The Mother–Daughter Tangle: Why This Relationship Is So Hard… and So Worth Healing

0:00The following podcast is a dear media production. Welcome to After Bedtime, where the house is finally quiet, but the real noise begins. The thoughts, the questions, the wondering if you're doing any of this right. We're Kristen. And Dina, child behavior experts, moms, and co-founders of Big Little Feelings. And we're not here to give you more pressure or perfect parenting energy. Nope. We're here to tell the truth. The unfiltered, beautiful, brutal truth about what it means to raise kids and re-raise ourselves in the process. Because parenting isn't just about sleep schedules and snack hacks.

0:36It's about healing. It's about breaking cycles. It's about becoming the kind of adult you want your kids to grow up to be. This is the place where we say the quiet parts out loud. And we're so glad that you're here. I am sitting here with one of my dear friends who I love more than anything and who I was obsessed with long before I met her. You probably know her as Attachment Nerd. Her real name is Eli Harwood and she is a therapist, a mother and author on a mission to make the world a more securely attached place. One parent child relationship at a time. She is the creator of Attachment Nerd, author of best-selling books, Securely Attached, Raising Securely Attached Kids, and the recently released mother-daughter journal, Uniquely Us, which is my favorite thing on earth that I just started doing with my daughter.

1:26Eli, welcome to After Bedtime. Thank you so much. I love hanging out with you after bedtime. Oh my God. We've been talking about doing this, I don't know, for a year? Yeah, maybe. No, no, no, no. That's dramatic. It's not been that long. Really? Months? Months, maybe months. That's not bad. Let's just go with months. That's not bad. No, no. I'm proud of us. I'm so proud of us. We are working moms. How is it being a working mom for you? That's not what this episode is. We're going to talk about mother-daughter relationships, but how's it going? How's it going being, you know, a working mom that's a creator, that's also a therapist?

2:03Like, how's it going i mean somewhere between everyone is still alive good and we usually leave the house with our pants on good i mean i love being a working mom i it's so important for my brain and nervous system to have projects in the world beyond just my children not that my children are my projects. Totally. But they are the most important thing in the whole world to me. And I think it just is so good that I have other things to pay attention to as well. And ellipses dot, dot, dot, dot. Sometimes that's too much. How are you? Relieved to hear you say that. You seem very put together on Instagram, might I say like not in a toxic way not in a toxic way just that like yeah like it's in a good way you I mean like put it together a little bit I think that's a part of my childhood trauma shining through oh you know like my mom was not okay when I was little my mama she was not okay big big big depression big PTSD low low low self-worth my dad is still a functional alcoholic So he wasn't much help.

3:27And I took on that role very early on and was like, okay, people, we got to function. This is not going well. I'm going to go ahead and figure this out for all of us. I think we call it codependence. I work so hard on my Instagram to make sure that I come on and share the flubs and share the hard stuff of course so it is but it's interesting for me still to hear you say that that perception still comes off and I think some of that is like you just yeah you seem put together in a good way again it's not toxic but you just seem put together but I think I think you're touching on something you probably had to kind of be the one to keep it together and seem together and be like, okay, everybody, we're putting pants on today.

4:10We're getting dressed today. We're, this is what adults do. This is what people do. We need to go to school. Did you have siblings? Yes. I have a younger brother who was also not okay when I was growing up. Not okay. And so, you know, in and out of like psychiatric care and on this med and on that med and trouble here and in and out of that school. And so I was like, I'm going to go ahead and be the president of everything and figure out how to get the lead role in the school play and also play sports and also be friends with everyone. And, you know, that was my MO. And so I think I will be shedding some of that for the rest of my life.

4:46And I do like putting on makeup and earrings and dressing up. And so there's some illusion of being put together that comes from just literally being someone that likes girly things. So I really want to compensate from that by saying, no, oh, of course I'm not put together all the time. Nobody is. This is not a real thing. That's a good reminder. That's a good reminder. I love your makeup and your girly things. And they're like over the top girly things in the best way. You know, it's like color. It's really what I aspire to do. I'm just over here in black. You aspire to it? You're tapping into joy, you know?

5:25Yeah, that's what I was just going to say. It's kind of a form of antidepressant for me. I also rely on the other antidepressants, just in case anyone needed to hear that. The literal? The literal ones. Okay. That's good to share. Yeah. I had some postpartum with my kids that I was like, oh, I'm angry all the time. And this is not my MO normally. And I am not coping. And so that was a really, really helpful tool. I get that it's not the right tool for everybody. It was a great tool for me. I've seen it be a great tool for a lot of my clients. But anyway. Okay. So if you aspire to wearing more bright colors.

