The Liz Moody Podcast - EVERYONE Has Childhood Trauma. Here’s Why + How To Heal With Vienna Pharaon, LMFT

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

Therapist tips for figuring out where your trauma comes from and how to address it for better relationships and a more peaceful life.  3 specific action steps for addressing & starting to heal trauma how to move through pain when the person who caused it won’t acknowledge it how the roles we play as children in our families shape who we become as adults  the 5 types of origin wounds you can experience + how to know which you might have why grieving is so important (+ exactly how to do it) how to help a partner or loved one who won’t acknowledge or work on their past trauma  how to uncover who you are at your core + what your needs are the one thing you should do as a parent to prevent passing on family patterns  and so much more!  For more from Vienna, follow her on Instagram @mindfulLMT, check out her website viennapharaon.com, and grab her brand new book The Origins of You: How Breaking Family Patterns Can Liberate the Way We Live and Love.  To join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthiertogetherpodcast. This episode is sponsored by:  Thrive Market: go to thrivemarket.com/healthiertogether to join Thrive Market today and get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift.  Seed: go to seed.com/daily-synbiotic and use code LIZMOODY for 15% off your first month. Pique: go to piquelife.com/LIZMOODY and use code LIZMOODY for 15% off plus free shipping FOR LIFE on Pique’s Radiant Skin Duo. Nutrafol: go to nutrafol.com and use code HEALTHIERTOGETHER for $15 off your first month’s subscription, plus free shipping on every order.  Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the healthier together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're getting science-back secrets for making more friends, learning the best tips for healthy cooking, or optimizing our gut health with diet and lifestyle hacks. And yes, those are all real episodes, so if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives. Today, I am so excited to welcome Vienna-Ferrin to the podcast.

Vienna is a licensed MFT and one of New York City's most sought after relationship therapists, as well as the person behind the wildly popular at Mindful MFT Instagram account. She has been featured in The Economist, Vice and Motherly, and on Netflix, and her new book, The Origins of You, how Breaking Family Patterns can liberate the way we live and love, just came out and is spectacular. If you've ever felt like your past is getting in the way of you living your best life in the present, this episode is for you. And honestly, even if you haven't, we're going to get into all of the ways that it's likely sneaking in. We talk about how to identify the origins of childhood trauma,

even if you feel like you had a good enough childhood, three specific action steps for addressing and starting to heal trauma, how to move through pain when the person who caused it won't acknowledge it, how the roles we play as children in our families shape who we become as adults, the five types of origin wounds that you can experience, plus how to know which you might have why grieving is so important and exactly how to do it, how to help a partner or loved one who won't acknowledge or work on their past trauma, how to uncover who you are at your core and what your needs are. The one thing you should do as a parent to prevent passing on unhealthy family patterns and so much more. We would both love to hear your thoughts and your biggest

takeaways as you're listening to the episode, so definitely screenshot and tag me. I'm at Liz Moody and Vienna. She is at Mindful MFT on Instagram. As we talk about in this episode, literally all of us have childhood trauma, which means this episode will benefit literally everyone in your life. So please send them a link so we can all move through this stuff and live the fully realized adult lives that we deserve. Sending the episode to someone by text on Slack, on DM, mentioning it in real life, these are all the best ways to support the show and they are so, so appreciate it. Also, be sure to stick around until the end of the episode to learn how you can enter an incredible giveaway from Vienna. She was so generous. You will not want to miss it. So

stay tuned to the end of the episode. Okay, let's get right into it with Vienna Farron. Vienna, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to have you here to dive deep into some childhood trauma and how we can begin to overcome those stories that are dictating our lives. You said that with such joy. I love it. I'm so exciting. I'm so exciting. to dive on in. It's like the topic that no one wants to go into your family, the big old elephant in the room. I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you for that very fun intro. It's exciting to talk about it because then we can start to see the light on the other end of the tunnel. You can see, oh my gosh, I've been dragging this weight around for years and years and years and years and what would

life feel like without that weight. Absolutely. I think the person right now who is caught in the unwanted patterns of their lives that they can't seem to shake. The conflict you keep having with a partner or a parent, the fact that you keep dating emotionally unavailable people, whatever it might be, those are really good indicators that there's something unresolved from the past that we need to take a look at. If you can't shake it with a quick behavioral change, it lets us know that there's more to the story than we've probably spent time addressing and witnessing. Can you share a few other scenarios that might indicate we have some sort of childhood trauma showing up in our adult life for people who are having a hard time identifying. Is this me? Are they talking about me?

