, because they're like
• 2:35
  a paid employee. So a lot of more sensitive or
• 2:37
  introverted people don't really like that.
• 2:40
  Then it's basically just you with the kids.
• 2:42
  And now it's great because. Or it's better for the women
• 2:46
  that I see now because men are really supposed to be more
• 2:49
  involved. They're getting longer for
• 2:50
  paternity leave even, and they can say things like I'm leaving
• 2:54
  work early to go to my kids game and it is not as penalized the
• 2:58
  way that it used to be, even just one short decade ago, which
• 3:02
  is obviously super short. In the trajectory of human
• 3:05
  history. It's not even a draw, but there
• 3:08
  has been a change. However, there are still many
• 3:11
  women who do the primary caretaking and are home with the
• 3:15
  kids much more than men that are home with the kids and or on the
• 3:20
  weekends do the lion's share of the of the child care.
• 3:25
  And some of those women, if they struggle with depression,
• 3:28
  anxiety or childhood trauma, they are really pretty scared to
• 3:31
  be alone with the kids. And men don't generally
• 3:34
  understand this. And I have a lot of like posts
• 3:36
  and stuff about this, but I figured I would talk about it
• 3:39
  more plainly and directly here. So if you are abused as a child,
• 3:43
  or even if you are harshly disciplined as a child, you're
• 3:46
  not allowed to do that anymore and you don't want to do it.
• 3:49
  So you don't want to hit your kid, but then you have no way to
• 3:51
  make them shut up. And that's the truth of the
• 3:53
  matter, is that you're alone and they're allowed and you know
• 3:58
  you're not supposed to hit them like you used to get hit.
• 4:00
  You know, you're not just supposed to ignore them.
• 4:02
  Like you may have gotten ignored.
• 4:03
  And you know you're not supposed to drink or cope in any sort of
• 4:06
  way of escape, like maybe your parents used to do.
• 4:10
  So then you're fucked, right? I mean, you got nothing to do.
• 4:13
  And you could read all the gentle parenting books in the
• 4:15
  world and it still remains that you can't shut your kid up.
• 4:19
  You just can't. If they don't want to shut up at
• 4:22
  a certain age of being a toddler or young, you know, a baby,
• 4:26
  certainly in a toddler, they can't.
• 4:28
  They can't control themselves, Right.
• 4:32
  And so if you're somebody who struggles with postpartum
• 4:34
  depression, which by the way can go on for years, it's not like
• 4:37
  the day afterwards, you know, like a lot of people think or
• 4:39
  the week, it could be years. Postpartum depression can just
• 4:43
  turn into depression or postpartum anxiety or postpartum
• 4:46
  OCD. So if you're struggling with
• 4:49
  having really low bandwidth and patients because of these
• 4:52
  undiagnosed conditions, which of course you may feel that you
• 4:55
  love your baby. So therefore you feel good about
• 4:57
  your life overall and you may feel happy overall that you have
• 5:01
  your baby but still unable to deal with anything.
• 5:04
  So then you wouldn't necessarily know that you're depressed
• 5:06
  because you assume depressed means you can't get out of bed,
• 5:08
  which is of course not true. And I have many podcasts about
• 5:11
  depression and post called what else does depression look like?
• 5:15
  And things like that. Some women don't even feel like
• 5:17
  they love their baby. And I have a post about that
• 5:19
  like when you don't feel when you when you've never bonded to
• 5:22
  your baby, when you can't bond to your baby.
• 5:24
  That's some of the work actually that I've done as a clinician
• 5:28
  that I'm the proudest of is working with those with women in
• 5:31
  such situations and helping them see that it isn't them and that
• 5:34
  they don't need to be ashamed that they have postpartum
• 5:36
  depression and or an extensive trauma history themselves which
• 5:40
  precludes them from bonding with their baby.
• 5:43
  And eventually they can, as long as they give themselves that
• 5:46
  self compassion to know that it's not their fault that they
• 5:49
  didn't automatically bond with their baby.
