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Mother Hunger Revisited · System Speak: Complex Trauma and Dissociation

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Over:
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the System Speak a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are new to the podcast, we recommend starting at the beginning episodes and listen in order to hear our story and what we have learned through this endeavor. Current episodes may be more applicable to long time listeners and are likely to contain more advanced topics, emotional or other triggering content, and or reference earlier episodes that provide more context to what we are currently learning and experiencing. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to the podcast. Thank you.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Today, we welcome back to the podcast Kelly McDaniel, whose new book about mother hunger will be available on Amazon in July. We do have a trigger warning for this episode simply because of the topical content regarding mothers and relational trauma. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening. Thank you. Hello, how are you?
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how are the kids? How is life? How are you?
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. So much is happening always with children. And then during the pandemic, that's just a lot. Right? But we've made it.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Well, plus you just had the the ISSTD conference. Right? Did you kind of help with some of that?
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: It was kind of epic, yeah?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Good. Okay. Well, I'm glad that you are interested in talking again about Mother Hunger. It does seem like things are really picking up around this topic, finally.
• 2:20
  Yes.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: So catch me up! Your book is coming out. When is it coming out?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, it comes out July 20. So much happening right now, but one of the exciting things that's happening is apparently this book is getting a lot more press across the ocean.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: So, like, the team at Hay House UK got in touch with me last week, and they've designed a whole separate book cover. And they let me know that Russia and Turkey and China have bought the rights to have mother hunger in their country. It's just I I think we need some global attention, obviously, on mothers and children.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: It's so true. There really is such an not just a need for it, but a shared common experience, especially now even with the pandemic on top of everything else, that separation really has amplified some of those experiences for people who maybe otherwise could distract from those issues or not slow down to notice those issues. And then when quarantine hit so hard, especially in the beginning when we didn't know what was going on and everything, that was a lot. So I can imagine globally on top of everything else that it's really, really needed.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I think so, and I think you're exactly right. You used the word amplified. This has amplified every issue we have, I think.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: So tell me about the book. Where do you wanna start? I know that listeners have heard you before. It's one of the most popular episodes we've ever recorded, and people want to know more about mother hunger. And then you mentioned also the degree mother hunger specifically for those of us with trauma and dissociation.
• 4:08
  So I wanna read something. It's actually you quoted someone else, just this part. There's a couple of things I wanna share, from your book. But you quoted you said one of my favorite descriptions of dissociation is from Marissa Corbell's article in Harper's Bazaar called Sometimes You Make Your Rapist Breakfast. And then the quote is, dissociation sounds scary, but it doesn't feel bad.
• 4:35
  Sometimes it feels like sliding into a warm, cozy bed, a secret safe place where I can stay as long as I want. It's the coming back that breaks me open. That's when I always cry. Isn't that wonderful? It's so powerful.
• 4:53
  What experience of dissociation? It fits my experience in that well, I don't know. There's kind of two pieces to it. One is that in the past, I was not that aware of dissociation. But what I've learned even just over the last year is how many different ways dissociation shows up.
• 5:21
  And so this description, slipping into the bed under the covers, that is such a visceral experience and such an intentional experience that I think that we sometimes don't realize it doesn't count because those of us with complex post traumatic stress disorder or CPTSD or DID or OSDD, so often when we think about dissociation, our mind jumps to all the things we don't remember or all the things we don't know or all the things that happened why we lost time. But I think this is really a big piece too where it kind of goes back to that avoidance and not just always avoidance, but sometimes seeking comfort, which I think is exactly what leads us to mother hunger.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I think, in fact, there's a circular quality to the dissociation you're talking about and we're talking about with this quote where dissociation is so linked with comfort and so is mother love. So I think as early as when we're in the crib, if our needs for nurturing are not being tended to, that's when we learn to dissociate. And so when we think about how young we might have been when we were dissociating because we were not being nurtured. So dissociation became the surrogate nurturing thing or capacity or I call it the surrogate mother.
