Latest / Spacious Success / 022 | The Big Person: Why Your Family Borrows Your Nervous System with Dr Vanessa Lapointe

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022 | The Big Person: Why Your Family Borrows Your Nervous System with Dr Vanessa Lapointe · Spacious Success

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Today's guest is Dr. Vanessa Lapointe.
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Vanessa and I often joke that we're sisters from another mister.
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We first met during a speaking roadshow with our beautiful friend, Maggie Dent, back in 2018, and we've stayed connected over the years through our shared work, initially supporting parents navigating an increasingly complex modern world.
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We bonded initially over not only our shared love of science, heels and fashion, but also our passion for translating complex science and research into practical, real-life guidance for families.
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Our DMs, I'll admit, are a combination of science...
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research and love of heels and fashion.
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Dr Vanessa Lapointe is a former psychologist, parenting educator, a best-selling author, an international speaker, and regularly invited by the media, known globally for her compassionate science-backed approach to raising emotionally healthy children and teens.
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She holds a doctoral degree in psychology and was practising as a psychologist for nearly 20 years before stepping fully into her mission of supporting parents and other big people around the world.
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Vanessa is also the founder of the North Star Developmental Clinic, where she has spent many years working alongside families and children.
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drawing on her experience across community mental health and the school system.
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She's widely respected for bringing a deeply nurturing, and I can vouch for that, a deeply nurturing human and developmentally informed lens to her work, helping parents, teachers, and caregivers better understand behavior
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by seeing the world through a child's eyes.
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In today's conversation, we're going to explore the realities of parenting in a digitally intense, high-pressure culture where we find ourselves today.
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Vanessa's personal experiences as an ambitious mum who's raised two young boys, how mothers can release the pressure valve to be perfect
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and can instead be gentler on themselves, and how we can step into being the steady, grounded, big person that our children so desperately need when their emotions and the world around them feels overwhelming.
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Welcome, Dr. Vanessa, to the Spacious Success Podcast.
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Hi, I'm Dr. Christy Goodwin, a neuro-performance scientist, speaker and executive coach who learned the hard way that chasing success can come at a cost.
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After burnout landed me in hospital, I made it my mission to help ambitious women who are done trading their health and happiness for high performance.
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On Spacious Success...
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I share science-backed strategies and real stories to help you flourish as a female at work and beyond so you can stop paying the success tax.
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Welcome to the show, Dr. Vanessa Lapointe.
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Oh, so good to be here.
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Thank you for having me.
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It is a delight.
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Now, Vanessa, you often talk about how parenting today is fundamentally different from how most of us were raised.
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We're living in a world where there's a different pace of life, totally different pressures, and there's no real blueprint for what modern parenting should look like.
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From your perspective now as both a psychologist and also a mom, or I should say a mom, what are the biggest challenges that modern parents, particularly mothers, are navigating right now?
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Yeah, you know, it is an interesting time to be alive and a very interesting time to be a mom who's trying to figure out, wait, who am I in this experience?
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of being alive.
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And I think perhaps at no other time in history have we been faced with those kinds of expansive musings because we've always had our role that,
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not go well, by the way.
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And so we fast forward to now and things are opened up.
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And I think many of us, I know this is true for myself, I was like, oh, I can have it all and I can do it all.
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And so I grabbed the bull by the horns and went charging in and then pretty quickly found myself on the ground, gasping for air and wondering how it all became such a giant mess and so quickly.
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And it's kind of one of those things, you know, I feel like when we're generalists and everything, we're specialists and nothing.
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And then we actually start to onboard.
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That's how we feel.
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And so we start to believe that's how we are.
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When, of course, it's not true.
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And we do have decisions to make about where we're going to put time and energy and how we're going to care for self and for others.
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Yeah, I love a few things there that you said that really resonated.
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I think our most important human currencies are our time, our energy, and our attention.
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And they're being tugged in a myriad of ways in this digitally intense, always on world.
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I also loved how you talked about, you know, these are really unshaky times for every human.
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And I think that's amplified when you've got a role that many of us do that we value and that is really so important.
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So I really appreciate those insights.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Now we're together.
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We are.
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We are.
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And again, I applaud you sharing that you felt tugged.
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And I think women have been sold this superwoman myth.
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I think for many years we were told you can have it all.
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And then we sort of adjusted the narrative and to try and make it a bit more palatable.
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We said you can have it all, but you just can't do it all.
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So you need to outsource and you need to delegate.
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Both of those, I believe, are huge myths that push women into an untenable position.
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You know, biologically, you can't have it all.
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You know, our time, our energy and our attention are finite human currencies and resources.
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So yet, I think if we dismantle that myth, no one can do it all.
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And most certainly no one can have it all.
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I think it's about lasering in on what are the most potent priorities in your life.
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Easier said than done.
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Word to your mother.
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Now, Vanessa, you work with a lot of women who are not only managing households and also careers, but they're also carrying, I describe it as sometimes the emotional tone.
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They're like the emotional thermostat of their families.
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Many women we know still today often tend to fulfill kin keeping roles, not only in their family dynamics, but we often see that spreading into workplace dynamics too.
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And you often describe we need to be the big person or the steady anchor.
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I just love that description.
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You know, I think we'd all agree that parenting can feel rocky and turbulent, you know, from hour to hour.
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And so being that steady anchor is a beautiful metaphor.
