TrueLife - Dr. Debra Mandel - Psychological Games in Family Bonds

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️🎙️  Get ready for an enlightening conversation that will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about mother-daughter relationships. Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Dr. Debra Mandel—a powerhouse in the field of psychology with over three decades of experience, a bestselling author, and a true trailblazer when it comes to helping families heal. Her newest book, “Sassy and Rude: Her New Attitude,” is more than just a guide; it’s a revelation, diving headfirst into the complex, often turbulent dynamics between mothers and daughters.Dr. Debra’s signature three-step plan to heal and strengthen these bonds is nothing short of transformative. She tackles the deep-seated guilt, shame, and frustration that can poison even the closest relationships and offers practical, empowering steps for finding connection and mutual respect. Her straight-talking, compassionate style has made her a sought-after expert on national television and radio, not to mention a co-host of a podcast with over a million devoted listeners.Today, we’re pulling back the curtain on what truly drives the “too nice” mom syndrome, the roots of family conflict, and how to find the path to reconciliation and a connection that lasts. It’s a conversation you won’t want to miss!https://drdebraonline.com/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scar's my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins

maze, lights my war cry Born from the blaze The poem is Angels with Rifles The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini Check out the entire song at the end of the cast Ladies and gentlemen

How's your day going? You live in the dream? I hope the sun is shining I hope that the birds are singing I hope the wind is at your back I got a great show for everybody today. I have with me, Dr. Deborah Mandel. And I want everyone to get ready for an enlightening conversation that will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about mother-daughter relationships. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Deborah Mandel, a powerhouse in the field of psychology with over three decades of experience, a best-selling author

and a true trailblazer when it comes to helping families heal. Her newest book, Sassy and Rude, her new attitude is more than just a guide. It's a revelation, diving headfirst into the complex, often turbulent dynamics between mothers and daughters. Dr. Deborah's signature three-step plan to heal and strengthen these bonds is nothing short of transformative. She tackles the deep-seated guilt, shame, and frustration that can poison even the closest relationship and offers practical, empowering steps for finding connection and mutual respect. Her straight-talking, compassionate style has made her a sought-out. expert on national television and radio.

Not to mention a co-host of a podcast with over a million devoted listening. Today, we are pulling back the curtain on what truly drives the Too Nice Mom syndrome, the roots of family conflict, and how to find the path of reconciliation and connection that lasts. It's a conversation you won't want to miss. Dr. Debra, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Well, thank you so much for having me.

And I have to tell you, in all the podcast, radio shows and TV shows I have done, I have never been called a trailblazer. You'll thank you. I love it. I'll take it. Yeah, why not? I mean, we spoke briefly before the show about the power of relationships and that you, you know, driven to help people doing it.

I think that's a trailblazer. Someone who's willing to go out and find new territory to help people explore. I think that's the definition of it. And I think you're doing it. Yeah. And you know what? We all know that relationships are complex, complicated. And no one really has the pulse on how to talk about what they really are, what they do, how they are, what's the healthiest, what's the least healthy.

We have some ideas, and we're always evolving in that conversation. And so it's been my life's passion to try to help people improve their relationships with themselves and with others. And boy, the mother-daughter relationship is particularly complex. So I know we're going to dive into that some more. But, yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. It is a complex relationship.

And, you know, when I, my wife and I were talking about this podcast coming up and she gave me a list of questions that we're going to get into. But what was it for you? Have you noticed? Was this something that you noticed that you noticed in your lap? Is this something that you've noticed that people are coming to you? They're talking about that's sort of bubbling on the ethos. Like, what is it that drove you to write this particular book at this particular time? It's a great question.

I'm going to give you a little bit of personal history because I think it's kind of fun, right? So my daughter now is 31. She'll be 32 in December. And she's awesome. I love her so dearly, but we have definitely had our challenges. Now, the funny thing is, is I actually wrote the proposal for this book about 14 or 15 years ago. And it was called, Why Is She Such a Bitch? My agent loved it.

She sent it out. We couldn't get a bite. So it just sort of sat in her backlist. then a couple years ago I'm in the hospital with a paper cut gone rogue like literally sepsis in my hand it was horrible like I had the that my hand was the size of a baseball and I'm able to you know I'm functioning I'm just you know on antibiotics and I'm there and I can walk and people are like why are you there because I'm walking with my my IV and I'm walking down the halls and I look fine and I go like this they go oh you know and then I get an email from my

agent and she says, I have a publisher who just loves it. Are you willing to write this book? So now my daughter's well into her adult life. What inspired me initially was because she was a teenager gone rogue. I mean, she literally did what teenagers do and we we bumped heads constantly. We couldn't get along and I thought and she had thought I'd leave that we had a really good relationship with her growing up. Teenage years were a little bit tumultuous. But boy, once she was in their late teens and she wanted to go hitchkike around the country by herself. And I'm like, oh, God, what am I in for now? And so we had some challenges.

And we healed a lot along the way. And in those 10 to 14 years, I somehow just, I don't know if I manifested it or what, but I had a lot of moms coming to me with their difficulties, not with their husbands per se or their boyfriends, but with their daughters. And so it just became a very significant goal in my practice to help. these moms and daughters rebuild their relationship or build it if they never really had a good one into a place where they really have love and respect for one another in a way that's really beautiful. So there you go.

I love it. I love it. It's such a coming of age story and such a like a hero's journey in a way. And oh, we've got our first question coming in right here. So here we go from Natalie from Florida. She says, in your experience, are mother-daughter conflicts more rooted in generational expectations or in personal psychological boundaries? Hi, Natalie.

That's a great question. Isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So I think the root of, let's see, reframe the question for me one more time, the psychological boundaries or generational. Generational expectations or in personal psychological boundaries.

Okay. Both, right? So generationally, we absorb tremendously that, that which our ancestors experienced in their rules as mothers, as daughters, as wives, as husbands, as fathers. I mean, all of us, we have these, in Jungian psychology, it's called archetypes or shadows. We have these places within our psyche that we just have deep within us about things that have affected us in our lives.

And we cannot separate from that. That is so much a part of who we are. And then also, our relationships are byproduct as well. of our psychological internal boundaries that we have with our self, how we define our own self in relation to another, and how that transforms and transpires in our experience with whomever we are trying to connect

with whom. So it's a complicated process, but I have to say, I'll tell a little bit more. Personally, my father was a Holocaust survivor and my mother was from Estonia. I don't know if anybody's heard of that place anymore, But it was taken over by Russia at the time she was a child. She went to Sweden and then both my parents met in Canada.

And they spoke 11 languages between the two of them. Neither of them spoke English. Imagine that. Okay. So they got married. They had my sister and they moved to California. And I was born in Downey, California. And my parents were a challenge.