• 7:06
  And in that way, we could almost think of dissociation as a surrogate mother who, in a pinch or in times of stress, comes to our rescue.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: I had not at all thought about it in terms of surrogate mother, but that makes so much sense. And I think that also is part of what's so painful about like she talks about that's always when I cry is coming back. Right? And I think it's part of what's so painful when we're doing that coming it back or waking up or whatever, sort of realizing that the surrogate mother is not the same as the actual mother or that we're sort of coming back to that pain because the need is still there.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Well said. We're coming back to reality, and sometimes reality is so painful, particularly compared to maybe the temporary dissociative trance that feels nurturing, that feels temporarily like a relief from the constant loneliness or deprivation. So to come back to reality of what I think is at the core of mother hunger, which is grief and a certain frozen grief and some loneliness, that's hard to come back to. Of course, we don't wanna come back. We don't wanna wake up.
• 8:23
  That's when we're gonna cry. When we're facing the grief is when the tears find us, and we need those tears. That's the good news. The tears are cleansing. They're healing.
• 8:35
  But I think our whole body is designed to protect us from emotional pain, and dissociation is one way the body does that.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: And it applies to other disorders too or other kinds of struggles. The same pattern shows up. You wrote in the degree mother hunger chapter, you said third degree mother hunger shares symptoms with personality disorders like borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. You said, I don't consider third degree mother hunger a disorder. It's a profound attachment injury that creates a constellation of symptoms that make life unbearable.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. I'm so glad you referenced that quote. You seem to be finding some of my favorites here. Thank you so much.
• 9:25
  I the reason I wanted to have a name suitable for this particular type of mother hunger, and I came up with because we all kind of have a visceral reaction to a third degree burn. Right? And this is a third degree relational burn. So, of course, our personality adjustments to adapting to a frightening caregiver, which is what creates degree mother hunger, our personality adjustments that helped us survive. In adulthood, they get these terrible, terrible diagnoses that, at best, help us get good care and medication, at worst make us feel more shame than we've already been swimming in our whole life.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: I had an experience last year where I went through a rupture in a relationship and not like a dating relationship or my marriage or anything, but I went through this rupture and there was so much grief that was attached to it and so much grief that it triggered. So like both things were true, both layers. Much layers. Right? And the more that I tried to repair it, the crazier I felt and the more drama it seemed like trying to get repair for that.
• 10:44
  And I would have felt like I was losing my mind, honestly, of why, like, why am I acting like this? Why does it hurt so much? Why can I not regulate it? Why can I not, like, fix this or move on? Like, I was so stuck in this loop, and it was really, really traumatic.
• 11:05
  And the only thing that helped keep me going understanding what was happening was because we had already talked about this mother hunger piece. And this was not my mother that happened with, but
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: I I had this context and a framework to actually stand up for myself. I I I guess to to stand up for myself and to honor my feelings where I could say my feelings are this big because my need is valid. And and I have tried so hard to repair it because it matters to me. And the other person was saying that it mattered to them too, but I could not get them to engage in a way that was meaningful to me or I was doing it wrong and all those shame things started coming up. And the harder I tried, the worse things got until I finally remembered that.
• 12:10
  We had already talked about this on the podcast and and the book you had shared, and then you had sent me the the book to read. And I was so grateful because being able to stand up for myself and say, no, actually, the reason I even brought this up in that relationship is because that need was valid. And when I see that the need is not being met and we can't repair it or can't work it out, that grief is real and it's okay to feel those feelings and I'm not crazy for trying to fix it. And it was so interesting because the other person is like a healthy person. Right?
• 12:49
  They don't have DID or anything like that. And so I felt like in this case, things were inside out. Like the other person is the one who is dissociating. Like, you are not seeing the pain that is happening. And I'm the one who traditionally would be the dissociator.
• 13:10
  But this time, I'm really sitting with it because I can honor that the need is valid and recognize when the need was not being met. And when that wasn't able to be repaired, understanding that that's what happened and not that I didn't try hard enough or I was just being dramatic or I'm just never gonna have an attachment with anybody because I'm too damaged. Like all of those kinds of things, I could let go of those messages and those feelings and those thoughts because I had this framework to understand my need was valid. I was able to directly express my need is not being met, and the harder I try, the worse things get, which is toxic even though the other person is healthy and even though I'm trying to be healthy and everyone's good. Like, no one was an abuser.
• 14:01
  No one was bad. But whatever in this rupture, like, things were so damaging that that experience was toxic. And being able to remove myself from it because it was not healthy for me and know that that was not the same as running away.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: What an important distinction to remove yourself because that's what's healthy rather than removing from a place of running. How how has that been? How has the removal process been for you?