I call it wounds. And I think that's important because sometimes people are like, I don't have trauma or we overuse that word. And some of the great indicators are, have you ever had a big reaction to something? That's probably every single one of us is that if we have reactivity to something. If we blow things out of proportion, that's a neon sign that directs us back into the origin pain that we haven't come into contact with enough. Anybody who is able to give advice that they can't take, there's the, ooh, this sounds really good, but I can't integrate it for my own life or like, ooh, I can tell everybody else what I think they ought to do. But for some reason I struggle with it. That's another really good indicator. The reactivity piece is one of the

biggest ones. What is it that causes activation? And you just notice sensation in your body. You're like, that is letting us know that there's something historical here that's presenting. I found the, if you give advice that you can't take part of the book so fascinating. I'd never heard somebody frame that as a sign that we might have a wound that we need to overcome in that way. can you explain what the connection would be there, like why somebody with these wounds would be giving advice that they wouldn't be able to put into practice themselves? In theory, most of us know what we want to offer to ourselves or to others. Stop being so hard on yourself. You did the best that you could or be confident. You're such a strong candidate for this job. We're able to say the things that

we know are quote unquote the right things, the most supportive things to say. But when we don't feel worthy, when we don't feel deserving, when we don't feel good enough ourselves, when we don't feel like we are a priority, when we can say, oh, you should leave that relationship because your partner is abusive or you're just in a dysfunctional relationship. So you got to leave, but you can't leave. Those are the things that let us know that our pain is really in the driver's seat. It all sounds nice, but when we don't believe that we're worthy, you can't just brute force your way through it. You can't just white knuckle your way through it. When you learned that you were not a priority growing up, it's really hard to trust and feel that sense of confidence that you are an important person in people's lives.

It comes from these well-meaning places. I've never come across somebody who's like, yeah, my girlfriend is definitely not worthy or deserving. No, of course, but I'm not. Somehow we are the exception to these rules. And our work is to try to understand what blocks us from being able to believe this thing about ourselves or create this change for ourselves that we might know is the quote unquote right thing or the most productive thing or the healthiest thing for us, but just is so challenging to integrate. And to the point of the question, who is this work for? You said in the book that you've never met anybody who doesn't have some kind of origin wound. And I think a lot of people feel like their childhood was happy enough

and they maybe feel guilt for suggesting that there might be some sort of wound there or like they're not appreciating what their parents did for them or not appreciating the privilege they had. Can you speak to those people for a second? That is a really common one. I know. that my parents did the best that they could, or they did give me so much, or they sacrificed so much. That can be a valid and accurate story, and that's where the and comes in. Yes, that is true. And our job is to still honor and acknowledge our pain. I talk about wound comparison, this idea that we put ourselves on some spectrum where maybe a friend or someone we know has a story that is so much worse than ours. And we would feel ridiculous even saying, my life was hard to,

we can't compare. And my suggestion is for us to just get into our own lane because all of that becomes a distraction away from our story. It does not matter how yours compares to anyone's. It matters that you are able to come into contact with honoring what your story is. And I know that this is hard. Sometimes we're afraid of opening up Pandora's box. Sometimes we have gotten our relationship with family to a certain place now that we don't want to disrupt it. We're worried about what we're going to find. Maybe we have a deceased parent and we are scared about finding something or processing something and they're not here for us to have conversations about it with. This common narrative is they did the best they could.

It doesn't have to be a negligent parent or adult in our lives. It doesn't need to be someone who is abusive. Sometimes wounds are created even when people are so well-intended. A client of mine, Andre, had a single mom who was working multiple jobs, and he loved his mother and respected her so much. She worked double shifts every day except for Sundays and Sunday mornings they would go to church together and then they'd have brunch together afterwards before she'd go off to her shift. And he really could rationalize that her working double shifts was her way of prioritizing him.

That was her way of loving him and trying to give him every opportunity that she could. And that was true. But it didn't change the fact that Andre still craved for time with his mom. It didn't change that he wanted to be prioritized by her through time spent with him. It's examples like that where it's so heartbreaking because we can sit here and we can think about that exact scenario. Here's this single mother doing everything. absolutely can. And yet there's still an experience that a child might have. And when we go to this place of, oh, I'd be ridiculous to complain about this, or I'd feel guilty about it, or they did the

best that they could, that takes us away from just tuning into what our real experiences were. We don't have to throw people under the bus. We don't have to hate someone. We would stay in a victim position if we did. But we do need to call the thing the thing. We do need to honor the story and the pain if we're going to be able to work with it and move it. It's almost about, I don't want to say isolating it, but you don't need to be like blaming other people. You don't need to be saying, this, cause this, cause this. It's just like, this is how I am feeling right now and I need to address this. Is that correct? I talk about five wounds in the book. I talk about the worthiness wound, belonging, prioritization, trust, and safety. The first step is

naming and identifying what wounds resonate. I really resonate with both the safety wound and the worthiness wound. My dad was someone who, when I was easygoing and I presented the way that he wanted me to, he was super helpful, super engaged, super loving. But when I was not quote unquote, well-behaved, when I was not presenting the way that he wanted me to, he would punish. by giving me the silent treatment. And what that taught me was that love, connection, presence, help, were really conditional. If I was easygoing, if I was well-behaved, then I had love and connection available. And when I wasn't, then it was taken from me.