My dad had had a really difficult childhood and adulthood, as you can imagine. And so to my mother. My mother came from a very abusive background. They had no idea how to parent. And then they had all of their background in terms of how they were parented in their generations. And all that came to the mix. So me as a little girl, I was this very loving, very vulnerable little girl, very sensitive. And so I wanted hugs and cuddles. And my mother was very stoic. I mean, you left a cup out. And if it was there for three seconds longer than it should be. It was put away and you were punished. I mean, it was that kind of thing. My dad had PTSD and he had so many issues that he never really conquered in his own self. So my

psychological boundaries were very warped, I can say. I did not know where I started, where I stopped, what was good, what was bad, or any of those things. And I sort of was working with a lot of stuff that was very challenging. So there was generationally and then my own personal accumulation of that and how I dealt with it, that led me to actually be a psychologist. It's funny, but it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think that your mother thought about you the way you thought about your daughter? No, I do not.

I do not. That's a great question. I've never been asked that question either, and I love it. Yeah, good job. You're a trailblazer. My mother, I believe, truly, and I don't mean, I'm not, she's been deceased now for over 20 years. She passed away very young. I was actually just about my daughter's age when my mother passed.

It was very sad. She died of unexplained causes, and she was only 58. And it was very tragic. We never really got to heal, and that was very sad for me. But I think my mother saw her children as a means to an end, something she was. supposed to do. You're supposed to become a wife and then a mother. She was a model when she was in Canada and she did very well. She was very independent. She had, you know, broken free from her family and she established herself. And then my dad was very conservative in the way that he did not want a working

wife. And so she pretty much let go of all that. And I think she was very bitter and resentful about that. And I don't think she really ever overcame that. And there were a few times when I was a teenager and my sister was gone off to college and my mom decided to get a part-time job and oh boy the dynamic in the house was miserable he said like sure go where why are you not here here's like the classic flintstones where's my dinner you know what's happening here and and she was unhappy doing so because he was unhappy and it was it was really a difficult experience so I don't think she looked upon us as these joyful beings in her life that that she got to have a participating role in helping foster our development.

Whereas the way I looked at my daughter was, wow, I'm so excited. I have birthed this amazing, beautiful creature in the world. And I can't wait to see how she evolves and how she changes. And hopefully I have a positive influence on her, as does the world. And she makes good choices. And I'm going to try to give her all those tools and skills that I can. But I had to really learn early on that there's so much I have control over and so much that I don't. and trying to really get to a place of acceptance around that.

Yeah, thank you for, that's a deeply personal story. And I thank you for taking the time to share it. I think that's really cool. I think it's really relevant though. It speaks to the, to the passion you have for this particular relationship. And was there a certain age where you noticed a switch where like, okay, this is different. Or was it like a slow, like the frog in the pot? Yeah, there's a very specific moment in time.

that I will never forget. My daughter used to love holding hands, walking to school, and I would drop her off at her class, and she was all about loves and love and cuddles and in adorableness, right? My heart, lovely, right? And, you know, drive her, park. We'd have to walk like a block

because all the moms were, or dads, moms and dads were on the driveway thing to drop them off. And then it was right somewhere in the middle of fifth grade. And I'm walking her to class. And she said, why are you walking me? And I went, oh, oh, we hit that moment. We hit that moment. And just about two months or three months before then, we were in the car and we were having

conversation. And I said, you know, some days, you're going to want to go off to school, off to college, or you're going to want to do your own thing. You're going to move away from home. She started crying. She was so sad, no, I never want to leave you. I never want to be away from you. And like, oh, you just wait, let's write a contract on that one.

And literally it was just all happening. happened in that same couple of months where it just became this, hey, she recognized as children do developmentally. I have to be my own person and I need to push off. And unfortunately, for moms, daughters push off harder against their moms than their sons will. And actually, to some degree, sons push off their dads more. Same gender tends to have more conflict, so to speak, I don't know if your wife is noticing that as well, but your daughter's 11. So she's probably right around that age where there's a little bit of sassy coming out. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's interesting to see the dynamic play out. And then, you know, the, the, the questions we have sometimes, like, okay, do we handle this as a family? Is this a sit down around the table discussion? Or is this, you know, something that we put over here? And it's an interesting thing to think about.

At what point in time do you decide which behavior is something that should be addressed and which behavior is sort of like a non-issue? a great question also first of all i want to say that this book is primarily for moms with adult daughters because there's so much written out there and i and i did not want to compete with all of those good things that are out there about raising children from a to z and the best ways to do that in adolescence so but but even if you don't have an adult daughter and you're interested in this dynamic that can get created it is still very important to learn these concepts that i talk about in the book that can be helped to be preventative maybe for future. So what do you do with your teenager, your budding teenager who's going to become much more independent, have her own identity? And yeah, you've got to pick

and choose your battles. So there's going to be some things that are going to be really important. So I would say that the conversations, the deeper conversations need to be around those things that we would call our values, right? So the personal values and morals that we want to help our children develop, being kind to others, doing community service, being charitable, recognizing high emotional IQ, building that if our children are a little bit low in that area, you know, really teaching empathy and understanding. So when you see behaviors in your child, daughter or son, that seem disrespectful to others that are annihilating people, bullying people, not caring about how other people think and feel.

then I think those are the really important conversations to have, regardless if you get the eyes rolled or you get that, what, what, mom, dad, why are we doing this? You know, which you'll hear a lot of, oh, please, it's no big deal. You know, children will notoriously, especially teenagers, downplay everything. That's not a big deal. That's not a big.

That's a fire down the street. And if you tend to be a bit of an overreactor, which I historically was, I'll tell you another cute story. I was 12 and I'm making dinner and I'm always about, you know, this is a lot of my mom in me was have to get things just right. I wanted everybody to be happy, have a good dinner, have it at the right time,

always trying to do this perfectionistic thing, even though I was so careful not to have my daughter have to feel that way, but I was role modeling it to some degree. And I'm just having a like a little bit of a tizzy when something's not coming out right. And my daughter looks at me and she's 12. She says, mom, is this going to bother you in five minutes from now? I said, maybe.

And she said, about five days from now. I said, no. She said, well, why are you letting it bother you now? What a great lesson from almost teenagers. So it was really a beautiful moment. And at the same time, I had to balance that because she would downplay anything, right? Because I was a little bit more heightened in my emotionality. So she was more reserved, even though she would have her moments for sure.

So I hope that answers your question. I think that the single things like, you know, parents get caught up in things like what their children should wear or how they're supposed to look as opposed to how do you feel? Who are you? What kind of person do you want to be? And let that other stuff go, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great point. It makes me think about there's a, on some level, expectations and competitions seem to have a relationship in the mother-daughter relationship.

