The Mental Health We Inherit — and the Healing We Choose with Leslie and Lindsey Glass

0:03Thank you for joining us for episode 569 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and it's also the month when we celebrate Mother's Day. So what better time to look at moms and mental health? And there's no better team to do that than today's guests. I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm joined by Leslie and Lindsay Glass, the mother and daughter duo who co-authored the Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover and the Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover Workbook. They lived through estrangement and healing, and now they share that message with others. So let's hear what they have to say about moms, daughters, and mental health.

0:40All right, it is time. I can't believe I'm getting to see you ladies again. It's my favorite mother-daughter duo since the Gilmore Girls. Lindsay and Leslie Glass. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. Oh, it's our pleasure. It's Mother's Day season. So we come out from the rock we live under. Well, and I love the fact that May, not only do we have Mother's Day, but we have Mental Health Awareness Month. And I've always felt like that's no coincidence that the two are in the same month. And also is the fact is that nobody can combine those two things like you two. So I really wanted to have you here to talk a little bit about the mental health journey as it applies to the mother-daughter relationship.

1:21And I wanted to start by having you each one say who you are so that as our listeners hear this, they know who they are listening to. I'm Leslie Glass. I'm the mom. I'm Lindsay. I am the daughter. And over the last, gosh, four and a half years, we were just reflecting on this. We have done over a hundred media spots to promote our mother-daughter relationship makeover healing series because unbeknownst to us, it was a trending topic and a lot of people needed help around this issue. Absolutely. It is a tough topic because even people who have the supposed good relationship between mother and daughter, there's still conflict.

2:05There's still ups and downs in it. And as I said, I really wanted to talk to you about the mental health journey as it applies to the mother-daughter relationship. Can we talk about how our mental health patterns and our coping strategies are being passed down generationally? Oh my God, we'd love to talk about it. Well, good. And not just our mother's generation, but our grandmothers, our great grandmothers. and from over millenniums. We were making a list of the things we inherited because we wanted to answer specifically. What did you come up with? Well, we both are very anxious. So our mothers were very anxious, very fearful, a lot of phobias, also food issues.

2:46My mother was the first one in her family to start restricting. So our food issues are overeating, undereating, control over that. I thought that a really big one, and I think it's harder for my mom to really acknowledge it, and it's a generational thing. So I think Paula's going to enjoy this. So it is so ingrained in my mom's generation and her mother's generation for the kind of women we were raised by to not share your feelings. Right. Not be a problem. Pull your bootstraps up. So when I brought up, we're so emotionally, whatever we are, and we push it down. We both had so much therapy to deal with our emotions and deal with them in healthy ways and not push them down.

3:35And she was like, huh? But if you talk to like, what are the ones? I don't even know what they are. Gen Z. It's all the feelings. Everything's out there. But I feel. But I feel. We've taught these kids to feel. My mother didn't want me to feel. No. She said, you've got everything. What's wrong with you? I have the security self-esteem of Swiss cheese. Literally, because it was March Like a Soldier. You have everything you need. You have nothing to complain about. Look at everybody else in the world and all their suffering. Did I say that to you, Lindsay? Yeah. Yeah, I did. So basically, I would also encourage Lindsay to just be like me, which is overcome your anxiety, overcome your self-esteem issues, and just march like a soldier.

4:23It's interesting. You didn't mention that before, but she's right. When she said, be just like me, it was like, we pick missions. We pick causes. Her mother was a social activist. She was a social activist. I'm a social activist. It's like part of the way we feel better about ourselves is by overcompensating in other areas. And that is really good. And we don't recognize necessarily that our behavior is something that's passed down. They might say, oh, you're just like your mom because X, Y, Z. But we don't see how that is going back to the grandmother. And I'm so glad that you brought up the anxiety.

5:04I know my mom was very anxious. Myself and my siblings have all dealt with anxiety. And I didn't realize this was a generational thing until one of my aunts had said something to my sister who was having a panic attack. And she's like, that's just what we do. And it was like, what? And then I found out like this had been going on for generations that we just, they're like, we're anxious people and didn't feel there was anything we could do about it. What about those coping patterns that we adopt that aren't good that we don't even recognize as being passed down. How do you start recognizing the patterns that are being passed down?