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What are you seeing right now in terms of the emotional load that a lot of mums are carrying?
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And what do you think it's actually costing them?
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We know so much these days.
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By comparison, you know, like I remember my my grandmother was still alive when I was kind of very early career.
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And I remember attending her 90th birthday party and her being like, wait, what do you do?
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Hold on.
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So you tell the people how to be parents?
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What do they call you?
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Like she was just like, are you for real?
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Like this is a job.
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You tell people how to be parents.
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The thing is, we have all of this data and all of this research and all of this knowledge now about what is optimal for our children where they're developing, for ourselves when we're developing.
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You know, we're at the end of really a fire hose.
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We've never had more information available in terms of what these needs are.
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And the problem is.
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everything around that in terms of how we'd be able to fulfill those needs has been watered down because we're running here, running there, and doing this and doing that and then doing the mad Dr. Google scroll after the kids go to bed because we're trying to figure out, do they have a learning disability?
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Do I need to get this cough that they've had going on for three weeks sorted out?
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Why is my mother-in-law still texting me about Easter dinner?
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Didn't we already just, you know, like you have all these things going on,
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And nobody has stopped to realize, wait, we're the same people as we were two generations ago, three generations.
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We're the same biologically.
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We're showing up as human beings the same way.
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And yet now, instead of being, you know, we have our focus here, we know all of these things were meant to be taken care of.
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And then on top of that, we're busier and more flat out than we have ever been.
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Pray tell how to carry the mother load.
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like that and not struggle
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To figure out how you're going to step in and meet the needs of all of the folks that are counting on you.
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I think it is an impossible task and most women finish every day feeling like they failed at it.
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Oh, thank you for saying that because I, the reason I started this podcast is because I saw so many incredible, very accomplished women who beside the, behind the scenes, you know, when doors were closed, when there was no one around watching, crumbling and asking themselves, what am I doing wrong?
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Yeah.
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And I think we need to disclose the fact that this is exceptionally challenging.
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And when we look around, and I think this is where social media, don't get me wrong, you know, you and I connect and share important research and Scanlon and Theodore samples via DMs.
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Three importants.
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Yes, very important.
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And social media has a role, but it also has a, you know, a side that is not particularly helpful.
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It's that compare and despair phenomenon.
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Oh, wow.
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It's toxic.
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You know, we look around and look at the highlight reel that other mums are showing.
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And I often say to people, we need to share the shiny, but we also need to know there's a shabby side too, and whether you choose to share that or not online.
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But I think we've forgotten that.
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The other thing that I really appreciate you sharing is just this bombardment.
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You know, your grandma was right.
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We are just drowning in so much information.
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I call it infobesity.
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And it is that fire hydrant.
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You know, there is just so much information.
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I read, it was last year, really fascinating research about what chat GPT was being used for.
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And yes, there was a business case for it.
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But one of the highest usages of it was seeking parental advice.
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So we're not necessarily going to Google anymore.
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We're going for that customized advice that we get through large language models.
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So parenting is shifting.
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Yes.
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Yeah.
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And imagine that that's where we're at now.
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Oh, yeah.
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You know, it's, I think, and we'll see, like, we'll see how the next 50 years play out.
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But I wonder if there isn't going to be some kind of a trend.
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And we might even be seeing the early edges of that trend now where we're,
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want to get back to the basics of what it is to be human.
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Yeah, I sometimes say we're experiencing, I call it Facebook fatigue, not just from Facebook, but this repulsion about can we go back to a simpler time?
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And I love that you described, like I call it our HOS, our human operating system, we're basically the same people that we were 100, 200 years ago.
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That hasn't shifted.
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That will not shift in our lifetime.
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So how can we, and I think we often, because of this infobesity, we drown in information and it almost dilutes our capacity to tap in.
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What is it that I need?
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I asked a coaching client this week, a female, I said, what do you do for fun?
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And you would have thought I asked her the most convoluted, complex question, and she said, I have not ever paused in recent times to think about that.
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We're overriding how we feel by this constant pursuit of information situation.
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You know, that makes me think of years ago, I did a deep dive into the work of David Alkind.
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He's done a lot of work looking at a lot of different things, but, but essentially what's at the core of being human love.
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Yeah.
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Play.
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And work.
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And work is not like we spend hours and we get money for it.
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Work with anything that you're doing to move towards something that feels like you're on purpose.
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And there's a value in that for you.
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So love, work, and play.
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We need to have fun.
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We need to have relationships.
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And we need to feel purposeful in what it is that we are doing.
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And all three.
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must be present in order for us to feel like we're fulfilling, you know, what it is to be human.
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I don't know that very many of us right now would say confidently that we've got all three in play.
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No.
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And I would argue our kids need that too.
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Like that's such a simple framework because we've convoluted things.
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Like if we, at the end of the day, say when my kid's,
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Were they loved?
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Were they bathed in love?
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Did they play and did they have some sort of effort or work?
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Like what a simple checklist that we could run through and hold ourselves to account.
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I love that.
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Wow.
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That's powerful.
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We often go into parenting, I know I certainly did, thinking that it was going to be all about raising these children.
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But I learned very quickly, and in a very sobering fashion, that it quickly becomes something a lot deeper, a lot more complex than what I thought it was going to be.
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Children have, and you've written about this before, and I just love how you articulated it, that children have this incredible way of revealing lives beneath the surface, our patience.