You know, there is some level of like high expectations versus competition. I know that's kind of a wide-ranging question, but what is your take on expectations and competition inside the mother-daughter relationship? Okay, great. Expectations, because I have a great saying that I learned from people in like 12-step programs. They say expectations are resentments under construction. And resentments are like swallowing poison and waiting for the other guy to die. So expectations are so important to be conscious of.

And a lot is written in the book, Sassy and Rood, your new attitude, about how we can refine and define what our, define and refine what our expectations are and whether they're reasonable or not. So it's one thing. If you and I decide that we're going to go to dinner and we both agree to 6 o'clock on Sunday evening and you have an expectation I'm going to show up at 6 o'clock or the show, right? Your expectation that I came on at 931. I wasn't quite prompt because my browser wouldn't work, so I had to switch from Safari to Chrome, but I had every intention of being here at 930

because it's your time and that's important to you and you're counting on me. So your expectation is completely reasonable because all confirmations indicated that I would be here at 930, barring any emergency. But let's say that you and I say, hey, well, get together sometime and I'm thinking, oh, well, I guess that means Sunday at six o'clock or, or we'll do a show sometime. I guess that means 9.30 and you don't show up, then I'm like, wait a second. Why didn't you show up? Then I'm being unreasonable because we didn't have that agreement. So we want to have conscious agreement expectations. We have an expectation with an agreement. Then the other person is on board. And then you can hold them accountable if they fail to meet that

expectation. But when we have these unconscious expectations in our relationships, particularly with our daughters, oh boy, we're in trouble because it's not clear. And then it gets really, really messy. So in the competition part, I don't know, they're somewhat related and they're somewhat different. There are moms who are competitive. There are moms who maybe they didn't get the accolades. I know a lot of moms who did not get the words of affirmation, the accolades, the attention, the love, the holding in the cuddles, like myself to some degree, who are searching for that through their relationship with their daughter. And then when the daughter is getting it elsewhere,

sometimes the moms will feel jealous that their daughters are getting this attention or love somewhere else and then they feel less special. And that can breed a level of competing with other people. Or you can have also the competition within the relationship. let's say the daughter is getting a lot of accolades for her beauty or for her intelligence and you were beautiful and intelligent in your youth and nobody or you still are but nobody's paid any attention to you it's like by golly i want her to have that but it's kind of like a double-edged sword i want her to get that attention that's lovely at the same time darn my inner child is wounded

and hurt and i may feel some grumbling in there and something that needs to be attended to by my own self yeah that makes a lot of sense that's a mouthful sorry No, it's good. It makes a lot of sense. I think that the insights and the internal dialogue that happens definitely gets messy, especially when the feelings aren't truly spoken. We got Casey that says, she's coming in from San Jose. Hi, Casey.

She says, if love and conflict often coexist in family bonds, how do we know when our conflicts are healthy expressions of individuality versus signs of a relationship in need of repair? Oh, wow. Oh, do we have three hours for that question? So there's something about relationships. There's a little model I really enjoy. I don't know really who coined it, but I learned of it from a relationship expert named Terry Real.

He talks about all relationships start out harmonious. Then we have disharmony, and then we need to get to repair. And when we don't get to repair, then we're in trouble. if we go if we expect harmony all the time we're in trouble and if we live in disharmony all the time we're seriously in trouble and this this goes to the question of conflict right so conflict healthy conflict i would say is when we can have a true dialogue a true discussion with another person respecting that they have a different point of view and being able to state our own point of view what we in a rational way as best we can and enjoy and embrace our emotions

around it, we can get very passionate about things that are particularly those I talked about earlier are values. If we have a value difference with someone, that's going to be much more extreme and more challenging than if we're just talking about whether, you know, it's better to have pepperoni on your pizza or not. Or if it's, you know, it's like it, well, although that could be a value too. Like I don't eat meat. I don't judge people who do. I simply don't eat it for my own personal reasons. But I eat chicken. So, so. somebody might say to me, why would you eat foul and not a man, I don't eat four-legged mammals. That's why. I don't know. It's my thing. But I could have conflict with people about that.

So, you know, dangerous conflict is that where there's name calling, there's bullying, there's attacking, there's disregarding, disrespecting, annihilating, all those, all those achy experiences of being abused, you know, that's all forms of abuse, emotionally, sexually, psychologically. And so we don't want that in our lives. And we want to do the best we can to remove that, remove that toxic energy because it's not going to do us any good and it doesn't do the relationship any good. But it's very hard sometimes when we're very immersed in a relationship with somebody, particularly if it's your own child, right? You can have a child who really goes awry in high school, right? There's a lot more influence of peer relations relationships at that time.

social media, it's becoming so dominant in our children's lives that they don't even have a fair chance to develop who they are. They're so bombarded with all this other stuff. So that conflict can come home where you're watching your child develop values that you don't agree with at all. And that can be really challenging. Well, obviously, you're not going to kick your child. Some people do kick their children out. But you would try not to do that. You'd at least find a suitable place if you really needed to go that extreme route. But you really try to. to work on that. So some relationships require a lot more time, energy, and effort.

But then if you just meet somebody, you know, out you're making a new friend and you find out this person is entitled or arrogant or very self-absorbed and doesn't really care about you, it's easier to get rid of those relationships. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally does. Sometimes circumstances, you know, create, incredible obstacles in our life. And when I look at, you know, I grew up in like a single mom household.

And I know a lot of young women maybe don't have both parents there. Do you think that that particular set of circumstances makes for a more difficult relationship between mothers and daughters? That's, you know, it's interesting because yes and no. I think that the, you know, the, and I want to say this also because I imagine a lot of your listeners may be single parents. And, you know, you don't want to feel bad about yourself or your life choices if someone made that choice for you or you made that choice to separate from somebody who may have been a toxic person in your life or maybe was cheating on you or was addicted to drugs or porn or whatever the case may be where it just made more sense to separate that that connection. So it's really what's most important for children is to know that they're loved, to know that they're cared for, to know that they're cared for, to know.

that they are admired and appreciated and you know a single mom can provide that a single dad can provide that it really just takes a little bit more effort and work and to some degree i mean i was a single mom so uh i mean her dad was very involved in her life and i made sure that that happened because otherwise we would have been recreating his own trauma and drama from his life where he was abandoned by his real father and then he was raised stepfather and i did not want that to happen but it was very very clear that he and I were like oil and water and it was not going to work. And we separated when she was a baby. I figured, okay, if I'm going to do it, let's do it now before it's even more complicated later on. But, you know, I just always wanted to make sure that I surrounded

her by loving people, you know, so she had lots of other mothers, if you will. She had lots of my friends who loved children. I would have them around a lot. And so she would get a lot of those goodies. So I think it can be more complex for sure. And there's certain element. that are more challenging, but it's certainly not, it's not a deal breaker and how well you can create a beautiful relationship with your child. Yeah, that's well said. I'm not a big fan of letting circumstances dictate the outcome of things. And we all dealt a hand and we got to deal with it on some level.