• 5:52
  If you've had a childhood trauma history and you do not have a
• 5:54
  template of a mother loving you and taking care of you in a
• 5:58
  common patient way, there's almost no way to do that without
• 6:02
  really busting your ass. You know, I mean, without
• 6:05
  literally taking parenting courses and going to therapy and
• 6:08
  being on antidepressants if you need it.
• 6:10
  And I mean just and having help, you know, I mean, you need like
• 6:13
  all these other things. Otherwise you're terrified all
• 6:16
  the time that you're going to scream at them or you're going
• 6:18
  to hit them or you're going to drink or you're going to do
• 6:22
  something bad or you're going to like, just take a Benadryl and
• 6:25
  go to sleep or something. And I'm trying to say this
• 6:28
  because a lot of guys have no idea how overwhelmed their wife
• 6:32
  feels and how much she feels like she needs an escape, but
• 6:35
  there is no escape. And then they feel that if she
• 6:39
  really felt like that, then wouldn't she say to them, oh,
• 6:42
  I'm struggling with severe mental illness?
• 6:44
  No, 'cause she doesn't think she is.
• 6:46
  She thinks that it's just really, really hard to be around
• 6:49
  kids, but that she has to do it anyway.
• 6:51
  And and she wants to 'cause she loves them.
• 6:54
  But especially when she feels that they are out of control, A
• 6:58
  lot of women feel really scared if they are not necessarily laid
• 7:03
  back people and they have a really quick trigger or temper
• 7:08
  because of undiagnosed postpartum depression.
• 7:11
  Now if this does sound like you, if you're a woman listening to
• 7:14
  this or this sounds like your wife, then if you're a man
• 7:16
  listening to this, then you are depressed.
• 7:19
  I can almost swear, you know, and go go to a therapist.
• 7:24
  Go to a therapist like right away or a psychiatrist and say I
• 7:27
  don't know how to deal with the kids whenever they're loud, it
• 7:30
  makes me scared. I'm scared of them.
• 7:32
  I know that I have childhood trauma myself, and cause
• 7:36
  invariably you do. Or I know that I may have
• 7:39
  depression or anxiety or something's going on.
• 7:42
  But they scare me. I can't be alone with them.
• 7:45
  I don't know what, you know, like like when when they can be
• 7:48
  quiet next. I become obsessed with nap time
• 7:52
  and bedtime. This is like a big, big thing,
• 7:55
  right? You know, Because that's when
• 7:56
  you know that they're quiet. So then these women get obsessed
• 7:58
  with sleep training and stuff and nap schedules and all of
• 8:03
  this because that's the only way that they can ever get some
• 8:06
  piece away from the baby that is, like, socially condoned.
• 8:10
  So it isn't bad if if you are somebody that feels like this,
• 8:15
  it isn't bad. It's understandable given what
• 8:17
  your life was probably like, where you did get yelled at or
• 8:21
  hit or just ignored. So you never really learn how an
• 8:25
  adult could manage their, you know, feeling kind of irritable
• 8:29
  and impatient with a child while also helping the child manage
• 8:32
  and regulate their own emotions. You never saw that, so how the
• 8:36
  hell would you know how to do it?
• 8:37
  It's not your fault at all, but you can learn how to do do this.
• 8:41
  You can learn a lot better if you're treated for whatever
• 8:43
  depression, anxiety, or underlying childhood trauma
• 8:46
  there is. If that sounds too terrifying,
• 8:48
  then there are parenting classes as well.
• 8:51
  Also, it is not a it is not a loss and it is not capitulating.
• 8:57
  And it it is not being a pussy. If you have to get help, you
• 9:01
  know, if you have to get help with kids, if that's a
• 9:03
  babysitter or that's sending them to daycare or that's
• 9:07
  sending them to preschool another day, a week or whatever
• 9:09
  the case may be, you know? And a lot of women feel that
• 9:13
  they're going to be a perfect mother to make up for what they
• 9:16
  never got and to be a different kind of parent than what they
• 9:19
  had. And sometimes it's just a bridge
• 9:22
  too far to do that completely on your own.
• 9:25
  Now enter the the husband, though.