Those revelations, they're so powerful. It's why origin work is so meaningful to me. The origin pain creates and maintains the roles and the patterns that we have in our adult lives. And when we can start to name and identify, that gives us a place to begin. And of course, information isn't enough when we're talking about integrating change and healing. But it's so powerful to begin to understand there is an origin story here. There is an origin wound here that makes this behavior makes sense. You know, we're so confused by, my gosh, why do I do that?

Or why do I sabotage that? Or why do I behave that way in conflict? And when we get caught up in this cycle of why, why, why, why, why, why, why, we just get lost in that space. When I was first dating my now husband, we were in a conflict. I was a point-prover and I needed to be right. And when I say point-prover, my husband was like, I got it, I got it, I get what you're saying. And I just kept going. I doubled down.

I tripled down. I certainly was critical of myself in that moment. I was just like, why are you behaving this way? this is not attractive. If I'm being really honest, I, of course, in that moment, wonder, do you even want to stay with me if I'm behaving this way? And I wanted to understand why I went to this place of point proving. What was the need to be right serving? That's an important question for all of us to reflect on. What is this unwanted behavior of mine serving? And really, what's it protecting us from. And when I dove into that inquiry for myself, what I found was that being right

was quite literally safety for me. When you grow up with a parent who is very manipulative, for me, what I saw that do was that it had a really big impact on my mom. It was quite literally crazy making. And I became someone who really tracked all of his words, everything that he would do to see where I could catch him turning something around or changing a detail or all of those things. And I needed to be right in order to protect myself from being manipulated, from being taken advantage of any of that. And when I understood that my point-prover part, it's a at protecting me from not feeling safe in the way that I had felt prior in my childhood, it was a big opening. And again, information is not enough, but it allowed me to spend time

with that original pain, what it was like as a little girl to be growing up in that family system, to have those types of dynamics playing out, to see the impact on a mother, to see how she could not keep things straight and keep up with him and how that built this muscle within me. But what I also needed to recognize was that if I continued this type of behavior, it would undoubtedly cause a wedge and likely disconnection, ultimately maybe a relationship ending. I think a lot of people can relate to that where it's like, I know that if I keep this up, there's a consequence to it. Love can be unconditional, but relationship. must have conditions. We know that, right? There are consequences if I keep a wall up and I never let somebody in. If I am passive aggressive in my, you know, communication, if I just keep doing this thing that I

know is deeply impactful and hurtful to the other people in my life, to the system at large. That is the beginning part of all of this as we dive into origin healing work. In your own journey, after you had the information after you sat with it, what were some of the actions that you took that you found to shift the situation the most? I'm a big believer that we need to experience witnessing. Where that can start is witnessing ourselves. And if we have a trusted individual in our lives, partner, therapist, close friend, someone else who might be able to also witness our pain. A lot of times we skip over the step of acknowledging our pain, really seeing, hearing, connecting to what it is that we experienced. White knuckle our way through, just continue on. The past is the past.

It didn't come along with me. That was so long ago. All of these things that help us avoid that. But witnessing is one of the most powerful steps that we can take here. And I want to say this because I think sometimes we get caught in wanting the person who contributed to our wound. wounds to be a participant in witnessing us and the pain. And we don't need the person who contributed and participated in our pain to participate in the healing. In fact, we oftentimes cannot get that,

right? I can't tell you how many times I hear people say, I just wish that this parent would be able to acknowledge that this happened or validate my experience. And instead, they're met with defensiveness or rationalizing or explaining. And we're like, okay, well, how do I get that person to hear it? Maybe if I write it to them, maybe if I'm really gentle or maybe if I scream it at them, maybe that'll be the thing that gets through. At the end of the day, this is about going where you can be witnessed. And oftentimes that is certainly with ourselves and then with somebody else other than the person who contributed to it. If they can, beautiful, there's maybe nothing more special than that, but that is not the case for that many. I remember I was on the phone with a family member,

and we've gotten into the same conflict pattern that we were always in, and my husband was in the room, and the phone was on speaker at the time. So he had overheard the whole thing. The fight ended the way that the fight always ends. And I get off the phone, and Connor looks at me, and he just validates me in such a life-changing, really like life-altering way, where he had witnessed this pattern that I had been in for so long. I don't recall the exact words that he said, but he said something to me where it was like, you just saw and experienced what I see and experience all the time. and that was such a healing moment for me, right, to have someone else witness and validate

and acknowledge that like, yeah, this is what happens. As long as one person witnesses it, long as one person gets it and understands it, I no longer needed the original person to. And that brings us to grief, certainly, because there's a loss that happens there, But that witnessing piece is so, so powerful. And the third part is the grieving part. And I always say, when in doubt, grieve more, when stuck, grieve more. Like, grief transports us. Grief moves us. And that's not about wallowing. That's not about sitting in a space of poor me, right? Grief is about feeling what needs to be felt. It's about being with the pain, connecting to it. For me, what that looked like was big tears. and that might look different for lots of people. But for me, the grief was to be in contact with

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That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That is Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer in there. Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. For witnessing, I just want to drill into that for a second because you talked about what seems like two types of witnessing. You talked about witnessing that you were doing of yourself, of your memories, of your experiences. And then you talked about witnessing that was your husband witnessing you in this interaction as an adult. Would you say that both of these types of witnessing are important?