5:40And then how do you change them? The first thing you kind of want to do is start to pay attention to what's happening. Where are you having emotional distortion? Where are you getting really, really upset in your daily life? Are you having the same fight with your mother? Is it when she comes over, you're fighting about childcare, food, money? The way you look. Yeah. But the first thing you really have to do, and self-discovery is the first part of both of our books, because if you don't start to have some self-awareness about what's going on, it's really impossible to see those patterns. So we recommend, and not in a judgmental, shameful way, pay attention, make notes.

6:26This is what journaling is for. Oh, we had another fight again. What was it about? Or how was I feeling that morning? What were the things going on in my life? And really starting to say, oh, you know what? When I'm stressed, this is how I react. The other thing you want to notice as you start to see, are you playing a role? Are you always the peacekeeper? Are you always the blamer? Are you always... Another thing we have in common is if there's silence, we'll start becoming the court jester, both of us. We're going to fill it. Because we're going to entertain you. We don't want people to feel uncomfortable.

7:02comfortable. So you start to see these patterns and you're like, oh, wow, I really am the one who makes my mom feel better every day. Or she's really the one that triggers me. So that's where you start with this stuff. Yeah. But once you recognize those, once you've done some journaling, done your own homework and started figuring out what's going on, how then do you have that conversation? How do you start working up just in your head to think about, all right, this is the conversation I want to have with my mom, or if it's a mom I want to have with my daughter. And then how do you do that? I think that what you need to do is literally change the conversation, change the way that you communicate.

7:44You want to give an example of that? You have to start really small. You have to move away from the door slamming statements. You never let me have my feelings. You don't want to say, you always do this. So part of paying attention in the patterns is seeing how you're communicating. And when you decide you want to have conversations that are going to open the door, not close the door, you have to start small and with non-threatening statements. So it's okay to be vulnerable. Vulnerable is a beautiful thing. And say something like, you know, I wish we were closer. Maybe we can find some ways to do some things together or just try things.

8:27And I think the point is it's baby steps. And if you can get through really small conversations in a safe way, you're opening the door for bigger conversations. So if you've been fighting with your mom for years, you're not going to sit down and suddenly have the conversation. It's all good. Right. But if you say, you know what, I love you so much. I would like us to understand each other better and come from that place of non-shaming, non-blaming, how do we fix this? I think you could just start to set a tone. I would start with share pleasant time. So let's go and have tea together or let's go to the movies or let's do something like that and begin to model what being together should look like.

9:12Let's agree that we're going to go to dinner and we're not going to fight about the past. We're not going to talk about this. We're not going to talk about that. And so the baby steps might be, I'd really like to spend some quality time with you. Here are some ways that we can get along better. You know what else really helps? And this is how we reconciled and we still do it today. We always talk about it, but the cooking and the dogs. It's two things we have in common. Find that common ground. Walk the dogs. We don't always even talk to each other, but we walk the dogs and we notice the weather and we look at the birds.

9:48We love the animals. We also share comedy videos because laughing is really important. Oh, and that bonds so well. What kind of comedy or laughter can we share? Can we make fun of other people instead of ourselves? Or make fun of ourselves and not beat each other up? I mean, the whole idea is to create new memories and new patterns that can be passed on not not only with us, but with other relatives and with the next generation. What happens if one person is ready to have that conversation and the other person is not? I have a friend who has had a very tumultuous relationship with her mom, and she is ready.

10:33She would love to be able to sit down and talk with her mom about all the things that happened, the abuse, the misunderstandings, and the mother wants nothing to do with that. So what happens in those cases if you feel like the other person isn't willing to have that conversation with you? Well, first of all, I would say in the mom's case and in all of our cases, we really want to be good people. We want to feel that we are good people. And if a mom has been involved in a relationship, say the husband or other family members in which the child growing up has experienced abuse, the mom doesn't want to talk about that because she doesn't want to be blamed for it.

11:14So and I think that in 37 percent of adult children are not speaking to one or both of their parents. Right. So, yeah, that's a staggering number. Family estrangement is a huge, huge subject all across the world right now. And in most of these cases, it's not the parents who don't want their children. It's the children who don't want their. And part of that is because parents are having a great deal of trouble acknowledging the pain of their children or the trauma or whatever it is. They just want to stop. They don't want to think about it. So I would say this is very, very common situation. One wants it.