5:57Yeah. Do you want me to randomly buy you jewelry and clothing and send them your way? Just let me know. I've never had anyone offer me that. I'm going to have to think about that. Just say no. It's never good for a friendship. That is not what I thought you were going to say. The makeup, the lipstick colors, yes. I'm actually very lipstick friendly adjacent. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll send you some lipsticks. That's going to be the baby step. I did not think this is, I forgot this isn't therapy, you know, where it's like the therapist has to ask me how I'm going to do this for myself. And that's why I love being your friend instead of you being my therapist.

6:39I'm just going to do this for you. I'm just going to send this to you. Yeah. No problem. Let's just ride the wave of my codependent need to help everybody and do it for you. How else can I lift you up? Please. Please. Let me. I don't have enough to do. I just, I got to fix you. Okay. Let's go back to your mom because this episode is actually about mother-daughter relationships, tricky relationships, tricky dynamics. I actually would like to start. Why is it, and you are an amazing therapist. You've seen so many clients. You are so brilliant. Just your knowledge, but your empathy. Why is it that mother-daughter relationships tend to be tricky in general, whether it is unhealthy, whether it's just slightly or whether it's extremely toxic.

7:31Why is there that tricky dynamic between mothers and daughters? I think there's a lot of layers. And the first three layers that come to my mind, sorry, that's my cat running by with her bells. Can you hear it? They also were just in the litter box and they were like going to town. And I was like, I wonder if they could hear that. Okay, squirrel it's good cat approved i think the reason that it's tricky is that we love our kids so much and our same gender children trigger something in us about ourselves so i think it's messier because we might fear things for them about what we've lived and experienced or we might have expectations implications on them about things that we've lived or experienced or needed, we tend to allow more closeness between same gender parent and children, which is odd.

8:23I don't think it needs to be that way. I hope it keeps evolving that like our sons get as much closeness from us as our daughters do. I will be writing a mother-son journal too, don't worry, because I know everyone's always like, what about the sons? I'm like, I promise it's coming. It just doesn't come at the same time. Anyway, and then I think like there's patriarchy at play. Can I say patriarchy on the this podcast? Patriarchy approved on after bedtime. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Because, because, you know, the amount of emotional, social kinfolk labor that goes on women often then trickles down to daughters, you know, from mothers to daughters and mothers-in-laws to daughters-in-laws.

9:04That's a whole other conversation. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law dynamics. We need a whole different journal for that one. Yes. Whole different journal. Not sure how that journal works. I'll have to think about that. But I think the messiness is in our identity. It's in, you know, fearing things for our daughters, potentially envying things with our daughters, feeling the losses of what we didn't have through what it is that they have. I don't know. What else? What do you think? Why do you think? Oh, my. This is my podcast. You're my guest.

9:40let's see I think it's easier to and perhaps it's just because it's it's a it's a layer of protection but I think it's easier to slip into thinking of ourselves as the daughter when we talk about mother daughter sort of unhealthy or intense or whatever you want to call it dynamics of when I think of the older generation of mothers, our generation of mothers, I think you're spot on. I think there's a lot of, you know, projection. There's a lot of I gave you everything. Right. And a lot of our mothers had to sacrifice a lot of them. My mom, especially a lot were in marriages where they couldn't get out financially or, you know, they just they had to be there.

10:26And a whole list of envy and things like that can come into the picture. Well, and you know, so it's interesting. I look at like my mom and her mom did not have a close dynamic. And there was a lot of that sort of like, you should be grateful for what you have, you shouldn't complain, that kind of stuff. And like criticism, my grandma was always criticizing my mom. Yeah, what's that? Even up to today, my mom has like gotten tattoos in recent years, And she loves them. And they're cute. One's this like huge floral tattoo on her leg. I love it. And she hid it from my grandma. My grandma just passed actually a few weeks ago.

11:00And my grandma had no idea that my mom got a tattoo because my mom was like, she's going to be so mean to me about it. I was like, what is that? Well, I think that is some twisted way my grandma was trying to protect my mom. It was like, I don't want other people to look down on you. So I'm going to constantly look down on you in hopes that you'll, you know, do what I think you should do. and therefore be liked more by other people. One time when I was in graduate school, I had my hair dyed black, blackish. It's dark already, but it was like darker. And I was with my grandma and she goes, honey, why would you do that to yourself?