If somebody wanted to try witnessing, would you say going back to a memory that feels resonant in some way would be a good place to start? Because you can't really control who's going to witness you as an outsider. Absolutely. A great place to start is with the self and, of course, making sure that you're being safe. And if you feel like you need support, if that means having a therapist, working alongside of you, cluing some people in to make sure that you have your support network around, that can be very helpful. The hope would be that we would be able to rely on ourselves to do this work. And then I'm a big believer that if it's relationships that contribute to the wounding, then we need relationships to contribute to the healing. So we can't just do everything on

our own, but that is a beautiful place to start. But those relationships don't need to be the relationships with the person who was involved in the pain in the first place. It can be completely different relationships. Totally. Okay. You mentioned briefly the role that you were playing in your family dynamic. And I found it really interesting in the book, how you talked about how the role that we play as children can shape the people that we become as adults. And I would love for you to speak to that for a second. There are endless roles that we can take on from the perfectionist, to the people pleaser, to the comic relief, to the person who flies under the radar, to the performer. When there's dysfunction in a family system, we do take on a role.

We find a way to attempt to make the system operate better, whether that's to self-protect and or system protect. We figure certain things out. For example, I need to be funny to make dad stop yelling at mom. Or I need to get straight A's so there's less conflict in the house. Or if I please someone, then my sibling stops getting hurt. Mine was, I'm going to fly under the radar. I'm going to be the pleaser. I'm fine. I don't need anything at all. I'm good. And this is my way of trying to make the system function better. It's funny because they were crashing and burning and there was no way to make the system better. But as a little human, you're like, what can I do to contribute to the family? What can I do to try to make this a little bit easier on me and or a little bit easier

on the other people I love here? You write in the book, you've been convinced that being someone other than who you are is the only way to get the things that you crave the most, which I thought was one of the most powerful and sad statements that I've heard. And I think it becomes tricky as we become adults because these are the things shaping our personality in our formative years. And it can become really hard to disentangle. Like, are these my superpowers in some way? Like how much of this is who I am versus something that I use compensatorily? It's causing me more harm than good. Do you have any advice for beginning to untangle that? One of my colleagues says our wounds and our gifts are next door neighbors.

Everyone will tell you, well, if that didn't happen, I wouldn't be who I am today. And listen, I wouldn't be as good of a therapist as I am today without those experience. I can track stories. I can remember every single detail about people because that was a skill set that I needed throughout my childhood. Of course, our skill sets oftentimes are birthed from the pain. But there's a separation because that doesn't need to be the driving force anymore. There's a point in our mature adult self where we can separate that. But I hear a lot of times people say, well, I'm worried about doing this work because will I lose my edge? I work with professional athletes. So I especially know that question and that narrative because you have high

performers or high achievers who are like, I need the pain to motivate me. And we don't. We don't need that to motivate us. We can keep our gifts. In fact, I don't even know how you would lose your gift. It's who you've become. This is a way of operation. But to heal it, to no longer need it to be motivated by the pain is the shift that we're talking about. We can still choose. to embody the gifts that we have. Absolutely. We ought to, but we don't need it to be driven from this place anymore. We've touched on a lot of the different wound types. I would love to just explain briefly a worthiness wound, a safety wound, a trust wound, a belonging wound, and a prioritization wound. Can you kind of explain briefly what each type of wound is?

The worthiness wound, how that shows up in childhood, kind of similar to what we were just talking about with the roles, but you're leaning into being the perfectionist, being the performer, being the peacekeeper, being the pleaser, being the comic relief. It's all about conditions when we talk about the worthiness wound. So basically, this is who I needed to be in order to get love, connection, attention, validation, presence, calm in my family. And similar to that story that I was telling you about my father, where if I'm easygoing, then I get help and support and love and attention, And when I'm not, I get the silent treatment. It's where we learn the conditions of love are dependent on how well we do X, Y, or Z.

Perfect grades, grade on the athletic field, et cetera, et cetera. The belonging wound is oftentimes like the black sheep of the family, the person who kind of feels like the outsider that they don't fit in. A lot of times families have this ethos of this is what we do in this family. This is who we are. This is what we believe. There's an emphasis on the system. And there's beautiful parts of that. Amazing family traditions that we do together.