11:56The other doesn't. OK, go. So I think when you're in this situation, you have to work on yourself. That's what you really have to focus on. When they're not ready to get back with you, that is the time to see if you can find some understanding of why this is happening. Also some compassion for the other person and what they might need right now. This is the time to be patient. This is the time to understand that people sometimes need to go off on their own and find their own way. And everybody has a right to do that. but for the person who's on the other end, it's really important to be able to enjoy your life.

12:39We were just talking about this with some people last night who had been asking about our separation and the truth was she was figuring out who she was in those years and what she enjoyed. She'd been a mom, she'd been a wife. Suddenly she was on her own. I was off learning how to be independent, how to be an adult, how to take care of myself and I think if you can focus on what you need to be whole without that person, because they may or they may not come back and you want to be hopeful that they will, but if they do, you want to be a safe space for them to land. And I think this is the really tough thing to acknowledge, whether you're a mother or a daughter and you find yourself in a no contact situation, it takes two to tango.

13:28Right. I don't care who's more to blame. It does take two to tango. I want to go back to this point that you made about being safe. And I think for the mom who doesn't want to hear about anything about the past, she may feel unsafe. And I think that she may feel that she's going to be accused. So this is the moment for a daughter or anybody, maybe to do a little bit of sleuthing to find out what kind of state the mother was in during those traumatic years and maybe find a way to say to the mom, I really understand it was so difficult for you, but then the daughter may not want to hear what the mother had to say.

14:06So you may have really very, very different opinions or different memories about what happened. So you may not be able to find common ground to talk about. But once again, if you can find common ground or a safe way to explore who you were or who you want to be now. And once again, there are moms who say my way or the highway. And if that's the case, or daughters who say my way or the highway, you have to determine who you are on your own. And that takes a lot of forgiveness to be able to look at the other person's life, to look at what they were going through, put yourself in their shoes. And that can be very difficult.

14:53So how do you do it? And can it be repaired without walking down that road of forgiveness, of empathy, of understanding? Well, I mean, this is why Lindsay and I wrote the book, because it wasn't until we started doing the journal prompts and doing that self-discovery, were we able to say, oh my God, my mom's life was not what I thought. I actually have a tough answer to this one. And again, we had this conversation last night with some people who are asking about it. I don't think it can be repaired if both people aren't doing a little bit of work. I don't. I think if one person is really angry and can't back away from their rigid beliefs about what happened and their hurts, it's going to be very, very hard to have these open conversations because you're stuck in your story about what happened.

15:49We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

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16:54And now, let's hear more from Leslie and Lindsay Glass. How do we then prepare ourselves? How do we let ourselves be okay with what we need to hear? It's not just a one-sided, I'm going to tell you how I feel. It's I'm going to hear what it felt like for them too. How do you prepare for that? Can you sit in ambiguity? Because the mother-daughter relationship is love-hate, love-hate, love-hate. We all want to be loved. We all want to be accepted. We all want all of those things. And the relationship is inherently full of ambivalence. And conflict. And conflict. And we have to be able to accept that, particularly in the teenage years.

17:36It's I mean, daughters can be quite abusive. So but let's let's look at this from a different angle. I mean, I think it's like one has to be able to say, what do I want from this relationship? Right. When you're at it. Yeah. And what am I capable of? And what is she capable of? OK, so it's like, all right, maybe we're not going to totally get on the same page here because you don't have to agree for things to get better. So maybe we're not totally going to be on the same page here, but that doesn't mean we can't be able to be together on holidays and get along or let mom see the grandkids and not have our issues come into play.

18:17I think there is a lot of room if people are open to it to say, okay, we're not going to be able to sit down and say, all good. Everything's water under the bridge. but I love you. I want us to be in family wellness. And we're going to find some ways to be together that are not so contentious and open the door to healing. Maybe pick up a book like ours or listen to a podcast like yours. Maybe today you don't think you did anything wrong, but maybe in three months, a thought is triggered and you think, you know what? I could have been a little bit more chill. You know, I'm going to give my mom a ring and say something about that today.