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: It was painful. It was difficult. There was more grief involved because in my head, I had imagined what that relationship would look like and really, I guess, had imagined what it was. And it it was not what I thought it was, and it was not going to be what I had hoped it would be. And so it took a while because there was a lot of backtracking of, like, well, was this piece real?
• 15:00
  Was that piece real? Like, how much not real was there? And that was really hard work, but I had the framework to hold like a container what that work was instead of just, oh, I'm bad and I'm wrong and everything's my fault.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Mhmm. It sounds like because of the healing work you're doing and having a framework to understand the needs, you were able to do this with a whole lot less shame.
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. And in fact, on this same quote, that's what you say next. Well, not about the shame, but the symptoms. You said patterns of relationship instability, idealizing someone one moment, which is what I did, but in the next experiencing the same person as cruel.
• 15:46
  And in this case, I knew the person was not cruel, but what I was receiving was cruelty. Does that make sense? I could distinguish that they weren't a bad person. So even being able to do that was evidence of progress for me, but also it was not okay for me to be treated the way I was being treated. You said that these are normal with for those with mother hunger.
• 16:07
  Fear of abandonment, difficulty sleeping, eating disorders, mood problems, difficulty finding meaning in life are all part of complex post traumatic stress and degree mother hunger. Addiction to something or someone can feel like a life raft, so can suicidal thoughts and self harm, which goes back to what you were saying earlier about dissociation and how painful it is to wake up out of it.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. The dissociation is really protecting us from the kind of fear and pain, emotional heartbreak that makes us just not wanna live because it feels like we're so broken. There's something so wrong with us that every time we try a new relationship or we try to make a goal and accomplish it and we can't seem to get there, it seems as though sometimes until we get some help, that belief that's deep down inside that we're broken gets stronger. So the sooner we can get some help to intervene and help us navigate relationships or career aspirations, mothering, the better.
• 17:23
  Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: It's so powerful and it really emphasizes how important it is to not just care for our children, which of course is so, so important, especially as we learn more about the impact of of trauma and misattunement and shame and things that lead to this mother hunger, but also caring for each other, like the people around us in healthy ways, in a culture of kindness, really, and nurture and meeting those needs that people have because they're human, not because something is wrong with them.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Well, exactly. And I think one of the most painful things about writing about degree mother hunger, because I'm an advocate for women, I'm an advocate for mothers. I had to face the fact that some mothers are are really cruel. And in doing that, I really needed to look at the systems, the cultures that produce maternal cruelty because this isn't just about one mother and one child. Right?
• 18:36
  This is this is an epidemic problem that really has more to do with the fact that mothers are trying to mother when they themselves have not been nurtured, protected, or guided. So when we look at problems in mothers trying to be nurturing and protective of their own children, we have to look at a culture, a system that isn't offering women the nurturing they need, the safety they need, and often the wrong kind of guidance. Like, back in 1920, when doctor John Watson, the father of behaviorism, decided it was time for parents to try new parenting techniques. And he thought, let's get away from intuition. Let's look at the science.
• 19:25
  We can raise children the same way we train dogs. He was a a pupil of Pavlov, and he really liked even Pavlov's way of training dogs. And he thought we can do this with children. So his whole philosophy was don't touch your children. Don't hug them.
• 19:41
  Don't kiss them. Don't show affection. Maybe give them a pat on the head when they accomplish something extraordinary. These are actually his words. And at the time, he was publishing in places like Harper, Bazaar, Cosmopolitan.
• 19:56
  He was really the pop psychologist, and he did so much damage around guiding mothers who are already worried they're not gonna do it right or they're going to not somehow protect and love this new little baby as much as they would love to and tells them not to touch their babies. And so generations of mothers have been impacted by misguidance, poor guidance, when what mothers really need is support to follow their intuition, to follow their baby's cues. That's where nature nature's design teaches us, respond to that crying baby. Hold the crying baby. Feed, love, touch.