But then there's also the other side of that, which says, if you don't believe, do abide by the rules in the way that we expect you to, you're on the outside. What that does for a child is that it really requires them to trade authenticity for attachment. Dr. Gaboormata talks about that those are the two lifelines for a child. child, attachment and authenticity. But when attachment is threatened, a child will trade authenticity every time because it's survival. So early on, it's about adopting the family's way of being, like their form of operation. Sometimes when we get a little bit older, we'll see the path of rebellion. Teenagers are sometimes like, screw this. I'm going to wear whatever I want to wear. I'm going to

believe what I want to believe. I'll love who I want to love, those types of things. But when we're tiny, we will always go to a place of adaptation and adopt what it is the family wants us to do. The prioritization wound, how that can show up in a family system is if you were a child who did not feel like you were important. A lot of times this is maybe a parent who's a workaholic or maybe there's another type of addiction in the family that's taking up space. Maybe there is a mental health challenge that is the priority. or maybe it's parents who are constantly fighting. Conflict is the priority and the children are forgotten about. Or it's parents who get divorced and then mom starts dating and she's obsessed with it

and can't stop talking about her dating life and you're no longer centered as a child. There's a lot of things that can take up a lot of space in the family. Illness, for example, not all wounds come because they're negligent parents, or abusive adults in our lives or that they're malintended, sometimes wounds come when people are super well-intended or when there are circumstances that are entirely out of the adults' hands and control. And then the trust wound is when there's a betrayal, when there is deceit or lies.

Big ones are an infidelity or a fair or a parent who gambles away your education fund or parents who take out credit cards and their children's names. But it can also be ones that are a little bit more subtle, like somebody who promises something and never follows through. These are the things that chip away at the belief that we can trust the people closest to us. Family Secrets is a big one, especially if there's information that's been withheld from you, that would have been important information for you to have.

that changes the trajectory of your life in a significant way. And then the last one is the safety wound. And this is, whenever we're talking about the absence of safety, we are also talking about the presence of abuse. This is a tender chapter, of course, because we have to talk about emotional, physical, sexual, psychological abuse. We're talking about negligence. We're talking about recklessness.

But overall, if you as a child didn't feel like your well-being was cared for, that there was deep concern, respect, and honor for it, that there was like a sense of protection over you, then we can often be left with a safety wound there. I'm sure some people will hear all of these descriptions and immediately be like, oh, that was my childhood, that's me, I identify with this strongly. But if you identify with one of the things you said at the beginning, the giving advice that we can't take ourselves or the outsized reactions, but we don't quite know which wound type we might be experiencing. Is there anything that we can ask ourselves or explore to begin to get that answer?

One of my favorite questions is what I wanted most as a child and didn't get was, it's a big oof question because if we can go there, it brings us to the pain. It brings us to the thing that we craved for. And I would encourage people to try not to block it. Sometimes I ask that question and they're like, I got everything that I needed. We exist in imperfect systems. There is no perfect vacuum. So to make space for that when you're ready, you don't need to force yourself into answering it, of course, but to try to make space for yourself to say, like, what did I really crave for or want or need as a child and not get? That will help bring you to that. I also have a free, what's your origin wound quiz. And that's a great place for people to start because there's a lot of questions. And then at the end of it, even though we've already said, that you can have multiple wounds, it will tell you what your primary origin wound is. I love that. And we'll put a link to that in the show note so everybody can take the quiz and find

out what their primary wound is. And once we figured out our wounds, are the steps fairly similar? It seemed like in the book, we're mostly starting with witnessing regardless of the wound. Is that true? Exactly. With the origin healing practice, it's always going to be name and identify what the wound is. It's going to then take you into witnessing. then into grief and then into pivoting. And before we can create change that lasts, we really do need to do that feeling work. But I know that ultimately we want to get to the place

where we're making the changes that allow for the life and the relationships that we really want to have. But you're going to start to see how the unresolved wounds play out in the breakdown of communication, the breakdown of conflict, and the way that we navigate boundaries. And so we'll start to see how,

if we don't tend to this, it's going to mess with that stuff in our relationships as well. Once we do this work, we're witnessing, we're going through the process of beginning to heal our wounds ourselves. I know we don't need the people who were involved, but should we tell them anything? Should we say, hey, I'm not going to talk to you right now because I'm doing this work on myself or I can't interact with you in the way that I've been interacting with you. What role should we let them play, even if they're not directly involved in the process? So person to person specific, because it has a lot to do with who those people are, what their capacity is, do they respect boundaries? Is this something that is going to activate them? And then you're going to have to deal with

a lot of their emotion and then you become an emotional caretaker to them. It's very important for each individual who is beginning on this process to think, what's supportive for me right now? And when we do this, it rubs up against some stuff. And if we have someone who can honor that and respect that, then communicating that is important. If you have someone who, if you share this information with, is going to reject it or push your boundaries, then you might consider not saying anything and just keeping quiet boundaries to yourself, taking care of yourself by maybe not picking up the phone as much as you normally do or responding via text instead of getting onto a phone call. So this is a person specific, like how do I actually take care of myself during this time?

Do you have any communication tips if we have an emotionally immature or avoided family member, but we are trying to maintain that relationship? Yeah, the big sigh, right? I think there is something about accepting where the constraints and limitations are. Hopefulness is a really beautiful thing, but only to a certain extent. At some point, that just turns into maintained suffering. I love hope. I think it serves a purpose.