Desiree comes in over here. She says that Desiree from Palm Springs, what's up, Des. She says, do you believe mother-daughter relationships are fundamentally different from other family dynamics. It's so, in what ways are they uniquely challenging and transformative? Yeah, I do. And I'm very careful, even in my writing in the book, at times I do say things, like also for fathers and sons, because it's not the most special relationship on the planet that's so different than anything else. It has all the fundamentals of a very important, it's very meaningful and important relationship. But, you know, let's face it, I mean, moms are the

ones who give birth, and that is a unique experience that dads don't get to have. What was that movie with? Was it Arnold Schwarzenegger who was like he was the pregnant man? Do you remember that? Was it Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwartz was a long time ago? He was he was a pregnant man anyway. We know that that's not happening anytime in this generation. So that so that's a very special bond.

I mean, we literally hold the the fetus, embryo, the fetus in our womb. I mean, that is, that's an attachment that cannot match anything else. And I think daughters, maybe so because they're raised more or maybe fundamentally women, females are a little bit more sensitive to that experience. I know that my daughter, she's gotten into the realm of sacred femininity and truly understanding. She's studying now to be a doula. She really wants to be that birthing experience is so relevant in her mind. It's so important. And I think that so mothers and daughters share that kind of specialness, if you will,

and that can make it very unique and very beautiful and lovely. But also we are inherently in need of the separation individuation process. And because we're so united and so close in that way, that it can sometimes make that developmental journey a little bit more challenging, particularly because a lot of moms want to hold so dear to their heart, and their space, their daughters. Like, I don't want to let her go. I don't want her to grow up.

She's my little girl. You know, and dads do that with little girls too. She's my little girl. He's very protective, et cetera. Whereas I guess in this culture, and I haven't lived across the world, I've visited lots of places, but I don't know in other cultures.

It could be quite different where, you know, the boys are kind of really encouraged much more early on, be independent, be a provider, be a protector. And, you know, it's a little bit different than those dynamics, I think. what do you think what's your take and you mentioned you were raised by a single mom what was that experience like for you

I feel like abandonment in some levels like I know that my mom did her very best to create as much as she could but you know she struggled as all parents would to provide a lifestyle that she felt was worthy

of being for us like she loved us so much she wanted us to have everything on some level. But in doing that, like, I feel there was a level abandonment in my parents getting divorced. And maybe that is just me trying to work through some things. But I see that pattern. And I see it in other things, too. Like, my opinion, and this might be unpopular, is that a child that has two parents is going to be vastly more prepared for the future than a child with a single parent. That's just my experience. I don't know that to be true, but it seems like that to me. Do you think that's too far off? Well, yes and no. A lot of it depends on the community

that one has around them. Like I said, I had a lot of really supportive friends and other relatives that were amazing. I mean, I had, so my daughter also was a only child, so only child and single But her dad was involved. And I may have a very different opinion if he had checked out and decided he didn't want that role, right? That would be very different. But he was very involved and she's very close to her dad. And he's a beautiful man in her life. And that's a beautiful thing.

We got along much better apart than we did together. So a lot of it has to do with also conflict and the availability of the other co-parents. So if there are co-parents or a community, again, they used to say it takes a village to raise a child. And we try to do it in this little myopic little space in our home with, you know, two plus two, four, two and one and one, these small little versions. So like I, her first cousins, my sister's daughters, I mean, I used to take them all the time. My older niece didn't even know what the day Thursday was. It was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Park Day, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,

because Park Day was Thursday the day her tea used to come to take her out. So I got them very close. some ways my daughter wasn't even raised as an only child. She was actually raised in a community of other children. We had a lot of play dates. So there's ways in which we can circumvent some of those abandonment feelings. But yeah, I think at the core, a lot of children adopted children or children of divorce have this sense of being abandoned. The truth is, as an adult, you need to work on that because you don't want to carry that sense of abandonment forward. By the way, You can't be abandoned as an adult unless you are dependent because abandonment implies the necessity of someone else to give you your needs.

So once you're an adult and you can meet your own needs, you can no longer be abandoned. So even adults and relationships will say things like, oh, I feel abandoned by my partner. Well, you might feel, you might experience you're being rejected or that your preferences are not being seen or met. But the reality is you don't need this other person unless you do, right? There are some people who are completely dependent on their spouse or their So, I know I just went all over the world on that one. Yeah, I think it's fascinating to think about.

And as we touched back on the earlier part of the conversation, my wife picked up this little, this book. We were at Barnes & Noble one day, and it was just one of those little impulse buys, like those little small books you buy it, like the counter. And it was about mothers and daughters. And we remember reading through it. It had all this cool, like, sort of anecdotes and one-liners, and we were reading it.

And it was really funny and touching and heartwarming. And you get to the last page and it's like, and now you let go. And we both almost started crying. You know what I mean? Because it was like, all this cool advice. And then you're like, and then you let go. And it's like, what? How am I supposed to do that?

We just spent like 17, you know, like it was, it was this real feeling, this overwhelming sense of like, wait a minute. I have to let go of this thing. Like, it's hard, it seems like. It is. And then there's also some peace in that. You know, there is some peace in when we recognize the acceptance of what we have control over and what we don't. And a lot of the journey, I think, particularly in, look, for the most part, if you're a good person and a good loving person and you have children, you're going to do your darnest to make your child feel loved and adored. And especially if you've worked through your own inner child wounds where you don't have to recreate the same damage

or trauma that maybe you yourself experienced. But by the time they get to teenagers, I mean, it's just a crapshoot, man. It's just, it's anyone's guess where that's going to turn out to be. So is your daughter your only child or do you have any other children? Our son died like the first day when he was born. He was still born in nine and a half months. And so in some ways, it was the biggest tragedy of our life.

But I believe that hole that's left in your heart at some point in time when you work through these things, something grows back. And something did grow back. And it was this way, this lens to see the world. So a few years after having my son, Ocean, we had my daughter's Sky. And so it's an interesting question because when a child dies, do you say you have two kids or do you have one kid? I always say two because I want to acknowledge him. And I love him and I think about him all the time. So she is an only child, but she's aware of what happened.

and but she is our only child that is living, I guess. Yes. That's a roundabout way to answer that question. Thanks for me sharing that, by the way. And that's beautiful, and I'm so sorry for your loss. That has to be just one of the deepest pains that any parent could ever experience. And it's nice to see that you're able to smile today for that. But I bet it was not that easy at that time.