• 9:27
  So sometimes some stuff happens where then the wife basically
• 9:31
  says that the husband has to be around 100% of the time with her
• 9:36
  and he has a job and he may want to exercise or have hobbies or
• 9:39
  like anything. And so he says, but I watch the
• 9:43
  kids when you're doing your thing, why don't like what's the
• 9:46
  problem of you watching the kids when I do my thing?
• 9:49
  And by the way, some of my thing is making money, you know, for
• 9:53
  the family. And what she doesn't want to
• 9:56
  say, because she won't admit it to herself, is I am terrified to
• 9:59
  be alone with these children. I have no idea how to parent
• 10:02
  them. I get incredibly dysregulated.
• 10:04
  It's hard for me to get off the couch when I feel depressed.
• 10:07
  I don't want to admit that I'm depressed.
• 10:08
  And of course, this is just a subconscious voice talking.
• 10:11
  She doesn't know that she's depressed.
• 10:13
  I feel like I'm going to lose my temper or my mind or scream at
• 10:17
  them or give them too many timeouts or whatever the case
• 10:20
  may be. And when you're here, it's it's
• 10:22
  a calming presence. Plus, I can always leave the
• 10:25
  room. And when they're very little,
• 10:27
  you know you can't just leave the room all the time.
• 10:29
  You can always you can leave the room.
• 10:31
  If they're safe and you're upset, you know you should do
• 10:35
  that. You should always turn the TV on
• 10:37
  or do whatever you need to do. By the way, if you do get upset
• 10:40
  with them, should always have things like that.
• 10:43
  And I say that to mother sometimes when you're trying to
• 10:45
  be the perfect mother, you're also trying not to give them a
• 10:48
  lot of screen time or things like that.
• 10:50
  So was bigger, of course, before the pandemic, when all screen
• 10:52
  time limits went out the window. But if if it's between you
• 10:56
  screaming at your kid or you like feeling like you are going
• 11:00
  to have a nervous breakdown and then having more special iPad
• 11:04
  time, that's cool. Give them more special iPad
• 11:07
  time. You could download only
• 11:08
  educational stuff if you'd like. You can learn Spanish, French
• 11:12
  and calculus if you'd like on the iPad or whatever.
• 11:15
  Little levels of that. There are like counting dots,
• 11:19
  you know, for a toddler, but you need to have some way to replace
• 11:24
  what would have been them going to Grandma's house next door or
• 11:29
  them walking over to grandma who lives with us because that is
• 11:32
  what we were supposed to do as a species is have live in large
• 11:36
  extended kin networks. Like if you watch Chimp Empire,
• 11:39
  which I know I've mentioned many times, you know, like, no, no,
• 11:43
  none of those chimps are parenting alone.
• 11:45
  There are lots of other people when they're tired, when they
• 11:47
  need a nap, the baby goes to somebody else and to a different
• 11:51
  chimp. And that is how we used to live
• 11:53
  as human beings until very, very recently in our trajectory as a
• 11:58
  species. And it really, really makes
• 12:01
  sense why. And I've said this before,
• 12:05
  chimps only abuse their baby chimps, their children in
• 12:08
  captivity, when it's just one mother and one chimp and one
• 12:12
  baby chimp, They do not, in the wild ever abuse their children
• 12:15
  because they can get away from them.
• 12:17
  So doesn't that make sense? So what this podcast can help
• 12:21
  you understand is that it is completely normal If your wife
• 12:26
  or you with anxiety or depression or childhood trauma
• 12:29
  is scared to be alone with the children.
• 12:30
  Does not mean that you have to be with her and them 100% of the
• 12:33
  time. They're you know, because
• 12:36
  obviously you also have to work and live your life.
• 12:37
  You don't want to get depressed yourself.
• 12:39
  So the the the point is, is that people need to have more open
• 12:43
  discussions about getting childcare in and what's really
• 12:47
  going on because a man can understand okay, she has
• 12:50
  postpartum depression. She can't really be alone with
• 12:53
  the kids. So what we're going to do now is
• 12:55
  we're going to get in a babysitter and she's going to go
• 12:57
  back to work, you know, part time to pay for that.