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Our triggers, our own childhood experiences often simmer to the surface.
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So why does this parenting experience have the ability to expose us?
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And what's really happening when our children's behavior feels like it rips?
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I'm not going to say pulls, but it quickly rips the ground from underneath our feet.
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Yeah.
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I mean, that's what's so fascinating about this experience of being a parent.
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What happens is we've actually been in a parent-child relationship once before.
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We were children.
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And during that round, we fulfilled the role of the child, but we experienced the dynamic of the parent-child relationship.
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Then we grow up at least in form.
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We become adults and maybe eventually parents at which time we re-enter.
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the parent-child relationship frame for the second time in our lives.
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We don't enter that with a clean slate.
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We carry into that all of the things that we experienced in our first six to eight years most potently.
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And if you imagine that that's true for us, then it was also true for our parents and it was true for their parents and it was true for their parents.
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So what we're pulling in from our own childhood will actually be reflective of what's even down the family line, not necessarily even just in this generation.
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And we reenter the parent-child relationship and we have all these fabulous ideas and.
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You know, like we're going to join the mom's group and we're going to do Pilates on Thursday morning and the baby's going to do this and then we're going to go get a coffee and then we'll do this and then we'll do that and we're going to have their bedrooms going to be really organized and the closet's going to be color coded and like all the things.
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And if you're anything like me, I mean, I spent my whole adolescence working with children.
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I, by the time I became pregnant, I was a doctoral student.
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I had not intended to be pregnant, but there we were as a doctoral student pregnant.
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And I was studying child development.
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So I was like, y'all, I got this in the bag.
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I'm going to be so good at this.
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Like you will not even have seen what fantastic parenting happened until you see me parent.
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I'll tell you what, my first child was born, and within a matter of moments, the entire axis of my world had shifted.
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I went from being like abundantly really confident to feeling like I literally knew nothing.
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Like, was I going to sleep train or not?
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Because everybody was telling me to.
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Was I going to use timeouts or not?
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Because everybody was telling me to.
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Was I going to put my kid in daycare or was that sending him to hell?
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Like all of the things.
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And I just felt incredibly disoriented.
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And what I realized is that not only had my child...
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been born that day, but I had been born that day into the role of mother.
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And this was a new world for me.
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The uncertainty that came up for me in those early days, I really worked with that until my kids were probably early to mid adolescence.
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not because of anything to do with them, but because to go inside and figure out what it was that I needed to address in order to be more solid in my footing, you know, to feel like I could make a decision that I could arrive at what my truth was about a certain thing, and that I could speak it with power and with grace and drop it and walk away and not make any apologies or excuses.
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That took years.
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And I noticed,
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this pattern and I wonder if you've had the same experience.
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Whatever age my children were at, I would go into some kind of process.
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You know, like maybe it's my kid who's struggling in grade two with reading.
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And I would go into, I would be so mad at his teacher and she's being so unkind to him and all these things.
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And I would get all grindy and feral about it all.
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And then I would realize, oh wait, what happened for me when I was seven years old?
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What was going on for me at school?
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What was going on for me in other areas of my life where performance was valued as this really key indicator of your worth as a human being?
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Were you an A-plus student?
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Were you the gold medal figure skater?
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Were you the champion track star?
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All of it was measured by performance.
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And if you weren't amazing, then you weren't anything.
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And so now here's my kid struggling and he's seven years old.
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And I can see, you know, he's not getting the A's and performance in the education realm anyways was, let's just say, lacking.
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And I took it on as a seven year old, not as a 37 year old.
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And that's where the growth began is to figure out why do I feel like that?
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And how can I grow myself alongside growing my child?
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And isn't that the biggest blessing of being given the gift of being a parent?
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Because, yes, you can nurture your children, but in doing so, if you're willing to do the work.
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And that's, I think, the difference between a lot of parents, those that are willing to delve deeper.
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Like, why am I experiencing this?
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I know for me recently...
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It was one of my sons who was, for a couple of weeks over the extended summer holidays, left out of a group chat.
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I actually think he'd just been omitted.
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There were boys, attention to detail and the logistics are not high up in the pecking order of priorities.
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And for him, he didn't want to interrupt or to interject this group.
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So he had a couple of days at home and I could really see it was derailing him.
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And I, upon reflection, realized that brought up things from my adolescence over one summer where I was excluded.
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It was pre-phones back then, but I was left out of the phone loop and spent a couple of weeks out of a friendship group.
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And those intense feelings...
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came back and I realized that I was projecting this onto my son, making it a bigger deal than what it was because very quickly he was added back into the group and was out and not to be seen for many weeks at a time over the summer.
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But it was that willingness, reluctant willingness, I will say.
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At first I thought, where has this come from?
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Even my husband reflected to me, Christy, you're really affected by this.
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You know, he's going to be fine.
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But I realized it was unearthing that.
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you know, the rejection that I felt years ago as a teenage girl.
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And so I think it's, yeah, that willingness, isn't it, to look and ask where is this an opportunity for growth for me and what an incredible form.
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You know, we can all do personal development.
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Parenting often says life's greatest equaliser and the best form of personal development you will ever do, free of charge usually.
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Well, not if you need support to work through it.
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Yeah.
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That can cost an arm and a leg as it turns out.
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They're our greatest teachers and we'll do for our children what we often won't do for ourselves.