And so I would imagine, too, that there's a little bit extra that your daughter experience. in that she is the surviving child. So you want to be careful, and this is not to give you any advice because I don't know, but just in general, the theme of being careful to not overburden her with the responsibility of making up for that, right? That's between you and your wife to deal with that loss

because she didn't deal with that loss. Your daughter, Sky, did that what you said? Yes, yeah, thank you for knowing that. Yeah, Sky did not, she did not experience that. Maybe internally on a cellular level, I don't know. We don't know much about that, but maybe deeply genetically, there's a little piece of that. But in reality, for the most part, in her waking daily life, she doesn't have that suffering. So that's something that's really crucial.

And that's a big part of the book is about healing our own wounds and how we make our experience with our next generation of children more healthy. and that's not easy, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, the accountability is so incredibly powerful when a mom can say, honey, tell me how I made mistakes and here's also how I think that I made mistakes. And we can do that from, from any age. You don't have to wait until they're adults. We can start that process along the way. My daughter once said to me, mom, you know, the worst thing you did to me. I'm like, oh, oh, oh, you know, Oh, oh, here it comes. Oh, time out. It was time out.

Time out was the most brutal thing on the planet for her. And I didn't trust my intuition enough. This was the discipline of choice at the time that she was three and four. Your kid is making a bunch of noise and being a temper tantruming little pistol. Then you put them in time out. This was not a good method for her. And it was traumatic because I was. I put her in a room and she's crying and I'm crying because I don't want her in there

and I want to hold her and I'm thinking, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to be the tough mom and let her deal with her consequences. And all I really wanted to do was hold her. And then I went to this, I'm trained in EMDR, I movement desensitization processing, which is a trauma tool. It's very helpful for people who have endured chronic abuse, PTSD, et cetera. And so when I was in that course,

the beginning course and the advanced course, they taught me something about with children that if they'll allow you to put them in your lap, put your child in your lap, and ideally they're facing outward, and then you wrap around them and you start tapping their shoulders, very gently and say soothing, calming words that has a very impactful,

experience on their nervous system in calming down. Because EMDR is bilateral stimulation of the two hemispheres. Alternating stimulation. It's either through eye movements or this or tapping. And so that method was so much better for her. It didn't cause her to become more of an acting out whirlwind Tasmanian devil. No, instead, it would calm her down in that moment. So, you know, I had to hear that was the worst.

thing and I felt terrible and what I said was I am I looked her in the eye and I deeply in your eyes and I said I am so truly sorry for not having better intuition at that time to do something better for you and just owning that it comped her too because she was carrying this resentment toward me you know she was so she was so loving little girl she didn't ever wanted to say anything negative or mean or she might think that I would think was mean but I really wanted to hear And that's one of the hardest things for moms. We have to get through our own shame and guilt about things so we can be a vessel for our daughters to come to us and say, this is how you failed me, Mom. This is how I wish things would have been better.

And there's one thing I'd do in the book, which I thought was really cool. And they let me keep it in there. I was very excited about it was I asked a bunch of young women in there, anywhere from like 18 to 35, what their journey. with their moms and their relationship. What's the one thing that they, the three things they love the most about their mom, what their moms did, what they thought were the most damaging or the most hurtful things and just a series of questions for the daughters to be able to answer candidly about their moms, what things that they wish their moms would change, what things they wish would never change in their moms. And so it really opens up that what I call the healing tree,

you're creating a fertile ground to create new seeds where you can have a healing tree. And it's one thing that my My daughter and I did as well. We started a WhatsApp healing tree conversation as I was writing the book so that we could actually share in those things in a sacred, safe space. That is a cool thing. It's, it's, and it, my mind's going back to the whole different parts of the brain processing information through tapping or stimulating both sides of the brain. Like that, what a great way to understand a situation when you can process it holistically. You know what I mean? Like when you can process all that information, oh, I see the images. Oh, I see the metaphor. Oh, I hear the language. Oh, I feel it. Like, yeah, you're going to, you're going to better than if you're a visual learner and you only hear the language part of it. Like, that's beautiful. I never, thanks for sharing that. It's, it's, it's, it's interesting that you talk about sassy and rude. It's chock full of awesome information about how to, how to get messaging and understand relationships better. It's, we have, it's, it's interesting that you talk about guilt and shame because we have, I got Clint Kyle on deck with a question, but right now we're going to go to Betsy.

She says, how do guilt and shame become such powerful forces in mother-daughter relationships? And are there cultural or societal factors that make these emotions harder to overcome? Oh, absolutely. Definitely. There are some cultures, I believe in Asian culture, particularly Japanese culture. I mean, shame, you have to save face. There's a very strong public persona that you need to manifest. and you do not, you do not air your dirty laundry. You do not. I mean, I don't know the statistics these days, but I rarely get Asian populations into therapy.

And when I do, I'm so flattered that they would trust enough to talk to me about some of these things. And the shame core is very deep. And we have a very shaming society. Let me say the difference between shame and guilt, I think it's a really critical difference. guilt is the experience of I did something wrong or I have a bad behavior right I stole something from you I feel bad I feel guilty I am remorseful about it and now I'm going to make amends that's that's healthy guilt well it's healthy guilt because it's helping you to remedy your behavior it's

but a lot of people stay mired in guilt because they don't let it go but then you're not really making amends you're not changing anything you're likely to do the same behavior over and over again You really need to acknowledge that this is bad behavior. I'm still a good person, but this is bad behavior. Shame is I am bad. I am worthless. I'm undeserving. I something is defective and wrong with me.

And shame-based people, myself included, I suffered tremendous amount of shame that took me. I mean, I had a severe eating disorder in high school and in young adulthood. And I acted out with promiscuity. I was raped. I had so many negative experiences to overcome, you know, truly turning adversity into strength. But the core, if I have to say that was the deepest component of my own personal therapy was healing shame.

It was letting go of just because I was a mess. I mean, I was a hot mess, let's say that. I had to realize that I in my core being was a good person and that I can have challenges and I can have conflicts, I can have feelings that don't feel right, I can have all kinds of thoughts. It doesn't make me a bad person, but it's how can I show up in the world? But I had a guy I was dating and he said, you know, you're like being in a beautiful house that has these potholes in it and you never know when you're going to hit the pothole and fall to the bottom. like, ow, but okay, right?

Because if I experienced that my being was being challenged, even if he was just giving me a standard criticism about something, like, you know, you didn't do that the right way. I asked you to do it this way. Why didn't you do it that way? Not being controlling. Just simply I said I would do it and I didn't do it. I went to like, oh my God, something's wrong with me instead of,

I messed up, let me fix it. Yeah. It's very challenging to have relationships with people who are shame-based. And, mom, you know, who carry a lot of shame, they're not going to be able to hear useful feedback from their daughters about how to parent them better. And, you know, not that daughters get all the control and power and how they're parenting because the parent does need to make those decisions, particularly when they're underage.