• 20:37
  And so even well meaning mothers can sometimes create mother hunger in their little ones simply by trying to do the right thing. Granted, that's a long way off from eternal cruelty, but it's still part of mother hunger.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: And we just I feel like that really harmed an entire generation who then grew up to be the generation of parents that, like, I grew up under. Parents my age are the generation to have been raised up under that and now trying to change that so drastically when our brain literally has damage because of it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's impacted generations of us, and now we have to go back and relearn what is intrinsic to our neurophysiology. Nature's design isn't meant to be cognitive. It's meant to be embodied. And to be taken away from our own innate wisdom is, I think, the experience of so many women in patriarchal systems.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. I think that shows up in so many different ways both in culture and society, in the politics and the protests that happened last year that still need to be going on in some ways. And just that disconnect to think that we could treat any human as an object or as a dog like Pavlov's, that we can think that the way to approach another human is by controlling them in some way. Like, that's not okay.
• 22:26
  That has nothing to do with connection or humanity or compassion or attentiveness or any of those things that build attunement or relationship.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Right. And I think what you're speaking to when we think of ourselves as infants is attachment. So what what psychologists such as John Watson are doing has nothing to do with attachment. What he's doing has everything to do with training. And there are still plenty of experts out there today writing, teaching, talking to parents about sleep training.
• 23:05
  Okay. Sleep training. It's a thing, but it has nothing to do with attachment. And I just want parents to know that. I mean, if you want to practice sleep training for your family, that may be about whatever's going on, and it may be necessary.
• 23:21
  But as long as you're aware that that is not the same thing as practicing attachment, that attachment has nothing to do with training the infant. Attachment is all about bonding and following the cues of nature and your own specific child. It's not about following a formula. It's not about being on a schedule, and it is most certainly not about training.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: My husband and I fostered 87 children over the years before the six that we have now adopted could not go home, so we adopted them. We did not plan on adopting six children, but they couldn't go home and that unfolded. Those six are adopted. And the things that we were taught to do and trained to do through the DHS and court system really truly horrifies me. And we never set out to or intended to or meant to or tried to abuse the children.
• 24:23
  We have had to sit down and have some very serious conversations with them of these people literally sent us to a class to learn how to do this and this and this. And we did it because that's why we that's what we were taught would be most helpful to children in your situation. And now what we're learning about attachment and parenting and connection and relational trauma and shame and all these things, now we are learning this and this and this, which tells us those things were wrong, and we are so sorry because that was not okay.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: I just love that you're sharing this with us because I think you're speaking for so many parents when you tell the story. So many parents were given really miss well, poor guidance that was scientific in nature, but not attachment in nature. And and now you're speaking for so many parents who realize, oops, I wish I had known that that was not a great idea. And maybe we could talk about some of the specifics that you went through. I think it'd be so helpful for your audience.
• 25:36
  But before we do, I just kinda wanna say what's so lovely is that, you know, our brains can change and grow. And as you've said before when we talked, the neuroplasticity of the brain is a wonderful thing. And so when you have a mother like yourself, parents like you and your partner that can realize, oops, I wish we hadn't done that. That can be repaired. When you have a parent like you that's conscious and aware, that means there's a possibility of repair.
• 26:07
  You gotta have awareness to have repair. And so many parents never even get to that awareness, so they're not able to go back and repair or do things differently. So you're truly an inspiration. And I think if there's anything specific about the guidance that you got that you wish you could have known differently, that might be a helpful thing to visit about.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: Sure. I can think of several examples because I'm really good at shame. And this is a shame spot for me because, of course, I wanted so desperately to be a different kind of parent than I was raised. So there's lots of things I didn't do to my children ever and would never. But as far as just like parenting skills kinds of things, they would teach specific techniques of different situations that I wish that those things never had even entered our brain.
• 27:03
  And we've spent several years trying to undo that, but because they put it into my brain, they are things that I never would have thought of before the classes, but now have to consciously not choose when I'm looking in my parenting toolbox in a heated moment. For example, I'm trying to think of something super easy and, like, not triggering or intrusive to my kids. So for example, like time out. Right? They
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Good example.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: THS is all you're not because they don't want children to be hurt, you're not allowed to do any sort of physical punishment with children, which is great. Like, I'm all for that. That's great. I'm in favor of this. But there there's they just sort of substituted alternatives that I feel like built in isolation and shame into the experience of parenting and being parented as opposed to building attachment and connection, which is exactly what traumatized kids need.