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So there is something about wanting to step in in this case for your son and then being reflective about it and recognizing that it actually stirred up an old program of some kind.
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And then you get to tend to it.
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You get to.
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You don't have to.
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but you get to tend to it.
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And that, that really is, there's gold in them, their heels.
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And we want to make sure we mine every single ounce of it.
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Um, because that not only sets us ultimately into our power on our path, but it,
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really ensures that we're able to bolster that foundation for our children.
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So they too get to live that kind of big, expansive life.
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And I think you've beautifully articulated what I know you speak about a lot.
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I've heard the privilege of hearing you speak in person and online and read your books.
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And I know you often talk about being the big person, and that is just such a tangible example of us turning up as the big person that our young people need us to be.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Our young people on the outside of us and the young people that are still alive on the inside of us.
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So that big person I've heard you describe as the calm, grounded, emotionally steady presence that our children can borrow regulation from.
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And what a beautiful phrase.
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You know, I love that idea that they can tap into our...
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regulated state.
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I recently shared a post on Instagram and I shared something that I'm calling identity whiplash.
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And the response that I got in my DMs was huge.
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So many women saying, my goodness, this is exactly how I feel.
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I got another one that said, I was never sure how I could be delightful all day at work with my colleagues and come home and turn into an instant asshole.
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Now I know why.
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I think we spend our entire days in this high functioning mode, especially if we're choosing to work outside of the home.
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We're making decisions, we're leading, we're solving problems.
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And then somewhere we go from that to daycare or school pickup, we need to start homework, start dinner preparation, and then everything shifts.
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Yeah.
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Now you're negotiating a tiny human when they're refusing to do their home reader.
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You're possibly holding a toddler on your hip and trying to prepare dinner.
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You're trying to find the library book that somehow ended up in the back of dad's car and dad's car is out.
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And there's no transition point.
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Dr. Adam Fraser, I don't know if you've ever heard, he's a fabulous Australian speaker and a friend.
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We need to do an introduction there.
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But he talks about creating third spaces.
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And I think many women don't have that transition point.
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We actually flip identities and there's no decompression time.
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What does it mean to be a steady anchor or what does it mean to be the big person in everyday parenting moments, especially if our children are dysregulated and they're feeling overwhelmed themselves?
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What can we do?
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I don't know.
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And I think probably like a few layers of things.
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And the word that immediately pops into mind is grace, grace for ourselves, that we can, we can look upon all of that with kindness and with compassion and with empathy for what is actually happening there.
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And that, you know, it reminds me of that scene from the Lion King where he does the
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And you just have to keep like adjusting to whatever it is that's happening all around you.
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When you are, if you're working outside the home and you're in charge of all of these decisions and you get to do all of that stuff, you're kind of in big person energy.
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It's easy to stay there ish in that work world because you're in a space with other, one might presume grown adults and everybody kind of knows the role and they're coming along and they're doing the thing.
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Then you get home and you don't have that, you don't have time for a work shower, as I used to call them back in the day.
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You know, that space before you walk through that front door, when you're just like, let it on so that you can enter in with that heart forward kind of energy.
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We don't have that opportunity often.
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And so we bust through the door and everybody's been waiting because they've been separated from us for six, seven, eight hours, which is, you know, a challenge for our human making.
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So there's going to be a little blowback and a little bit of payback time for the fact that we've been apart all day.
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So they're going to need to let us know that wasn't so great for me and I didn't love that.
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So right away you're hit with, you know, you've got a little resistance and you've got to bring people around.
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Meanwhile, you're watching the clock.
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And you know that this one's going to get very hangry if they don't have dinner on the table by a certain amount of time.
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And then dinner needs to happen and maybe you're running out the door to whatever sports practice and then the homework needs to and all the things.
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And you're no longer the CEO of your life because you have these little kids who aren't like the grownups that you work with, who know their roles.
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You have these little kids who are figuring it all out.
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And who are actually looking to you, who is, you know, I've been off at work all day where I'm Vanessa plus, I'm a little tired.
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I come home, I'm a little bit Vanessa minus.
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And now I'm expected to like lend you part of my nervous system so you can be regulated.
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It's tricky.
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The key with stepping into your big person self is to understand you have a role here.
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And your role is that you are the captain of this ship.
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Your children are desperate for the ship to not hit the bottom of the ocean.
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You don't have to be perfect at all.
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Because even on your very worst day, it'll be your child's best bet.
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And even if your very best on that day is 10% of what it was yesterday, it's still good enough.
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Yes.
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Step into that.
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Don't berate yourself.
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Don't come back on yourself.
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That's your ego trying to upend everything.
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So you can be like, hey.
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Grown up me is in the house.
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I got this.
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You can take a rest.
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I'll be grown up now.
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And then you decide to step in with swagger.
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I love that.
27:08
And swagger is where you walk it and you talk it and your eyes beam it out.
27:14
You know how the Care Bears used to do the Care Bears?
27:17
Yeah.
27:19
You get your own mama version of the Care Bear Stairgoing and you are on it, right?
27:23
This is what we're doing now and this is what we're doing here and you've got time to kiss that little boo-boo and you've got time to hear somebody else out because that's what it is to be a mom and you know that you will revisit your own needs and you will, you must.
27:39
When the space allows for it, perhaps a little bit later in the evening.
27:42
Oh, that's beautiful.
27:43
I love swagger.
27:44
And I love how you've described that before, because again, I think there's simple things that we can do.