But at the same time, if we can't hear any, if we can't respond to and absorb feedback and really learn from the interaction of what's going on and we just stay mired in a shame, shame or guilt spiral, the relationship can't grow and it's going to do damage. And it's ultimately, most likely, I should say, not ultimately, but most likely shame begets more shame. Your daughter will inherit that level of shame from you and have a hard time herself standing on her own ground as a self and respecting and loving herself in the way that most moms want their daughters to feel.

Thank you, Betsy, for that question. That's one of my, my other one of my, is understanding. shame for sure. I've got to take a moment to think for a minute. Like that is that touches a nerve and I think it does with a lot of people. This idea of shame and buried shame that just that just turns into like a hard resentment on some level and you never really move past. I see it in in a lot of relationships and thank you, Betsy, for for bringing that out there. Is there, let me move over here to Clint. We can come back to shame because I still have some more thoughts on it, but I want to get to Clint. Clint Kyle's amazing human beings.

being, he says, what are the biggest hurdles preventing adult daughters and their mothers from having authentic relationships based on mutual respect? Thanks, Clint. Thank you, Clint. Lots of hurdles, right? I think we just covered one big one is that if the parent, moms, dads, dads also need to heal and resolve that level of shame and unhealthy guilt. That's very key. The other is taking an inventory of our own childhood experiences, what we're left with that we would call baggage, the stuff that really doesn't serve us well, that we might be acting out or recreating in our relationships, hoping that our daughters in some way will heal that for us, like through that relationship that's magically going to alter that. But that's our own personal work that we have

to do. Otherwise, it's going to be an hindrance in our true selves to be able to have a healthy relationship with our daughters. So it's very important to really take inventory and stock on what those experiences are that are left unfinished and unheeled. And a lot of times we think that we have to do that with the insulting parent, if you will, like that, oh, my dad was really mean to me or my mom was abusive or whatever. And we want to go back to them to make them heal it for us. We get this level of vindication. But actually that healing can come from within. and we need to do that ourselves, whether it's a therapist or a close confidant or a life coach or just self-help books, whatever you need to do that you're really kind of clearing out

that stuff so that you have a fresher slate to deal with. And the other hurdles are, you know, our environment. Our environment is very challenging. I'm blaming our environment. But, boy, we live in a tough world right now. And, you know, I say that because now I'm older and I always said I'd never say that. But every generation seems to think that their generation is the most challenging. And I don't know.

I'm sure it was challenging for my parents and your parents and their parents in so many different ways. So I don't say that with any level of lightness. I mean, each generation has this challenge. So I think it's important to assess the social, cultural atmosphere in which you live and take stock in, you know, what's useful, what isn't? I mean, whether that means sometimes setting boundaries with your child that maybe other parents are not doing. I'm very much against this. I think we've created such a me-oriented culture that we've lost the concept of other or we.

And so it's all about me and it's all about I and what do I need and what do I want. And we've lost this idea of this empathetic experience of, okay, but is that serving our community is so much. I can't say more important because serving the self is very important, but also serving our community and the needs of others. And so one of the huge hurdles of parenting is how do we take a lot of that sort of peer pressure in our own lives? Like, you know, Bill and Katie down the street who gave their child a cell phone at seven years old. You know, is that we're going to work in your family? What would be the need for your daughter to have or your son to have a cell phone at seven years old?

Maybe that family, it's required. Maybe they're separated. Maybe there's some emergencies. Maybe we don't know. So we can't just do what others do just because they're doing it. We need to be very thoughtful and mindful of the context in which our family exists in whatever form that family is. Single parent or joint households or moms and moms or dads or dads or whatever the configuration is. It doesn't matter.

It's the family as you define it. And what do you want? What's the family value? And one of the things that I think is very important in parenting, it's I call it the family-centric component as opposed to the couple-centric or child-centric. Okay. But it's family-centric. And just, I know there's a little segue in off-topic here, but it's like, you know, when children will say, well, I don't have to do that.

That's your job. You know, I don't have to pick up my clothes. That's what you do. You say, excuse me? This is a community. I don't have time because I'm doing. something else to benefit you and you need to do that to help me then that's what we do i actually taught my daughter to do her own laundry at eight years old i don't know if that's a claim to fame but boy

she's very efficient with her laundry because it wasn't hard she certainly had the mental capacity to do it and it helped us move things along so that i would say you do that we have more goodies coming later if i've mom's got more time we can have more park time we can have more fun time so it's It's a balance. And that's part of those hurdles is to get really clear about what's necessary for the community of the family to build strength. Yeah, I like that. On some level, it's getting the individual or the child or maybe even the parent to see that they're part of the whole. Instead of being me-centric, I like that idea about a community and seeing the bigger picture of like, hey, this is going to benefit all of us if we can come together and figure this thing called responsibility out. Yes. Responsibility. This is a big word. Responsibility and accountability are so critical in my book as well. It's, it's, what can I take responsibility for? That's pure. It's true. It's real. Because if I did something to inadvertently affect my child's well-being or her sense of self, that I want to claim that. I don't want her to have to carry that throughout her life. Now, sometimes, here's the rub that's going to be really hard for parents to swan it. follow that I that I encounter a lot and I in myself too is sometimes our children perceive things

differently than the way they were so we because our minds are are forming right when we're young we don't have perceptual clarity sometimes now sometimes we're told things inaccurately and and and sort of forced to believe certain things that aren't true like the parents and my family when there was violence you were not supposed to say anything it would it happened for some other it. You know, somebody, somebody accidentally fell on the counter. Right. Somebody, has a lot of cover-ups. So it was very hard to, to determine what was reality and what wasn't, because I was told all these things. You don't say that, but oh, you say this. It's like, eh. So I'm like a, I'm a truth seeker today. Like, that's so important to me in relationships

is I do not deal well with lying at all. Even, even white lies. I'd rather somebody say, I don't want to come to your party because it just don't feel like it than to make up some Kaka made me an excuse because you don't want me to feel bad. I'm not going to feel bad. You have to have a right because I'm healthy enough now. You have a right to be and do what you do. But for parents, sometimes the children will come back and report, well, you did this.

I was like, what? I didn't do that at all. Okay. So then you have to get into that mindset. Oh, based on your perception that that was so, I can totally understand that you feel the way you feel. This is a useful tool in all relationships, by the way. I observe something.

It's my observations, my subjective observation. Then I interpret that to mean something. That's how I get to my feelings. I get to my feelings through my own internal computer that has maneuvered whatever it is that I just observed. And that's how I feel. So if I'm angry, then it's because I have interpreted your actions to be malintended.

If you didn't take out the trash because you forgot, but I think you're being passive aggressive because you told me you wouldn't, didn't. And you just said, oh, I forgot. And I think, oh, he's lying. Now I'm angry. Yeah. Oh, if I think, oh, he's preoccupied,

he's got a lot on his plate. Maybe it's unrealistic to put that chore on him. Maybe I'd take it over instead. I get that I have sympathy and empathy. How we get to our feelings has everything to do with how we perceive things. So our children, let me segue a little bit, because I think this is really critical.