11:38And I said, grandma, I like it. I feel like it makes me look good. And I was like, and people compliment me on it all the time. And she goes, they're lying to you.

11:51so you know my that's my grandma and my mom and then my mom was really wounded by all of that and so I felt that wounding and I felt responsible to help my mom feel loved which is a trauma you know that's a parent child inverse relationship where rather than my mom helping me feel secure I was trying to help her feel secure and I got really lucky because when I was nine years old my mom was so not okay that she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. Love it. And she's in the 90s. I'm like, that's some tough stuff. Nobody was going to therapy, let alone being like, I think I need an inpatient stay.

12:30But she did it so that she could stay around for all of us. And she started working on herself. And so, you know, when I was nine, there was this shift in our relationship and in our dynamic because she started to take care of herself. And so I didn't feel as responsible. Now, granted, I still am working through my codependent habits. But not as much as I was. And not with her in the way I was. I can get mad at her now and not worry that she's going to crumble into a ball and disappear. Right? What's that like? That's cool. It's still scary. I still feel a little scared. But she'll be like, I'm okay.

13:03It's okay. We can figure this out. She's awesome. That's really inspiring, honestly. Yeah. She's pretty rad. I think a lot of us worry that it's too late. you know I met someone at I don't know about the Hoffman retreat Hoffman retreat is like a you just go and it's early childhood and you tackle all your early childhood stuff with like a group of 40 people and you get really close to each other oh it's incredible and there's no phones there's no books even so you're just like immersed in your childhood with these other 40 people it's incredible. But I met this incredible woman there and she would talk to me about how it's too late with her 16 year old.

13:46Like it's too late. She had this big realization there, you know, after, after sort of working through her own childhood, cause that's what we were all there doing and being like, I've ruined him, I've ruined our relationship. It's too late. It's over. And I just remember thinking 16. Like I can't imagine you were nine and your mom completely or slowly transformed or put work into herself like a human being could. It wasn't even just, you know, a magic wand happened in 30 seconds. She did the work. Yes. And I just can't imagine. I remember being 16 and I was like on that crux of like not OK. And I can't imagine if my world would have changed with my caregivers at 16 even, even if it happened today, even if today one of my mom came to me and said, I'm so sorry, or had any of that.

14:36So I think for anybody listening, this is a more extreme version, obviously sort of needing to go to inpatient rehab and you sort of hit rock bottom. But also for those listening who you yelled or you've been really an angry mom recently, Who hasn't? Eli was just sharing about how she was. Who hasn't? Who hasn't? Who hasn't? It's never too late. You could start at 9 or 16 or 21. This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Besties, I want to talk traditions. Tradition talk, if you will. I'm newer to traditions and they've grown along with my family. One holiday tradition for me is mashed potatoes.

15:19Straight up, not playing, mashed potatoes is a tradition. If I'm cooking at home or somewhere else for the holidays, I'm making mashed potatoes because there's nothing better than a perfect batch of mashed potatoes, and my mashed potato batches are perfect. Anyways, a tradition you can add to your list is taking care of yourself, and that can be done with a great therapist. A tradition I've got for myself in this realm of self-care is boundaries. Love boundaries. But get this, this boundary is not for other people. This boundary is for me. I get overwhelmed around the holidays with noise. Too much noise.

15:55I can't take it. Get overwhelmed. Got to remove myself. When I feel myself becoming overwhelmed by too much noise, I pick myself up, take myself out of the room. A little boundary I set for me. It's good for me. It's good for everybody else. that's self-care and that's the power of therapy try better help online therapy this month and close the year out with clarity rather than chaos better help therapists are fully licensed in the u.s and adhere to a strict code of conduct with better help you complete a short questionnaire and they will help you find a therapist based on your needs and your preferences and with their more than 12 years of industry-leading matchmaking excellence if better help doesn't find you a satisfying match the first time, they'll match you with a new therapist.

16:38This December, start a new tradition by taking care of you. Our listeners get 10 % off at betterhelp.com slash feelings. That's betterhelp.com slash feelings. Besties. Do you recognize who this is? It's me, Dina. I know I'm not on this episode, but honestly, with Kristen filling in for every single episode for me while I was on mat leave. She called me in. I'm officially back to work. I was not on this episode, obviously, but I am here to share a few of my favorite things with you today. And this one is near and dear to my heart because I've just used it every single day for the past, like, what, nine months now, I think.