• 28:10
  I mean, any kid needs that. So so for example, timeouts, however
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: you're supposed
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: to put them in timeout for however many minutes they are old, for example. And now my kids who need timeout still, I think that they are struggling with big feelings because when they had them five years ago, we left them alone while they had them. And so now it's like, no. Come rock with me. Come swing with me on the hammock.
• 28:42
  Come let me hold you. Let's walk together. Let's dance. Like, there's so many ways you can, connect with a child and help them embody those feelings in a bottom up kind of way that are so healing and they work so quickly and prevents me from escalating, prevents them from escalating because it's actually meeting the need. My child has closeness and attachment in someone paying attention to them and attunement, I have safety in my home and the comfort of knowing the child is alright.
• 29:20
  Like, it's so healing for us both.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: That makes my heart swell with warmth to hear what a beautiful, beautiful example of exactly what we're talking about. Poor guidance that many of us followed as parents to put a kid in time out. It's really unfortunate. I mean, was progress. It wasn't spanking or hitting, but it's still leaving a child in isolation, which really we only put people in solitary when we are punishing criminals, and it's terrible that we did this to our children.
• 29:53
  So instead of time out, I'm hearing some parenting experts call it time in. Yes. So go toward go toward the child. Right? But here's the thing, and this is what's so remarkable about you.
• 30:05
  To go into time in, to go toward a child who is having an intense emotional reaction, That means you, as the caregiver, mother, have to be comfortable enough with your own internal emotional state that you can tolerate the child's emotional reaction. I think a lot of parents send children into time out or react in punitive ways because they themselves can't be with their own internal dysregulation, their own internal intensity, whether that's anger, even joy, fear, anxiety. So when a child acts out with intense emotions, whether that's intense happiness or intense anger or fear, if a parent's not used to regulating that for him or herself, that parent's gonna really struggle to go time in with their child. So for you to be doing that now, offering those repair efforts now, swinging in a hammock, taking a walk, meeting your child at whatever level of time in they can meet you, says a lot about your own healing, resilience, and recovery.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: It I will admit it's very difficult and it is very triggering. Like I have one, for example, who has both fetal alcohol syndrome and autism. So when he goes off, it is a big thing for a long time and a lot of work and a lot of presence to bring him back. It is not as long as it used to be because we've changed how we handle it. Right?
• 31:44
  Because we've learned now that everything we were taught was wrong. And so Mhmm. We we handle it differently. But, also, I kind of have a cheat, just to be honest. I have a cheat because since I have cochlear implants, I can take my ears off.
• 32:02
  And so when I am snuggling with him or holding him or while he's still raging, I can stay super calm because I'm not hearing that, but I don't want to neglect even that part of his feelings. And so I do take my ears off a little bit just because I have that advantage. And then but I keep close eye contact with him, and I'm very conscious of my face. Because of that study they did, I totally just forgot who did it. But the one with the video and the baby where not the still face.
• 32:38
  Not the still face. Oh, okay. The one where they filmed the mother's reaction to the baby, but then stilled the frames between. And Mhmm. The baby could see the mother's danger face even though in real time video, you can't see it at all.
• 32:55
  And about neuroception and all of that. So I'm very, very conscious of that piece. And I even if he's snuggling against me, I can feel when it's not just the screaming piece anymore. And so I put my ears back on as soon as I can, even if he's still upset so that I can make sure I'm completely attuned to him. But I do have that little cheat.
• 33:21
  But it's hard. It's hard.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: It's so hard. It's so hard. That's why I almost kind of wanna say, you know, I don't know that I would call it a cheat. I would say that's pretty resourceful. That's a good way to, you know, stay present without the intensity going into your ears.
• 33:38
  I I think that's very resourceful. And there are all different ways that children can tolerate proximity anyway. You know? Right. Right.
• 33:48
  Sometimes just eye contact can even be too much for a child when they're really having extreme emotions. So who's to say that that's not the perfect antidote for your son? And, anyway, sounds resourceful.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Well and I I think proximity is an important piece because
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: I have seen him progress since we've changed things. I don't know. Maybe the last four or five years, he has made so much progress that now when he is like, super mad, for example, he wants some space, but he is able then while he's still upset when he's calm enough to then come to me. And so now I can wait on him to initiate that peace. But as soon as he's ready, it doesn't matter what I'm doing.