But at some point, right, there's a real power that happens when we accept who is in front of us. We accept that this is where they can go to, that this is their capacity, that things will not change. And why that's so hard is because when we accept that things won't change, it means that we have to grieve. because we're stopping ourselves from believing that we can get to a different outcome. It is a heavy sigh because it's so painful when there's a lack of emotional maturity, when we want so desperately for this person to get it and engage with it differently. Sometimes people are so quick, well, cut them off. I work with so many people.

Most people don't want that. Listen, if that's what's needed and there are many circumstances where that absolutely can be the move. But most of the time people will say to me, like, but it's my mom or it's my dad. I don't want to be cut off from this person. I don't want that to be the way that I protect myself. Depending on what the circumstances are, of course, if there's abuse or manipulation still happening, those are great places to certainly set that boundary. But with people who still want to have relationships with an emotionally immature adult in their lives, I think it is about getting to a place of acceptance of what that limitation is and to begin to work out that part that says they are not

changing. And when I say they are not changing, of course, I am not suggesting that I have any clue what will happen in the future, but we have to be connected to the present moment. Because that's what hope does. It moves us out of this. It says, well, but maybe, but maybe this. And it keeps us stuck in that cycle. Even though this is a really hard step, I'm sorry to say, It's not like, follow these two things and then you'll be good. It's like, it is very emotional. But there's such an important power in moving away from letting hope be in the driver's seat and being connected to what I know is true right now.

And what is true right now is you're not changing. So if whatever this is isn't going to go anywhere, how am I going to engage with you? Do we just talk about the weather? Do we just talk about the kids, the grandchildren? Do we just talk about a great show that we saw? that we think that they would really like. What do we need to do to maintain a relationship but not go there? Because there is where the suffering is.

There is where the loop is. When we have emotionally immature people in our lives, it's so easy to get hooked into that dysfunctional dance. And our job is to unhook from that. That is such good advice. You've mentioned grieving a few times. And you said for you, it looked like crying. You said there's going to be a grief process in maybe acknowledging that your family member isn't

going to change in the way we'd like them to change. In the United States particularly, I think that we are not taught to grieve very well. I know so many people who haven't cried in years. I know so many people who have you told them to grieve a tiny thing or a large thing, they literally wouldn't know where to start. Can you give any advice for, I don't want to say good grieving because I don't think there's any type of bad grieving, but how to get us into grief that's productive and that gets us to where we need to go. It's such a good point. We've really reserved grieving for when there's a

death. Don't really talk about grief in our normal day-to-day moments. One of the constraints is that we're scared of going there. I think that is overwhelming for people. What I tried to do in the book was put every person on the page in some way. And one of the ways that I have seen people who have said the same thing that you just said, like, I don't know how to do this. I don't know if I do want to go there at all is to have people read the stories or hear the stories of others, to see themselves or to see a parent or to see their adult child in the story of someone else.

And sometimes when we are connected to another person's grief, that can open us up. I'm sure you know some people who are like, I can't cry for myself, but then I watch this video about, you know, and like sometimes that is our entry point to beginning to feel. I actually love the idea of bringing down the stakes of, okay, you know, here's, if you haven't cried in years, here's how we're going to get you to do it. Let's take that off the table. Don't even worry about that. Let's read about the stories of real life people and see what resonates for you. See what it brings you to

because I would much rather have people get to that place kind of authentically as opposed to like, okay, I got to grieve. Let's do this. When we can start to see ourselves as these little human beings and sometimes it's so hard because we're staring in the mirror and we see these adult selves and You know, we don't like to think about the tiny versions of us. That wall starts to drop a little bit. And we begin to connect with a bit more compassion and empathy. I do think one of the best start points for someone who's resistant to it or doesn't know how to do it is to feel through other people first. Maybe they even find a photo of themselves from long ago and they put that on their desk or they get to know that little human differently. There's something about tending to the younger versions of ourselves or if we have another tiny human in our lives like a niece or a nephew or a friend's child or something. Like sometimes connecting to younger people is a really good way of feeling a bit more to think that that's,

child might have gone through what you went through, right? Might allow for some emotion to come up. I would say the stories of others. I would say get a photo of yourself from when you were however old you were that, you know, when you think about yourself as a small human, you know, what age comes to mind and find a photo and be with that. Begin to feel for that. Don't force anything. Just get to know that little human a bit more. Get care. curious with them. I'm genuinely confused how masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly like the cooking class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally

have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing, Shan Boudra art of mastering confidence and sex appeal class. It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it, they're on masterclass, and it is such a good way to get off your phone, but have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month

when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every. every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even in audio mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off. at masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, masterclass.com slash Liz Moody.

When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline, and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you,

certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30, our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. We're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help.

But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement, mitochondure, does. It contains urolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondure increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine, it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health

impacts all of this, and urolithin-A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. What if we're listening and you're describing all these wounds and we're like, my partner definitely has some of these, but they're not doing anything to address it. Should we be bringing that up?