• 13:00
  And so all right, that's something we could do or we are
• 13:04
  gonna actually really contemplate moving my mother
• 13:06
  across the street who's actually been asking to do that.
• 13:09
  But you know, I didn't think we needed to.
• 13:10
  Well, maybe we do or we're gonna just get we're gonna look into
• 13:15
  our daycare options or whatever the case may be.
• 13:18
  And of course my wife slash I. If you're the one listening,
• 13:21
  you're the woman. I'm going to go to therapy and
• 13:24
  or try medication like antidepressants which really
• 13:26
  take the edge off for a lot of people when they're dealing with
• 13:29
  their kids. I have there was a post years,
• 13:32
  years ago, over a decade ago on my no, not over a decade, A
• 13:36
  decade ago. Probably one of the very first
• 13:39
  ones of somebody who wrote in I hate my kids, I hate my life
• 13:42
  type of thing of a young mother. And in the update she went on
• 13:46
  Zoloft and she was feeling great, man.
• 13:49
  She was really feeling a lot different.
• 13:51
  She was scared to be alone with the children.
• 13:53
  She just hated her life. She felt completely trapped.
• 13:57
  And then she went on an antidepressant and she's one of
• 14:00
  the lucky people that had an it had a pretty instant positive
• 14:03
  effect. And then she really realized
• 14:05
  that it was postpartum. And I guess I can link to that.
• 14:08
  I'll link to that in the description for you guys.
• 14:12
  So anyway, so this would be an excellent one to make you think
• 14:15
  a little differently about this, to think why the hell if you're
• 14:18
  a man, many men come in and say why the hell am I supposed to be
• 14:21
  around all the time? Jesus Christ, I have to leave
• 14:23
  sometimes. I let her leave, I'm always
• 14:26
  encouraging her to do shit, but she never encourages me to do
• 14:28
  anything, you know? And she's always telling me that
• 14:30
  I'm not being a good dad or I'm not being a good husband if I'm
• 14:33
  not around 24/7. But how's that possible, you
• 14:35
  know, And and she gets to do her thing sometimes.
• 14:38
  Or if she doesn't, at least she gets to go into another room.
• 14:41
  Every time I go into another room, there's a problem, you
• 14:43
  know, and it's certainly not sustainable for it to be two
• 14:46
  people that are trapped with the children constantly because
• 14:50
  nobody wants to see the bigger picture, which is that there
• 14:53
  need to be other people around to spell these two parents, as
• 14:57
  there are in in other societies and as there were in our society
• 15:02
  and in earlier eras. And.
• 15:04
  Or right everybody isn't cut out to be a stay at home mom.
• 15:08
  It's just the truth, you know, everybody isn't.
• 15:11
  And it's harder to be a stay at home mom in many ways than to
• 15:14
  work. And it's certainly a hell of a
• 15:18
  lot harder if you have no idea what you're doing with the
• 15:20
  children because you had no template, because your own
• 15:22
  upbringing was really, really difficult, you know?
• 15:25
  Or again, you're struggling with untreated depression or anxiety.
• 15:28
  So all of this can make you deeply think about it.
• 15:31
  And these are the things that therapy really, really helps
• 15:34
  with. And I'll also link you to my
• 15:36
  thing on stay at home moms could be depressed, you know, stay at
• 15:39
  home mom depression. So I will link to both of those
• 15:42
  right now in the description so that you guys can can think
• 15:44
  about that and my one about the baby and just anything else that
• 15:47
  I think about that's relevant. And if this is you, there is no
• 15:51
  shame in this at all, in feeling like this.
• 15:54
  But you do want to get yourself some help right?
• 15:57
  Of any sort, or you do want to get that for your wife.
• 16:00
  All right. I hope you guys found this to be
• 16:03
  helpful and useful and a different way to think about
• 16:07
  things without as much shame and more openly and honestly, which
• 16:11
  is what I always try to help people do, is to look at their
• 16:13
  situation more objectively with self compassion.
• 16:16
  And I'll talk to you soon. Bye, bye.