• 34:35
  I have to stop and attend to that and be super, super present and in that with him.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Mhmm. Well said. At his pace. I love that. That is you doing the repair.
• 34:48
  Yep. And that's giving him autonomy as well as connection. He's getting both. It's wonderful.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: I wanna go back to something you said earlier because I was using the example of the rupture that I had last year because it's been on the podcast a lot. So it's a neutral example people already know about listening. Okay. One of the things that was so difficult to like, why it took me a whole year to grieve that or get out of that so that it ended up feeling like a domestic violence situation where I can't get out of it. I can't leave.
• 35:24
  And so then it sort of morphed into a whole different kind of trigger. Right? Part of that, as I said earlier, was that I it was not what I thought it was going to be. It wasn't what I thought it was. I felt sort of tricked maybe and be and there was some betrayal in that.
• 35:43
  And you referenced in that in that degree mother hunger chapter, Jennifer Fried and her betrayal trauma theory and talk about betrayal blindness and how it's so hard to see, but you said something that I think is so powerful and relates to this experience, and so many people go through it, so I wanted to be sure we talked about it. You call it pathological hope. You said, in spite of decades of evidence that a mother can't or won't change harmful behaviors, daughters cling to hope. I call this pathological hope. Pathological hope starts as a protective measure, a way to endure adversity.
• 36:26
  But over time, pathological hope may keep women stuck in painful relational cycles with others. Most don't notice the nature of pathological hope because the brain adapted so early. Daughters of abusive mothers have been fighting to be noticed, fighting to be protected, fighting to be nurtured, and fighting for an apology most of their lives. And that summed up my entire experience of what happened.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that those words made sense of your relational experience with this, friend. Tell me, did the relational experience with this friend kind of the original hope and then the disappointment and then the ultimate needing to remove yourself, did any of it feel familiar? Did any of it line up with your experience with your mother?
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: It not only lined up with my mother. In that part, because of mother hunger, I knew to call it out and even share that piece of I had a mother who on a good day, like when we're not talking about direct physical or other kinds of abuse, would isolate in her room like with the door shut, right? And I couldn't get in. So I would, I remember laying outside her door begging for her to come and help me or begging for her to open the door and let me in because I wasn't safe outside the door. But I wasn't necessarily safe with her either.
• 37:56
  So that pathological hope comes in, but she never opened the door. Like that was just a thing. And if she did, it was a bad thing. And so I talked about that with that rupture last year of this is what it feels like that I'm trying so hard to get that door to open and it's not going to. And then realizing in hindsight that it had always been closed and I was totally in a reenactment in a way I hadn't recognized at all and not that it had repeated what had happened with like previous foster parents.
• 38:33
  And so like I even emailed the list of therapists who treat DID and I was like I need someone to come on the podcast, Please, I'm begging you and talk to me about reenactments. Because I realized this was what was going on and it absolutely was a reenactment.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And so let's really name for people that are listening about the the most powerful elements of that reenactment. And this is such a such a poignant example and a painful example of where as a little girl you're laying outside your mother's bedroom door and you want in and at the same time even if you'd gotten in, it might not have been a good thing. Right? So really, you've got two terrible options. One is to remain outside the door alone.
• 39:20
  Not good. The other is to go toward your mother who may not at all be a healthy person. Also not good. So two terrible options and a child is faced with what to do. And those options are activating our strongest neural The neural pathway for bonding is our strongest and that means that made you want to go open the door and get to your mother.
• 39:45
  That's human normal survival. The strongest neural pathway. The other neural pathway that is also equally strong is fear. And fear comes as children when we're left alone because we know we're not safe. We're not meant to be alone.
• 40:01
  The neural pathway for bonding will always trump fear. So you're trying to get to her. That is the most powerful pathway and biological drive. But even that would not have been ideal is what you're saying. So your body and your brain was working.
• 40:21
  Trying to get you what you need. And what you needed wasn't there. So unfortunately, that gets reenacted in adulthood and probably will over and over again until the needs for bonding and safety are more adequately tuned to from usually from the people we hire to help us, right? From really well trained clinicians that can help us get those two neural pathways more regulated. Yeah.
• 40:57
  But oftentimes we practice with our friends. It's true. It's true.