Is their journey their journey and we shouldn't get involved? How should we approach the situation? Great question. We know. We can bring a horse to the well, but we can't make it drink the water. It's okay to name things and request things. but obviously we can't force people into this work. One of the best things that we can do is stay in your own lane and don't let that be something that prevents you from leaning into this. Because

sometimes we become the model. You start to connect dots or you have some type of breakthrough and then you share that with your partner or you say, I'd never thought about this incident that happened in my life and I'm starting to reflect on it and you start to open up a conversation. And maybe that invites a person into it at some point. I know sometimes this is scary for people. I've heard many people say things like, well, I don't want to do this because I'm afraid that we'll grow apart. Or there's that fear that if I lean into some of this, it will mean that the end of our relationship is a possibility. I know that that can be a tricky one to decide if they're not going to come along on this journey, what does this mean for us? But I would really encourage people to still tend to

themselves and let their work be the model, be the inspiration, be the motivation. Think about what way of learning a partner might receive. Like maybe they'll listen to a podcast. Maybe they will read a book. Maybe they're not going to go to therapy with you, but maybe they're like, all right, I'll read a few chapters here. To think about different ways in which information might be received by them. And if they're blocked, they're blocked, but I often like to consider what keeps that person from wanting to do this work. Instead of just, come on, why won't you do this? You need to go to therapy or you need to read this. You need to do that. Maybe the question becomes, what are you afraid of? What keeps you from wanting to explore this? I love that constraint question,

because instead of just shaming people, you need to do this or why won't you do this, right? The idea of like, oh, well, there's probably a reason you don't want to do it and I'd love to know about it. You know, Like, that's just such a different energy. I love that question in the book. And then the other one that I loved and I thought it was so guiding was the one that was, is what I'm about to say or do going to lead me to peace or is it going to lead me to suffering? And it felt so simple. But that one just like hit me in the face.

Because if you asked that before you ever opened your mouth in an argument, even in an internal dialogue with yourself or before you took an action, it would literally change my life on a day-to-day basis if I asked myself that all the time. I'm so glad that that one landed for you. We have to really imagine peace, not as like, what's the easy way out? Because sometimes the most peaceful thing is to shut down because that brings us to peace very quickly. But it's about whether or not that question is aligned with your goals and your expansion and your healing. Is this going to lead me to my suffering or is this going to lead me to peace in relation to where I'm headed?

And framing it in that way helps get away from. like peace being people pleasing or taking the path of least resistance. It helps you get to almost you're using peace. It's like your peace in the context of your truest, most authentic self. Exactly. When we understand so much about all of the historical stuff that might be showing up in a particular moment. And when we know that about our partners too or the people we love, then that space opens and expands before you even open your mouth, right? Before you go there to just take that beat to be like, what's familiar here? What's showing up? What do I know about this? And is what I'm about to do or is the behavior or is the involuntary thing that I know all too well, right? Is that going

to take me back into a pattern and leave me in this space of suffering? Or is there an option, even if it's hard, even if it means that my palms are going to sweat and my voice is going to shake and my heart is going to beat out of my chest, is that going to lead me to where I say I want to go? And I think it's so important even the way you just framed it because you are acknowledging that for many of us, the path of suffering feels easier because that is what we have known for our entire lives.

The path of peace won't necessarily feel peaceful in the moment because our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains, our minds, are practiced in choosing the path of suffering. We're trying to move in the direction of our authentic selves through all of this. Like you said, a lot of us have stifled that in the name of attachment as children. Is there anything that we can do outside of this wound work to begin to ask, who am I as a person at my core? Who is my truest authentic self?

It is so important. Like, who am I? What do I actually believe? what do I actually feel? It's so easy to lose ourselves and all these things. I remember being this person where you're on a date and someone's like, oh, do you love this band? And you're like, yeah.

And you're like, I've never even heard of this band. Like, I don't even know what you're talking about. And yet we just live in this inauthentic place because we believe that that's what's going to get people to want us, choose us, love us. There's a point in everyone's lives where we have to check in with ourselves to be like, What do I like? What do I believe actually? Because our beliefs are given to us at the beginning, right?

Our families and then beyond media and religion. And there's a number of things that obviously contribute to this. But it's those things that say, okay, this is what we believe. This is what you do. This is how we think. And at what point do we check in with ourselves to be like, do I still agree with that? Do I believe that? It's very important for us to take that step to say, what lights me up, what threatens authenticity right now? Oftentimes people feel a pressure to conform. You feel like you have to go

with the crowd. And if you do, then you get validation or you get love or you get connection, all the things we've been talking about today. As the great Maya Angelou famously said, you are only free when you realize you belong no place. You belong every place, no place at all. This is a profound moment of recognition that when you belong to yourself, meaning you are at peace with yourself, you will simultaneously belong everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere is within you. Nowhere is outside of you. To be authentically yourself means that nothing can be taken from you and that you relate to the threat of judgment, shaming, rejection, or disowning differently. It's so powerful to be authentically yourself means that nothing can be taken from you.