27:49
And we often forget like the decompression time, as much as we'd all love a day pit stop on the way home at the day spa, that is a feasible non-reality for most working parents.
28:00
What are some things we can do in real time?
28:02
Is it just closing your eyes, not whilst you're driving, if you're on the train or in the bus?
28:06
Yeah.
28:07
Is it doing some breathing practices?
28:09
Like what is that decompression time that will help you to turn up so you can turn up with that care bear swagger energy that you need to sometimes muster?
28:19
to be that big person.
28:19
I love what you shared there.
28:20
Thank you.
28:21
I think, Miss Parents, we know we need to stay calm, but in reality, our children can often activate reactions that we didn't even know we had.
28:31
I have found myself sometimes having my mother come out of my mouth, and I adore my mum.
28:37
I had a fabulous and continue to be blessed with a fabulous relationship with her, but I sometimes don't even recognise actions or things that I have said.
28:44
I'm just emulating...
28:47
behaviors and words.
28:48
What's happening neurologically and emotionally when our kids trigger us?
28:53
Why can those moments feel so disproportionate to what's actually playing out on the surface?
28:59
Because all overreaction is an age regression.
29:05
So anytime you're
29:09
or disappointed or hurt or whatever the big feeling is.
29:14
When you logically think through those moments as a fully grown, very emotionally present adult,
29:20
you will recognize, you know, that this overreaction that you're having about why nobody put their shoes away, you tripped over everything coming in the front door, or, you know, why, why was the kitchen clean when you left this morning and you've come home now and it's a full on dumpster fire and you had no part of it.
29:38
And yet they're all going to look to you to clean it up or whatever your story is that you have going on.
29:43
Those kind of moments like that, they're not you being a grown up.
29:49
All overreaction is an age regression.
29:53
So anytime we leave our logical grown-up frame of mind and we get sucked down into some kind of an amygdala hijack situation, we are actually representing as child versions of self.
30:06
That's our four-year-old showing up, our inner four-year-old, our inner five-year-old, our inner eight-year-old.
30:11
She had some sass.
30:13
It's the child in us that's actually coming out in reaction to the trigger.
30:18
And so it's a tricky bit of business then to be able to quickly grow yourself up in a real life moment where you won't have the privilege of getting to do some navel gazing to figure out what triggered you, because like you got people, you got to keep alive here.
30:34
So you got to show up in the moment.
30:36
And I, and there isn't a, there isn't a workaround for that.
30:40
There is a way to strengthen the connection.
30:44
Below the view of the camera, I have my hands on my belly because I often when I'm in an activated state like that, I really feel it come up in my stomach.
30:52
And I will often just place my hands there to remind myself, I've got her.
30:57
But all these kids too, and we're going to get through this.
31:00
And even on my worst day and their best bet, even if my best is 10% of what was yesterday, like all these mantras.
31:07
So I just pour, maybe it's 10, 15, 20 seconds, pour a little love into that and go to the wise words of Ram Dass.
31:15
Be here now and invite yourself back to this moment.
31:20
Cause that age regression, that overreaction has you hurtling backwards in time.
31:25
So be here now.
31:27
Take a moment.
31:28
Look around.
31:29
Where are you?
31:30
It's 2026.
31:31
You're standing in your kitchen.
31:33
You've got two, three, four beautiful children who are all needing you right now.
31:39
And you got this.
31:40
Now go get it.
31:42
I love that.
31:44
I have a friend who often says, be where your feet and your hands are, because I think so many of us, especially with the digital demands that are constantly coming in, can get tugged in a myriad of directions.
31:55
So I love that presence is so important.
31:58
I also have heard you speak before about, and I love that you reminded us to have grace, like to approach ourselves with the grace that we deserve.
32:07
And I think acknowledging that we will get it wrong.
32:10
Inevitably, as a human, we're going to stuff things up.
32:13
We're going to make mistakes.
32:14
That's part of the human experience.
32:16
And I love that we've got research behind this to talk about rupture and repair.
32:20
Can you explain a little bit about when we stuff up, when we articulate things that we wish we could take back, when we snap, when we should have let it simmer?
32:29
What can we do to repair in those moments?
32:32
Well, I've got great news.
32:33
There's lots that you can do.
32:35
And whilst you don't want to, you know, wake up tomorrow morning with the intention of creating a bunch of ruptures so you can have a bunch of repairs, you don't have to create them.
32:45
Those things are organically going to present frequently enough.
32:48
But the good news is that Edward Tronick, who's a researcher out of Harvard,
32:53
He has very famously said, that's where growth happens.
32:57
He talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
33:01
And it's only the ugly that we endeavor to avoid.
33:04
The good is when we're in connection with our children and we're on it.
33:08
The bad is there's some kind of rupture.
33:10
We yelled, we lost our patience, we were short, we were strident, whatever.
33:14
There's a rupture.
33:15
And then we make amends and we move back into connection again.
33:20
This is where growth happens.
33:21
We're here.
33:22
Growth doesn't happen if you're just hanging here.
33:24
I'm so sure.
33:25
And so, so we're not, we don't have to loathe the ruptures.
33:29
Of course, we don't want to plan to have them because that's not ideal and they will happen.
33:34
And the key thing with repair on the back end of a rupture is that it is the parent's job.
33:41
take on the repair.
33:43
You are the steward of that relationship.
