I'm Laurie Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice column for the Atlantic.
And I'm Guy Wench. I'm the author of Emotional First Aid, and I write the Dear Guy advice column for Ted. And this is Dear Therapists. This week we're going to check in on our guests from season two to hear how they're doing a year later.
First, a quick note, Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical or psychological advice, and is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. In the sessions you'll hear, all names have been changed for the privacy of our guests.
So today we're catching up with Melissa, and her episode was called Melissa's Stifled Emotions. When we spoke to her a year ago, she described that she would get overwhelmed when her kids had a meltdown and got loud, and that noise made her really shut down and be unable to be there for her kids in a moment, to read assure them, or to validate them, or to help
them manage their emotions because she was so overwhelmed. She also had a history of trauma, and she wasn't making the connection between her reaction to intense feelings and noise and how she freezes and associates in the moment. We also suggested that her husband, who she said was on the autism spectrum, might be expressing his love for her in ways she might be missing, and that while she wished to be emotionally closer to him, she maintains an
emotional distance from him too. So let's get a reminder of how that session went.
It's funny because he's way more expressive in terms of saying he loves me, like I have a hard time saying I love you back. You know. I think it's easier in hindsight, but many times it is in a moment but I'm frozen, or because I feel like almost a repulsion to the child, like just get away from me, just go away, leave me alone.
You're listening to deo therapists. We'll be back after a short break.
So let's hear what's going on with Melissa.
Now, Hey, Laurian, guys, it's been a whole year, and I think I've gained a lot since the last time we had spoken. The first thing you had me do was to notice in my relationship with my husband when love is coming towards me, to be aware of it and to notice it. And I think I've been much more aware of the things that he does and I translate them as love. And even if he doesn't say the right words with it, and even if he doesn't do the eye contact and the things that I really want,
I recognize it as love. And I also noticed that I do that with connection. The truth is, I think I wasn't aware that people aren't connecting with me, and I just haven't been noticing. A definitely added to my life this past year. My father died suddenly, and I think I had to just reevaluate the love that he had for me. He had aspergers, and you know, just like my husband, he's more limited on what he can
say and express. And yeah, it's definitely been a year with relationship to my children, who had asked me to not try to comfort them in the moment because it was too overwhelming to kind of come back to them when they calm down and talk about their feelings. And I've honestly, really really really struggled with it. Not because I don't want to be there for them just because
it's extremely overwhelming. It's highly triggering for me, I realized, because I have so many repressed emotions myself, like or that I was never allowed to show, and when they show it, it's you know, alarming, overwhelming, feels wrong. So I still struggle a lot emotionally validating my children. I have been seeing a therapists regularly, pretty intense work. We're doing for almost a year now. We're healing my attachment trauma and learning my patterns, my avoidance. I feel it's
allowing me to be more emotionally present to myself. I think that is key, being able to feel my emotions because I didn't allow myself to do so for so long. It wasn't safe. So I've gained a tremendous amount of awareness of done a bunch of healing modalities, a lot of mindfulness courses, healing retreats. I've even dabbled in psychedelics. I tried ayahuasca to help me yeah clarity, but I think the answer really lies in me. So I'm working on things, and I wanted to thank you so much
for your guidance. I still reflect upon much often, and I hope to continue working on things.
First of all, our condolences to Melissa on the death of her father. It sounds like it's been a really challenging time for her, and at the same time, it sounds like it's been a really healing time for her. I love how she is very aware of this lack of connection that she has been feeling and her own role in that in terms of her inability to take in the connection and her own fears of getting close to people rooted in that trauma that she experienced growing up.
And I think when she taught about the difficulty that she's still having with her children, it's very hard for people who have had significant trauma, like Melissa has to self regulate, and you need to regulate yourself before you can be there to help your children self regulate, and so it's still hard for her to be emotionally present
with them. And I remember her relationship with anger was that when she was growing up, she was not only unable to express anger, but her parents would have these extreme reactions where they would grab her from behind and yell at her, and.
It was so frightening.
So I can see why those big feelings those intense feelings that other people have are very triggering for her still. But it's great that she's working on all this in therapy and is becoming really aware of those connections.
Now I agree, and this is what it looks like when somebody is really really working on themselves. And that's theresion I had a year ago, and that's the impression I still have today. This is a woman who is determined to work on herself and to improve. She's really willing to try so many things, the healing retreats, the psychedelics, so many different approaches to try and get herself to grow. And I really applaud that, and I applaud her motivation.
It's the thing that comes across so strongly from her. The one thing that she's really struggling with still is being there for her kids when they are loud and emotional. It still disregulates her, It triggers her, it floods her, and she has a very hard time being there for them. One thing I would like to suggest, Melissa, if you're listening,
is to do it in stages. Perhaps one thing you can do once you're calm is to tape a voice message to your kids about what you would have said in that moment, and then you can play that for them, and that might be easier for you, And when that gets more comfortable than you might want to consider doing that face to face, or maybe even doing it in writing and reading it to them, but doing it in a way that you can slowly manage the big emotions and the triggering and the flooding that happens to you
in that moment, but still try to be there for them, even if it's in a delay, even if it's in a voice message.
I think that's a great idea, guy, And I also thinking about how it's very confusing for kids when their parents can't respond to their feelings, and sometimes transparency helps them to feel less alone in their feelings. So when Melissa was talking about working on her feelings and therapy, I think what she's really talking about is making friends
with her feelings. That she has always thought that feelings are the enemy, because when she was growing up, when there were big feelings, it led to abuse, and she gets very very triggered immediately by that. I wonder, when the kids are, you know, the ones who are old enough, if she could say to them, you know, I'm really working on what I do when I have.
Big feelings and when you have big feelings.
Sometimes I have big feelings too, and sometimes I need to take a minute and take some breaths. And I wonder if that's something we can do together. Maybe we can all take some breaths together, just so that they know, Hey, mom's having some big feelings too, but she's working on that. She knows that there's something she can do with them.
I love that, and I think it's such an important message because if she can share with her kids the fact that, yes, I struggle with these things and I'm working on myself in order to get better at them, and this is true for life kids. When you struggle with certain things and you identify that, then you also can start working to improve those things. I think it's such a great message.
And the message that they get when she does this is feelings are okay. All feelings are okay. How we manage them is what we need to work on. So you can be angry, how do we talk about that? You can feel sad? How do we talk about that? You can feel anxious? How do we talk about that? So all the feelings are okay? But as I'm learning how to deal with my feelings, I want to help
you learn how to do that too. This is something that we all need to learn how to do in life, is we're all going to have feelings and then what do we do with that?
And for Melissa specifically and her husband and her kids, if that is a discussion they can have as a family and a project that they can have as a family, that would be amazing because it's something I think they would all benefit from. Next week, a woman with a difficult mother wonders if there's a way to interact with her that wonet caused so much pain.
She was saying that she'd always trying to be a good mother.
I felt very poked.
She kept poking at it, and she'd talk quite defensively about why she can have done better what was going on for her at the time.
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If you have a dilemma, you'd like to discuss with us email us at Laurie and Guy at iHeartMedia dot com. Our executive producer is Noel Brown. We're produced and edited by Josh Fisher. Additional editing support by Helena Rosen, John Washington and Zachary Fisher. Our interns are Ben Bernstein, Emily Gutierrez and Silver Lifton. And special thanks to our podcast Fairy Godmother Katie Curic. You can't wait to see you at our next session. Dear Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
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