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22:30So that's an issue about our ability to release control, right? But if we can continue to dig deeper into our pain, our suffering, the insecure attachments we experienced growing up, like that's a gift to our kids. You said the word control and I want to touch on that too. Do you think that's a big part of a tricky mother-daughter dynamic? Yep, for sure. And it has to do with our own shit, right? Yes, because the urge to control is about deep-rooted fear and the panic and oftentimes the trauma that's still living in our bones that says, there is no help coming. You have to make this happen. And so you have to go back and do the grief work around, wow, when you were little, there was no one there to support you.

23:23oh it was awful that was painful that was traumatic but that doesn't mean you can't find people now eight billion people in this world of ours lots of them a lot how important is it to heal yourself and when I say that I don't mean to a 100 % place because I don't know if anybody's going to get to 100. How important is that work in maintaining or having a relationship with your daughter later on? Because I think a lot of people listening, we can't even imagine having a complicated dynamic with our daughters or our children right now. You know, they love us. We love them. We're also doing a lot of good work, everybody who's listening to this podcast.

24:06So I will say, I mean, I think we're all doing a really good job. But how, you know, as it gets, kids get older. Yeah. You know, well, I read this in my first book in Raising Securely Attached Kids. There's a chapter titled They Can Feel What We Don't Heal. And the older our children get, the more windows they have into our stuff. And so, you know, like my 10 year old right now, it's not my daughter, it's my son. But he's got deeper windows into my neuroses than he used to have we're currently in that dance where I want to fix his hair 24 7 I just like no one I get it to looking and like that he can see in me some of that neurotic kind of need for things to look put together full circle full circle coming back around my stuff whereas he's like mom I just don't care if I have a cowlick in the back of my head and obviously his friends don't care because he cares about his friends.

25:05His teachers don't care. He's not getting in trouble for it. Like, what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is I survived by being likable, by finding ways to attract people to me. And so that's my coping skill. And now I'm starting to put it on him. And you bet your bottoms dollar that I will put that on my girls if I don't work through this. And I'll put it on them worse than I put it on him because we all know that girls have way more pressure to appear pleasable likable appeasing to the senses right so you know we have to work through our stuff or else we end up working at our kids and they feel that and then eventually they get to a point where they're like this isn't fun something's weird or awkward or uncomfortable I'm not my full authentic self here and so like yeah no mom I think I'm gonna go to Friendsgiving this year and not come home.

26:01And I'm going to like, you know, yeah, mom, I'm fine. I'm great. Meanwhile, I'm falling apart, but I'm not going to tell you about that because I don't trust you to be a reliable person who shows up for me. You're going to be somebody who tries to get me to be something so that you feel less anxious. So, you know, we have to work on our stuff and it's a lot of work sometimes. And that could be a cowlick. That could be big feelings, like somebody you know girls are too dramatic you're too much just those inadvertent signals that we're sending them where it's like oh I'm I can't be myself here even the cowlick where it's like I'm gonna probably consciously choose to put the cowlick down around my mom you know and then I can't wait until I can leave the house where oh I just don't have to think about that damn cowlick anymore it's a great example of something that's just not you would never think it's not over the top and it's not going to damage your relationship forever but it's an example I love that you're thinking of zooming out and saying, what is this?

26:59Because that does matter in these, these tween years that we can sort of somewhat get away with. Now, let me, let me ask you also about not healing yourself or, you know, whatever the proactive version verb of that is, I should say. Yes. Dealing with your stuff. Yeah, there you go. Not dealing with your stuff. And it doesn't necessarily get projected onto to your kids, but they're watching you do it to yourself. And how does that impact them? Whether it's frustration tolerance, you know, losing it at the, you know, with plans that don't follow through. I can think of a million different examples.

27:35It could be my own cowlick. It could be, what if it's something we're doing a really good job at sort of trying so hard and working through all of our stuff so we don't project them onto our kids. But if the root isn't healed, it's still living inside of us toward us. And what is that impact then on the kids? Well, you know, let's say we're really hard on ourselves and we're constantly, you know, we drop something and we're like, oh, I'm such an idiot. You know, what am I doing? Our child is either going to internalize that model of like, oh, someone who drops something's an idiot. So when I drop something, I'm an idiot.