I was trained in Gestalt therapy. I love Gestalt therapy. I don't know if you've said that. But in essence, it's the whole, WHOLE, is greater than the sum of its parts versus Freudian traditional psychoanalytic theory, which is that everything is reductionistic. You break it down to its smallest minute pieces

and then you analyze from there, whereas it's the more holistic. And within Gestalt therapy, they talk a lot about perceptual, awareness, right? So have you ever seen a picture of what you could either perceive as two faces or a vase? It's the white space and the black space, whether you look at black space, right space. And once you lock in on one perceptual field, it's really hard to shift to the other one. It's like, no, I can't see the face. I only see the two faces. I only see the base. So flexibility in our perceptual

field is very important in healthy relationships, which most of us need a lot of training to do that. So back to children, and as they grow up, they will have memories of things that didn't happen the way they happened, but they happened that way in their mind. And that's really all that matters, because that's the experience that they're living with. So just like with a child who's crying, who skinned, his or her knee, who's bleeding, who says, I'm going to die. My knee is bleeding. and it's like, you know, it's like, little tiny drops of blood, but to that child, that is, my body is oozing something that's a stay inside me not supposed to come out. A child is frightened.

So you don't say, oh, honey, it's nothing. You say, I know, sweetie, it's kind of scary. That's a booboo. We're going to fix it and it's going to be okay. But you first align with the experience of the fear. So, daughter comes and says, you know, you were so nasty to me in my teenage years. You just never listened to me. And you go, oh, geez, I think I spent like four hours every third night listening to you, your heartache about this boy.

Please try it. My phone decided to talk to me. I'm so sorry about that. That's all right. Minor. Thank you, Siri, but no, thank you. Okay. So we're trying to then acknowledge that that's what was received.

That's what was internalized. And then later you can say, you know what, I don't really perceive that that was so. but if that was your experience, then I am sorry that that's the way you perceived it. What could I have done differently? What might I have done better now that you're in this different developmental phase? So it's a work in progress. It's an evolution of communication and understanding and empathy and compassion. And ultimately, my little bit of a manipulative goal is that the daughter comes around and sees you do all this work.

And she herself wants to come towards you and have more repair. and maybe take some acknowledgement and responsibility for her sassy and rude. By the way, it's not just daughters who are sassy and rude. Moms can become quite sassy and rude as well. It's like a, it's like a reciprocal effect. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating relationship without a doubt. I think it speaks to the incredible amount of growth and learning that happens in all relationships,

but in this one as well is we learn so much from our kids about ourselves. And the point you made about observation, interpretation, and then feeling, like, man, sometimes you just can't interpret situations until you have the experience up. You know what I mean? So that seems like it's always shifting. As you get older, you realize, oh, my mom or my dad was just doing their best. Or my mom or my dad were doing this thing. I didn't know that.

So, of course, I was going to act that way. And that can release some of the guilt and shame in ways. Yes, yes, yes. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about maturation. is when we can actually put our parents into a context, right? So it's not just about, oh, did they serve my needs well and what kind of parent they were, but, oh, my parents were children at 1.2, and they endured an experience their life cycle. It's not to make excuses, certainly not for some, but he's had an abusive parent,

a neglectful parent. And, you know, there's an attachment theory they talk about, you know, to create a secure attachment in a child. you have to do it only about 50% good enough. So, you know, you get a lot of leeway to air. It does not have to be perfect. But, you know, true neglect is somebody who's completely self-absorbed, maybe a drug addict or somebody who just is not there at all.

That's going to cause a lot of damage. And, you know, a lot of times if that kind of parent doesn't come around to a full circle amends, were really taking an acknowledgement of that. Maybe that's the kind of parent you don't want to have in your life. But for the most part, most parents are doing the best they can with the tools that they have and what was offered to them at the time. My parents, you know, therapy was like, only if you're crazy do you go to therapy.

And they had so much shame because they were so trying to fit in as, you know, my dad being a Jew and fitting into, you know, with all the anti-Semitism that was around. And my mom being a Protestant, So they were mixed, mixed religion. And they're nagavit, nah, nagavating. That's a good word, navigating. Their conflict around that.

And, you know, wanting to be, I mean, they were the picture perfect couple on the outside. Well dressed. You know, once my dad kind of made it, it was like they were beautiful couple. And, you know, the family was always dressed to the nines and looking good and all that stuff. But nobody knew what was really going on behind the scenes. So I really put my mom and my dad. of context and really got to understand their own demons, their own tragedies and traumas and things and and they really did they tried I mean I know that they they loved me you know now I

didn't always feel that as a child I didn't and uh well said part of that is turning adversity into strength you know turning as I say chicken shit into chicken salad you know make something good out of something that was pretty shitty sorry I don't know if we're we're allowed to use those words. Yeah, by all means, by all means, sometimes the raw language fits the raw emotions, and that's what breaks through those masks that we put on, right? Like, it's not, it's not all beautiful and wonderful, but you got to, you got to find the meaning in there sometimes.

Absolutely. We got another question. We got another question coming in from, I don't see the name, but it says, do you believe that true reconciliation in a mother-daughter relationship is possible without both parties being aware of their own psychological wounds? I'll say no. I don't think it's possible to have true reconciliation if there isn't some element of acknowledgement on the daughter's part of her contribution as an adult to what may be interfering with the progression and the enhancement of the relationship.

And that but and I don't like but too much, but and mom's, can do a tremendous amount to set the stage and plant the seeds for that to occur. So it's a yes and no. Like that question is, I really want to address the true reconciliation. You know, can it ever be complete anyway? But it's a work in progress. And the more that both can do together, the better. But moms can do a lot.

You remember the, and the Oprah shows, it was really actually quite lovely when they would bring on like mothers and daughters or, you know, family. conflict, types of things. And it was usually, it was biased. It was mom start the healing process first. Because be the bigger person. You got to do that. You're the mom. Because even though your daughter may be an adult now, you're still the mom. So that you still have a little bit more of that edge and power, if you will, to supply that which is needed for the healing to occur. So, so yes, I do think that a lot can be done, but probably we do need both parties to be participating. It'll be better.

Yeah, it makes sense. At least there's leverage there. Both people are coming in with a little bit of leverage on themselves, which shows their ability to want to work on something on some level. Yeah, we got another question coming in. It says, many people struggle with the belief that they have to maintain family ties at any cost. What are the indicators that a mother-daughter relationship is truly too toxic to reconcile?