33:46
You are in charge of how its course shall be charted.
33:50
from now until the end of time, because you will always be the mother.
33:53
So you'll always be in that role.
33:56
There is a hierarchical ordering of how all of those roles kind of play out.
34:00
And so you will always be in that role and it is your responsibility to tend to, to care for, to repair the relationship, even if you weren't the asshole who ruptured it in the moment, right?
34:10
So it's on you, it's your job.
34:12
Now, if you were the one who spoke loudly, who was too intense, who was angry, who was reactive, whatever,
34:18
I'm not a big fan of apologies because they're, they are buried in all of this old rhetoric about shame and guilt and hellfire and damnation, but I'm a big fan of atonement.
34:32
And if you take that word atone and you break it down into two words, they literally become at one atone.
34:43
So atonement is about owning what's happened, acknowledging it, doubt it.
34:49
That was really loud.
34:50
You might make a comment on what you observed to be the experience of the other.
34:55
And that was scary.
34:56
Wasn't it?
34:57
And then you take accountability.
34:59
You know what?
35:01
That is not the kind of mom I want to be.
35:03
And that had nothing to do with you, my darling.
35:06
That was all me.
35:08
And I want you to know the yelly shouts are all done.
35:11
I've got me and I've got you and I've got us and we're good.
35:15
And you're not even gonna believe what's for dinner tonight.
35:19
Best day ever.
35:21
So you're in it, you do the atonement, and then you're out.
35:25
So that everybody gets to take a breath, including yourself, your child gets to be released from whatever just happened.
35:31
And they know, if this is you, you've just invited them.
35:35
back into that restful experience of the relationship so they don't have to be at the effect of the rupture.
35:42
Oh, that's beautiful advice.
35:43
And I love that reminder that the onus is on us in that moment too.
35:48
And at a time, I had never heard of it like that at one.
35:52
That's really, really powerful.
35:55
It's beautiful.
35:55
My teacher gives me that.
35:57
I can't take responsibility for it, but it's similar to you.
36:00
When I first heard it, I just thought, oh, yes, that.
36:04
Yes.
36:05
And our kids learn that too.
36:07
My son saw me the other day and I must have had a very consternated look on my face.
36:12
I must have looked somewhat frustrated.
36:14
And he came up and he said, mum, are you okay?
36:16
And I said, well, here I am.
36:18
And I thought it was very perceptive that he noticed my agitation.
36:21
And he said, I'm just wondering, he said, have you got a big feeling inside or...
36:27
do you have a poo that's due?
36:30
As a mum to three sons, I thought both were very plausible, very good signs of attunement and emotional observations.
36:38
But what powerful examples when we can be that big person, that steady anchor for our kids, what a gift that we give them because I'm hoping that my sons, perhaps not to their partners in the future, ask if they have a poo that's due.
36:51
But hopefully turning in and tuning into those emotional cues.
36:56
Yes.
36:58
Now, I was laughing about this with some friends recently.
37:02
I've got a female group that we often share memes and text messages and we try where we can to catch up.
37:08
But we've got this shorthand in our group.
37:11
So if we've organised a catch-up, if we're too exhausted, if we're too tired, we just simply can text two options.
37:18
One is just the letters CBF and it stands for can't be...
37:23
you know, the F word.
37:24
Or we can say, I can't catch up tonight.
37:27
I'm not willing to pay the bra tax.
37:29
And we all know as females, if you're going out at the end of the day, if you need to go somewhere where you have to put on your bra again, sometimes we hit that threshold.
37:38
So it's either CBF or not paying the bra tax and that's all we need.
37:43
And there's no guilt.
37:44
There's no explanation required.
37:45
If we're choosing to opt out, we just respond that way.
37:49
But in motherhood, it feels really different.
37:51
So many high-functioning, emotionally intelligent women still struggle to say no.
37:56
They still struggle to set boundaries.
37:58
And they stop over-functioning for everybody else.
38:03
I'll admit, I sometimes find this hard.
38:05
Why is it so hard, particularly for mothers?
38:08
And what needs to shift so we can say no or uphold better boundaries?
38:13
You know, we were trained, especially as little girls, we were trained into those roles.
38:20
We learned from a very young age, most of us, because of the fact that we're not 12 years old, most of us will have been raised by behaviorist parents, which means that we did their bidding or there was trouble.
38:35
And so you learned very quickly as a child, and globally speaking, I'm not speaking specifically to your parents or my parents, but generally speaking, we learn very quickly as children, you do the bidding of others,
38:47
And you will be safe because when you do the bidding of others, then your grownups are happy.
38:52
Mom is happy and dad is happy and teacher is happy and coach is happy.
38:55
And all of the grownups are happy if you do what they tell you to do.
38:58
If you don't do what they tell you to do, then what happens is they're unhappy.
39:03
And as a child, you're very survival.
39:07
Hmm.
39:08
It depends on being connected to those people.
39:10
It is not safe for you, for your people to be unhappy with you, for your people to be disenchanted with you, for your people to be, you know, to throw you out, if you will, put you in the bedroom, put you in the timeout, hit you, do whatever.
39:24
It's not, that's not a good space for you to be in.
39:27
You're not safe.
39:28
So your job, you do what the other people want.
39:32
they'll be happy, then you'll be safe.
39:35
Now that messaging gets written upon our very souls when we're littles and then we grow up and we become adults and it hasn't left us, it's still there.