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: And because of the pandemic, I lost my therapist to COVID actually. Oh, Yeah. So that was devastating in a whole different way. Oh. So I really struggled through this.
• 41:15
  Part I think part of what was the experience of the reenactment for me, what- and I have a really good therapist now, so I'm solid talking about this, just so you know, I'm okay. Part of what was so difficult was because of the pandemic, I couldn't get to anyone in person at all to even help me fix any layer, even just to breathe, you
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: know? Mhmm.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: And I had learned enough and made enough progress from, like, you coming on the podcast and the stuff of yours that I had read and from therapy and things that I knew what was going wrong. I didn't know what you just said about the neural pathways. So that's really helpful. I knew that it was my brain. I had learned enough about my brain to even be able to say, okay.
• 42:02
  I know this is what's happening in my brain, so I'm not feeling shame about this. Mhmm. But I'm also at the same time not equipped to make it stop by myself.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, right.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: Yes. And I couldn't. And so what it felt like, if we're if we're still using that metaphor, what happened was, like, every time I worked through a layer of it, it was like the door opened, but the room was empty, and there was another door across the way. And I had to just keep crawling to stay alive. That's what it felt like.
• 42:31
  That's a
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: great description. That's a great description of what it feels like. Crawling, crawling darkness to stay alive. That's one of the best illustrations of what it feels like to recover from
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: So thank you for sharing that with me. I love those words and I want to come back to them about the pathways. I'll have to think about that some more. That was really helpful. I don't know how I missed those pieces, but that's, those are big pieces I need to hold on to.
• 43:01
  Good. But tell me the difference after using this example. What's the difference between that pathological hope that leaves you in that reenactment where it's just looping and you're stuck and things are getting worse instead of better and actual hope when you can trust it because of the progress you're making or because it is real or there is connection or authenticity or safety? Like, how can you tell the difference between pathological hope and actual hope? Well, that's the $40,000,000 question.
• 43:34
  I I think that that
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: is a brilliant description of the essence of what is so painful about degree mother hunger is that we literally can't tell the difference between pathological hope and healthy hope, plans, dreams. We don't know the difference. And the only way we're gonna learn the difference is by living and messing up and learning our way through it. Doing exactly what you did, which is taking the risk, opening to a new relationship, imagining what that could be and then living with the day to day of oh okay. It's not working out and then you try to repair and then that's still not working out.
• 44:23
  So, it's doing exactly what you're doing and many times over and over and over again with romantic partners, with friendships, with people that matter. Doing that kind of navigation between what's healthy hope and dreaming and what's pathological getting stuck in a fantasy of who I am and who this person with me is, that's the essence of healing. I think that that is so powerful
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: and it opens up opportunity even when you notice a reenactment. Like someone who's still in their healing process and notices that that's going on, I think we're able to intervene when we learn that piece that you just said. Because that's what that's what finally helped me last year was recognizing, okay, I'm really not like people, my my family or like, I'm really not a drama person. There's a lot of things that have happened to our family because we're a big family. So we've been through some hard things and I have hard things in my past.
• 45:28
  But I've worked really, really hard not to present as a drama kind of person. And so when these feelings got out of control last year, it really took me seeing that it was the situation not meeting my needs that was the trigger, so to speak, not something wrong with me. Because for a long time, like several years, I felt like, why am I not doing this right? Why can I not do it right? And the more I tried, the worse things got.
• 46:04
  Like what you were saying earlier about that bonding pathway being more powerful. And so I tried to stay and I tried to step towards and I tried to show up, but it was not meeting my needs I got hurt every time and it became dangerous. That was the toxic piece of recognizing I'm hurting myself, not intentionally, but when I keep trying to do the same thing and I'm still getting hurt, like I'm the one putting myself in that situation, I need to just step out because whatever has happened here with this rupture, all relationships have ruptures and I can't repair it by myself. So trusting that and seeing that and how different it feels in an embodied way than when you're talking with someone who feels safe or attentive or connected in some way. You can feel it differently in your body.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: It's like our vagus nerve knows when we're sitting with someone that is inherently who they say they are. We trust them. Their energy, their eye contact, their movements line up with the tone of their voice, with their gestures. And when those things are all congruent, our body, which we're always communicating at least 75% non verbally, our body knows we can trust the other body. Our vagus nerve feels it.