It feels so simple, but it also feels so hard because then the second you are actually confronted with something being taken from you or loss of love, especially if you experience those wounds as a kid, it feels so scary in the moment to say, what if my authentic soul? is it lovable, isn't worthy in this way. It feels really scary. Right. There is a consequence that will present when you stand in authenticity. The reality of it is if I present my authentic self, certainly there will be people who do not choose you, but there will also be places and people who do. We often focus so much on the negative outcome. And, where we will be rejected. And absolutely, you will be. People won't understand, people will all judge it,

but there will also be people who connect to it and love it and honor it. There are consequences. And if we're constantly pleasing or saying the right thing for everyone, maybe there's an ease to that. But there is no ease to living inauthentically in the world forever. To leave yourself over and over and over again is not sustainable. And how much better will it feel to have your life filled with people who you know are really seeing you and loving that person? Exactly. You're a parent now. I'm curious if there's anything that you're doing with all of your professional background to minimize the wounds that your child experiences. Every parent says, what can I do to make sure I don't screw up my child?

And what I say and also what is very important and relevant for me is that. the best gift that you can give your children is a commitment to resolving your pain from the past. We don't have to pass it. And when I say resolve, right? I don't mean like, and then we complete and we never have to feel anything ever again. But when we have resolution in our lives, then that does not then get passed down or passed over. And even if your children are way old, like it is never too late to work on resolving the pain from your past. And if you are, a parent listening to this and you have adult children and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I've really let them down or I've really done a number or oh my gosh, I know my child has a

worthiness wound or they have a prioritization wound. Your ownership, your accountability, the ability for you to just name that with them is so important, so healing, so powerful. It is not too late. It is the greatest gift that we can give, whether they are still tiny, or whether they are grown adults. That's what I've been working on. Just keep doing my work. And that is going to be the biggest gift that I give. I love that.

Obviously, everybody should go out and buy your beautiful book. But if you were to leave people with one homework assignment, just one thing that they could do today as soon as they're done listening to this podcast to begin to resolve some of that pain from their childhood. Could you just leave us with one thing? Yeah, but I'm going to steal it from someone else. because it's one of my favorite things in the book. I share this exercise that psychotherapist,

researcher Michael Kerr offers, which is to think of your mother as your grandmother's daughter and see how the perspective shifts. I offer that here as our clothes because it's so important for us to remember that we all have a story, every single one of us. We were all tiny humans at one point. And we all were tiny humans growing up in flawed and imperfect systems that have complexity and layers and pain to it. And this idea to start to think about people, not just as mommy and daddy as the grown adults that they are or a partner as the grown adult that they are, to like remember that they were a part of these systems is a really beautiful gift and a really powerful opening for us to allow for grace and compassion to come in, not for it to be an excuse,

but to allow for grace and compassion to be a part of this work. I absolutely love that. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful book? This book is such an important book. People say, who should read this? And I'm like, anybody who has a family? This is the book for those people. I've worked with individuals, couples, and families now for over 15 years, over 20,000 hours in therapy with people. And I wanted people to have a straightforward, succinct place to begin to explore this work. There isn't a lot out there for your average person to really explore this. So I put all of my training, all of my hours into this. And I know that many people are not going to go spend years or decades in therapy trying to unpack this. So I wanted to offer it so that people could,

in the comfort of their own home, begin to dive into this. And that's called The Origins of You. It's available wherever books are sold. Where else can people find you on the internet? So you can find me on Instagram at MindfulMFT, as in Marriage, Family Therapy. My name, vienna farren.com. Amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today.

Thanks so much for having me. If you need a hug after this episode, I am sending you a big one virtually. And I am excited for the next steps that you take now that you have. have all of these incredible insights. Please share a link for this episode with anyone that you think would benefit or just anyone that you want to talk about this stuff with. It is so important to be able to have these conversations. And this episode could be a really great casual way to start to open up this dialogue.

Like, oh, hey, did you listen to this? Do you have any thoughts? What did it bring up for you? And before you go, Vienna generously agreed to give five winners a copy of her brand new book, The Origins of You. so you can hear even more of her amazing advice for addressing and moving on from childhood trauma. It is such a good book. And if you love this episode, it lets you dive deeper into everything that we talked about. So definitely enter the giveaway. All you need to do to enter is to follow me on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody.

And Vienna is at Mindful MFT and then comment on any recent post of mine. It does not need to be about this episode, something that you loved or learned from the episode. And if you are new here, make sure that you're following the podcast on whatever platform you like to listen on. Just go to the main podcast page, the one that lists all of the healthier together episodes, and you will see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. That way, all of the new episodes will show up right in your feed so you will never miss out on one, which you will want because we have some incredible episodes coming up, including an episode that will completely change how you view self-care and one all about hacking your hormones to live your healthiest life.

So make sure that you are following until you do not miss out. Okay, I love you and I will see you next week on the next episode of the Healthier Together podcast. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants.

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