39:47
So sometimes, which is a really curious thing, even as the parent, even as the grownup, when it is your child coming to you, begging for this thing that they want or the extension of game time or the sleepover that's,
40:02
probably not a good idea or whatever, you can find you have a really hard time saying no, even though it's very clear that the answer should be no, because you have this program inside of you.
40:16
Keep everybody happy and you will be safe.
40:22
Tricky.
40:23
It is.
40:23
And just an observation, I think this is perhaps amplified for females, people who biologically identify as females, because of hormones.
40:33
So the hormone of estrogen means it's sometimes referred to as the hormone of accommodation and servitude.
40:39
So if we've got that
40:41
you know, programming from a young age that making people happy keeps me safe.
40:45
And then we add in some estrogen.
40:48
It means that we are almost wired to be that accommodating person who finds it hard to uphold those boundaries.
40:55
Yeah.
40:56
Wow.
40:56
And there would be a biological purpose behind, you know, estrogen and what it drives us to.
41:01
Of course, it's so important.
41:02
And I think you're right.
41:04
This double whammy effect of we get all programming and then we layer in these biological realities and then, oh my gosh, no wonder.
41:13
And I'm pulling, there's so many threads I could pull on here, but I also think that there's this, again, because we look around and watch what other women are doing, other mothers, and I say this from a loving place and as someone who has walked this path herself, I also think there's this tendency for, I call it, you know, the mother-martyr mode.
41:32
And so that if everybody else isn't upholding boundaries,
41:36
you know, I should overextend myself.
41:38
I should commit to the bake stall when I don't have the time or the cooking abilities.
41:43
I'm going to say yes to doing reading groups when I don't have the time in my calendar to do that because I look around and I see everybody else doing that.
41:51
Yeah, that's so fascinating.
41:54
Now, we're going to wrap up in a moment and I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
41:58
There was questions that really I didn't expect the answers to.
42:02
So thank you for sharing so generously.
42:04
I've got two to wrap up.
42:06
I've had the privilege of meeting both of your sons and I'm sure they would tower over me now if I met them in person.
42:12
They did several years ago.
42:14
How did you navigate, obviously having your own professional ambitions, how did you navigate your ambitions and drive with also that deep desire to be the mum that you wanted to be?
42:27
Even as you asked that, I feel my whole body just go into the alert phase.
42:32
I struggled with it.
42:34
I really, I didn't have a roadmap.
42:36
I didn't have models for how that was meant to work.
42:39
And I was very...
42:42
keen to the caregiving experience and not everybody is.
42:46
And so we're all sort of our own people in terms of what we long for.
42:50
But I longed to be around my babies.
42:53
I still, they're 19 and 22 now.
42:55
I still long for it.
42:56
Like I just love, I love being a mom and I love my time with them.
43:01
And I loved...
43:02
when they were babies.
43:03
And I loved all of it.
43:06
And I remember with stunning clarity, the day I was meant to go back to work after my maternity leave, which I mostly worked through most of my mat leaves because I always had other endeavors going on on the side, you know, study or whatever.
43:21
I remember the days that they started childcare and just like my heart literally being ripped from my body as I drove away from them.
43:30
I found it incredibly challenging.
43:32
I don't know that I did any of it really well, but you know there's that phrase, those who can do, do, and those who cannot, teach.
43:41
And so I feel like in a trial by fire way, I eventually found my footing.
43:48
But first I blew up a marriage, which, you know, I don't take on 100% responsibility for that, but I found it incredibly challenging to know who I was, you know, like, was I a mom?
44:00
Was I this developing professional?
44:03
Was I a wife?
44:04
Like, what was I doing and why did it all feel so hard and so challenging?
44:09
I think I made the mistake, if I can be really honest, of hook, line and sinker buying into the idea that we can have it all.
44:17
And then only realizing, you know, when my thyroid had died and, you know, all these health conditions and relationship challenges and other things were just like in my face all the time.
44:28
That I had to get very real about starting to kind of redesign how I was going to prioritize those key indicators that we spoke about at the very beginning.
44:39
And I would say my boys are out of high school now and I'm still figuring it out.
44:43
I'm still working to sort out things.
44:45
Who am I today?
44:47
And does what I'm doing today align with what works for me?
44:53
And I ask myself that I'm actually in the midst of a big transition at the moment where I keep coming back to what do I want?
45:01
Is this aligned?
45:02
Am I present?
45:03
Am I on purpose?
45:05
Does it feel like the right mix for me?
45:08
And I think maybe that's one of the pieces is to be willing to every day be asking those questions, even if the answers aren't landing right away.
45:20
I had quite a visceral reaction when you talked about the first day of daycare.
45:23
It took me back because I distinctly remember with all three of my sons, that first day of formal, I mean, they had lots of care.
45:30
Thankfully, my beautiful parents and parents-in-law helped out.
45:33
But that first official day of non-family related care and that aching, like that yearning.
45:42
It's like yesterday, like I can go back immediately.
45:44
It was sad and a lot.
45:45
I get the visceral response.
45:48
And it's, yeah.
45:49
What a candid and refreshing and deeply honest response because I think many women put up a facade that we've got it all together.
45:56
And that's why this podcast and having these heartfelt conversations
46:01
you know, deep conversations of what it really looks like.
46:04
And truth be told, I've learned this through working with a lot of accomplished women who from an optics perspective look like they're nailing it.