• 47:42
  We calm down. But the truth is, when our very caregiver was not someone that was inherently trustworthy because she herself couldn't regulate her own emotional state and therefore we could not co regulate with her. We became maybe more distressed with her. But we didn't know that. That was our normal.
• 48:03
  Right? And that's what degree mother hunger is. The norm is bathing in stress chemicals. Cortisol and adrenaline have been our friends and our familiar nervous energy most of our life. And so to heal that needs to happen inside a relationship and that means we will practice for most of our lives with friends and partners.
• 48:32
  So what is a celestial mother? Explain that as we kind of come full circle there. Celestial mother is a term that I came up with to describe creating one's own ideal mother because what we know now from studying neuroscience is that if we can imagine what we would have loved our mother to sound like, smell like, be like, and focus on that, meditate on that, we can eventually convince our mind that that mother is available. Now, different people call this different things. I've heard some people call it creating your inner mother.
• 49:15
  I love that. Some people call this the female side of or the female face of God. I've heard it called different things. I I think anything that feels resonant for you as an as an individual would work. Because essentially, what you're doing is tricking your brain into thinking, that is the actual mother that you have.
• 49:40
  And here is where I think a power of dissociation, power of fantasy can be used for good. Like, if we've grown up with degree mother hunger or other forms of mother hunger that might be more painful, we've already gotten really good at fantasy. I mean, children, we had to create the idea of a mother that loved us even if that was not our reality. So we know how to do this. We do this with lovers.
• 50:04
  We do this with friends all the time. We create who we think they are and then we later realize, oh, that's not who they thought we are. So this is actually a great way to channel the brain's natural capacity to fantasize. Fantasize the mother you wish you had, the mother that you want. Think about her every night.
• 50:24
  Think about her in the morning. Imagine her into existence so that your body reacts to having good care, having good mothering. This is one way that we can actually work with our brain on our own. Because so much of the healing needs to happen in a relationship and it needs to happen because, we need other people, and that requires a lot of vulnerability. Creating a celestial mother is something we can actually do on our own.
• 50:55
  And and then when we have an idea of her and that idea becomes embodied, we can call on her at three in the morning. We can call on her when we're scared, lonely. We all need this. How is this different than
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: how do we do that and also sort of grieve that peace that we're always having to do for ourselves what no one has done for us?
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Well, don't think it's eitheror. I think it's bothand. We create a celestial mother, but that's in tandem with grief work. That's in tandem with the psychotherapy that helps us navigate loss, helps us deal with the fact that maybe we did not have adequate nurturing, protection, or guidance, we have to grieve the loss of those things before or while we are replacing them. So it involves everything, and it's not necessarily either or.
• 51:57
  And there's really not even a linear nature to this process of do we grieve what we lost before we replace it, or do we replace some of what we lost before we grieve it? I don't think it's linear, and I think it's unique to each each of us and how we heal. That's so beautiful. Thank you for that authentic
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: grateful. Thank you for coming to talk to us again and thank you for sharing
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: your book. You're so welcome. Will be eager to have the book be in the world, July 20 it arrives. And I feel like we've all been waiting so long and so patiently, so I will be glad when it's here. Where can people get your book?
• 52:43
  Right now, it's available presale on Amazon. It will be available on Amazon. I sure would love it that if you, are drawn to this topic and you buy the book, I'd love it if you write a review, just an honest review. It doesn't have to be a glowing, wonderful review. Just be curious about your thoughts.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much for sharing with us.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me again on your podcast and for connecting the topic of mother hunger with DID.
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It's really, really important. It is. And I appreciate what you're doing. Thank you.
• 53:21
  We'll talk again soon.
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to us, and for all of your support for the podcast, our books, and them being donated to survivors and the community. It means so much to us as we try to create something that's never been done before, not like this. Connection brings healing. One of the ways we practice this is in community together. The link for the community is in the show notes.
• 53:56
  We look forward to seeing you there while we practice caring for ourselves, caring for our family, and participating with those who also for community. And remember, I'm just a human, not a therapist for the community, and not there for dating, and not there to be shiny happy. Less shiny, actually. I'm there to heal too. That's what peer support is all about.
• 54:24
  Being human together. So yeah, sometimes we'll see you there.