And how does one come to terms with that? Yeah, I'd actually describe. one of my clients in the book, all names are changed, so nobody can be identified and details are changed so that everybody's in there is a composite, basically. But the reality is that this poor woman, I mean, her daughter was a,

I mean, we're talking just a severe, severe drug addict thief, just was not living in society in any way, shape or form that was, okay, And every time the mom tried to have a relationship with her, the daughter would steal from her, would lie to her, would take advantage of her, manipulate her. And she finally just had to say, I can't do this. I love you from afar. I do suggest in those situations that somebody seeks some guidance in maybe Al-Anon, which is a 12-step program for significant others of those who are suffering from addiction.

And then there's just psychological abuse or emotional abuse that an adult child can provide. provides for a parent and the mom. And, you know, those relationships, I would say get some guidance because sometimes an objective third party can be helpful in really assessing the situation. Do that, which you can do in terms of trying to set healthy boundaries. If those boundaries are repeatedly violated, though, and you cannot come to any agreements, I say sometimes it's worthy of just taking a pause, not necessarily Xing out the relationship, completely, but taking a pause and then reassessing.

And then if you decide that it's really time to cut ties, then you do that. And you do that in a loving, as loving of a way as possible. It certainly doesn't, it doesn't do anybody any good to be harsh or abusive or assaultive. So it's better just say something like, honey, I adore you. I love you. You're part of my being. And apparently we cannot see eye to eye in any way, shape or form.

And I need to respect your life, but I need my life to be respected too. And so, no, you know, that two, two letter word, no, it's really important. Yeah, that's a tough one. It's, you know, we, we've blown through an hour super fast. Are you okay on time or do you have some things coming up or because I have some other questions, but I want to be. I'm going to get for another like 10 minutes. How's that?

Okay, that's fantastic. Let me, let me look at these and I'll give you one, another question. question and then we can begin to land the plane here. How would you define a treasurable mother-daughter connection? And do you think such an ideal is achievable in our relationships, or is it an ideal that depends on individual personalities and boundaries? That one. I'll go with C. Right. Yes, individual. Individual preferences, psychological boundaries, personalities,

et cetera. We're work in progress, all of us, right? We're ever evolving and we're ever changing. And what we may have

thought about 10 years ago, we may think very differently about today. And that's going to manifest in our relationships and how we relate to each other. So I think that in the mother daughter relationship,

what's treasurable is having, I said that word earlier, and I'll say it again, flexibility. The flexibility of even in our neural pathways in our brain, the more we can take alternative perspectives

and we can see different sides of something, which makes myself, I'd be a terrible decision maker in many ways, because I can see the two sides of four sides, ten sides to everything. It's like, oh, oh, I get that. Oh, yeah, I get that. But in a relationship with someone that we want that fluidity, you want that ability to kind of flex back and forth in terms of understanding somebody else's point of view, your daughter's namely. Yeah. So it is, it's an individual process, but it's very there a lot of healing can occur that's what I believe it's not perfect no one's perfect and I don't know that we ever arrive right this idea that oh finally I did the work and I arrived

I mean every time I think I've done this personal therapy I need to do I'm like oh geez I never dealt with that holy moly I better go back you know or or I do something with self-help or I do something with internal dialogue to you know whatever whatever is needed but but being open and willing to be flexible and empathetic, compassionate. Those are the things that create a treasure. I love it. I think that this conversation was a treasure. I learned a lot.

And my heart goes out to all the mothers and daughters in a relationship out there and to all the families and the people that are doing their best to make the world a better place. If you're within the sound of our voice, please go down to the show notes and check out Deborah, Dr. Deborah's book. It's amazing. You'll have all these insights. And it's really well done and it's full of heartwarming stories that are sometimes a little tragic probably, but it's very raw.

And I really appreciate the candidness with what you came out here and you told the stories and you were gracious with your time. But before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? Well, I think I'm just mostly excited about life and what life has to unfold each day. You know, that's kind of, I, you know, sometimes I'm a little prone to depression. I have had some historical bouts with depression. and so it's a challenge for me sometimes to stay as positive as my ideal self would like me to be. But I do.

I get excited about, you know, new discoveries in the world, particularly in medicine and in psychology and technology. I mean, there's so many things that are happening. And then always, you know, trying to do the best I can with myself in my relationships. And people can find me at my website, which is a great place, Dr. Deborahonline.com, D-R-D-E-B-R-A-O-L-A-O-Line.com. The book is available on Amazon and other online booksellers. I love the book. Thassie and Rood, her new attitude,

a tough love guide for moms on how to bring back the sugar and spice and they're not so nice adult daughters. There's a checklist, there's some little self-questionnaires, quizzes, you know, how do you rate or on a two-nice mom. the first, the nice, two nice moms club, you know, just, and what too nice really means. Let me just say, can I, can I leave? Yeah, of course, please. We have often told our children to be nice.

Do you know what nice means? It literally means pretending not to know. So when we're telling our children not to be nice, supposed to be kind, we're telling them to pretend to not know. when I write about that. And so my quick story, when my daughter was, I think she was four, and we were at the grocery store, and we're in line, and there's a gentleman in front of us, and he has quite a large nose. And my daughter points to him, it's innocent as a four-year-old can be, and she says, Mommy, that's the biggest nose I've ever seen.

I have a lot of options here. I can reprimand her, which I don't want to do, because she says, mommy, that's the biggest nose I've ever seen. I can reprimand her, which I don't want to do because she didn't do anything other than be observant and make a statement. And this guy was a gem and a half. He takes her hand, he puts her finger on his nose. He says, I know you want to touch it? He was so kind and so kind.

And I thought, oh, shoo, I dodged that bullet. I did not have to reprimand her. And I know other people around me are like, you're going to let your daughter talk about it. Yeah, yeah, totally. Assumption, right? Like, oh, my God. Right. And I got really fascinated, like, oh, I was going to tell her to be nice, but what does that really mean?

And so I did some research to understand that it really means pretending not to know. So don't pretend not to know. Be kind. I mean, we're going to use the word anyway, nice. But really, if you're really talking about be kind, we want to be kind to other people. So again, Dr. Deborah Online.com. Sassy and rude, pick up a copy. And thank you for listening.

I thank you for all the people who wrote in to ask questions. I really appreciate that. You're great questions and your daughter, Sky, she's got, I'm sure you and your wife are great parents because you just, I can feel that in your, in your heart. You have a lot of heart. She's lucky to have you. You make me want to cry. To my wife Kay and my daughter, Sky, thank you.

I love you both so much. And to you, Dr. Debra, beautiful conversation. I can't wait for more people to go and read the book and go down and check it out and reach out to you. She's got her, go down to the email, ask her some questions, and hang on briefly afterwards, I just want to talk to you briefly. But to everybody within the sound of my voice, go to the show notes, check out the book, and have a beautiful day, ladies and gentlemen.

That's all we got. Aloha.