46:11
You know, if you were to go off their Instagram, they are killing it.
46:14
They are just smashing it in all of their targets.
46:18
But when we have the deeper conversations, when we share what it's really like, there's such huge, I don't know if the right word's permission, but
46:26
There's almost like just a collective exhale that this is hard and none of us have this figured out.
46:31
But learning things along the way.
46:33
And as you said so wisely, be willing to ask, what can I learn from this situation?
46:37
You know, what is this showing me to learn about myself?
46:41
That was beautiful.
46:42
Thank you.
46:43
My very last question is what's one thing, big or small, that you do for yourself, Dr Vanessa, so you can experience spacious success?
46:52
What is that something practical, simple, achievable that you do in your day at this stage of your life where you can experience that spaciousness?
47:04
Oh, there's so many ways that I could go with that.
47:07
I have invited a key sort of circle of healers into my life.
47:12
And, and I've been gifted like a lot of really gorgeous templates and understanding from them.
47:18
And one of the things, and I'm sure lots of moms can relate, you know, when you wake up in the morning,
47:24
And you can have any kind of feeling come in, but for a lot of us, the, when you wake up, you're coming through sort of the mist of being asleep into being awake and your eye lens on the clock and you take a minute to be like, what day is it?
47:37
Where am I?
47:38
Who am I?
47:38
Oh my God, I have that thing.
47:39
I, I, I tumble in you start right away into the, you know, the ticking list of all the stuff and, and the pressures of the day that await.
47:50
I have a ritual every morning.
47:54
where I do not buy into that.
47:57
And it's there.
47:57
It's not like I've anesthetized it.
47:59
Like it's not gone away.
48:00
I still have those mornings where I wake up and I can go into that kind of a response.
48:05
And I have a process of I collect up all of the parts of myself before I get myself out of bed.
48:13
And how I do that, I've done a lot of inner child work over the last decade or so.
48:18
And so I know where she lives inside of me.
48:20
And I put my hands on her and I just greet her.
48:23
I say good morning to her.
48:24
I talk to her like she's a four year old or a five year old.
48:27
She probably is.
48:28
That's who's freaking out about the day.
48:30
It's not, I don't know if you know, but I got it going on.
48:33
Yeah.
48:34
But there's parts of me that don't buy into that idea.
48:37
So I collect up those parts and I speak to them.
48:40
I welcome them into the day.
48:42
The same way I would welcome my actual children into the day.
48:45
Where there'd be a little tussle of the hair and some little snuggle time and maybe something warm and comforting to drink.
48:51
And I want her to have that feeling.
48:54
So I sit with her every morning.
48:57
I also do it every day at the end of the day.
48:58
But every morning especially.
49:00
And it's like a reset for how I start my day.
49:02
And then...
49:04
I walk into my bathroom whereupon I brush my teeth and sitting right beside the sink is a photo of her.
49:12
So I am reminded every day.
49:15
I've got you.
49:17
I've got me.
49:18
I've got us.
49:20
And we're going to go get it.
49:21
We're going to be okay.
49:23
Because I am Dr. Vanessa.
49:29
Oh, that was beautiful and such an achievable thing, I think, for many of us to do.
49:34
You know, you don't need fancy equipment except a printer that will print out that photo if you want that as well.
49:43
You know, most of us carry a phone around.
49:45
You can put it on the lock screen and then she's just right there.
49:48
Isn't she?
49:48
Oh, Vanessa, you have shared so generously in this podcast.
49:52
Thank you.
49:53
I have learned an immense amount personally and professionally, and I know that the listeners will have too.
49:59
If our listeners want to get a bit more of Dr. Vanessa, they want a bit of that swagger.
50:05
If you're watching the video, Vanessa has some beautiful bling on.
50:08
So if you want a bit more bling, Vanessa and I, as you heard in the intro, have a mutual love of science and Scanlon and Theodore fashion.
50:17
Where can people find more out about what you did?
50:20
Dr. Christy.
50:24
Where people can find me?
50:25
Well, when I'm not shopping at Scanlon Theatre, I'm very active on Instagram and on Facebook, and I'm all about training your feed and cleaning it up so that it's the kind of feed that tops you up rather than taps you out.
50:41
So I endeavour to put information out that's meant to
50:45
make you feel championed, not make you feel put down.
50:49
And Dr. Vanessa Lapointe, drvanessalapointe with an E on the end.com is my website.
50:55
And I have a host of, you know, online courses and webinars and other kinds of things alongside a...
51:02
membership group and a container program for parents where we have an intake once or twice a year and we do six to 12 months together.
51:11
Some one on one staff, some group and community staff and people from all over the world are part of that and so it's a really cool community of like minded parents.
51:20
who are endeavouring to grow themselves alongside their children.
51:23
That's beautiful.
51:24
And every now and then, Vanessa treks over from Canada to Australia and often does some speaking work with Maggie Dent.
51:31
So keep an eye out.
51:32
I'm just planting the seed, putting that out there.
51:36
And she comes to do some shopping here in Sydney and Australia as well.
51:40
So thank you for your time.
51:41
Thank you for sharing so candidly and generously.
51:44
It has been a true privilege to spend the last hour or so with you.
51:48
So thank you.
51:49
Thank you.
51:50
The pleasure has been all mine and I simply adore you.
51:53
Thank you.
51:54
Likewise.
51:55
Thank you.