19:00Well, the other thing is that the last 10 years of political strife has torn a lot of families apart. If you have different religious beliefs, I know one mother who is very, very strong in her church. The daughter believes in crystals and the mom won't, the daughter won't let the mom see her child, the child, because, you know, one has got the crystals and the other one is like they're at loggerheads over it. They cannot come to common ground over it. So how do you draw up these rules of engagement so that you can have a relationship that kind of takes your differences and puts them aside, finds what is good and what works, and lets you kind of be in that space and nurture that.

19:49In this mother-daughter, the grandmother has got to put aside her very strong beliefs in order to be able to see her grandchild. And is she able to do that? And so far she hasn't. Here is a wonderful word. Where are you with your boundaries? Yes. Right? So here's the answer. In order to do what you just asked, how do we get together and do these things and blah, blah, blah. It's going to go a lot better if you understand and have the ability to use boundaries. Because one of the things that I think is a very healthy thing to do, but again, you have to be in a place to be able to have these conversations.

20:34And it's very important to say, I love you dearly. We don't agree about this. Please don't bring it up tonight. I don't want to start an issue at the dinner table. So again, you're paying attention to the patterns, right? At this point, we understand what some of the triggers are, some of the patterns. And you say, mom, daughter, I really want to have a great summer. I want to have a great summer with you. I want us to get along. I want us to be close. Here are my recommendations. I'm going to let you think about them and get back to me on your time. but I'd like to do these activities that we both like and focus on the activities.

21:14Go into a baseball game, go into the rodeo. I don't know, wherever you live in America, you know, whatever activities are available now that the weather's nice, you know, we're going to take the grandkids to the fair and kind of pick like, here are the things we like to do. Here's what makes them safe. If you're coming for the 4th of July, we're not serving hard alcohol. So whatever your issues are, you start to set some boundaries around them. And that takes commitment from both sides. They both have to dig in and say, this relationship is more important than this issue that we disagree on. And can I give you a little bit of, because we've come around, this is what I will say as a daughter that's been estranged from family and now back with family.

21:59Family is great. You know, if you can get along with your family, if you can have the support of a parent, I really think life is better that way. It's not perfect. We both have to work at this ongoing, but I think if you can remember, I only get one family. And if we can be on the same team, if we can set an example for the next generation, if we have the power to heal some of these wounds and understand each other, like you're giving your mom or your daughter a huge gift by making a commitment to be pleasant with them. That's it. That's it. That's all that's required. Just be nice. It's literally like what we learned in kindergarten.

22:44Everything that we learned in kindergarten is what is important as adults. We have a rule called light and polite. Yeah, we do. And whether if we're at dinner with certain people or we're on a certain kind of show where we don't want somebody interviewing us to get to our fighting confrontational with us, you know, we have the light and polite and we will just be like, well, that's great. Have you seen the weather? You know? Yes. So what about those relationships that can't be repaired? I mean, in a perfect world, we could use your tools and techniques and we can repair all our relationships, but that's not always the case.

23:22So when is it okay to know that you've tried, but it isn't working right now? Maybe it's a timing thing. Maybe it'll never work, but it's not working right now. How do you put that aside? And also how do you manage the guilt that comes with losing that person? So this is mental health month, right? Yes. All right. So let's talk about mental health because one of the things that really gets in the way of mother-daughter relationships or any relationships are other people's mental health issues or character issues, personality issues. Addiction is another one. And when those people, if your family situation has addiction in it and it's not safe for you or it's not safe for your grandchildren or your kids or whatever, if there is a person who is manic depressive and you're always in a state of caretaking, worrying, whatever.

24:17This is where you have to get into survival mode and not feel bad about saying, this is not working for me. I need some space. I need my own safety. So safety first, safety first. And I know for caretakers, it's very difficult to let go of someone, particularly a child or a mother who has addiction issues. It's very hard to let go, but letting go and finding yourself in your own life is really, really important. So how do you do that? Let's talk about that. It's one thing to say, yes, this is what I need to do. It's something else to say, this is how I'm going to do it. As nicely as possible. If you're with somebody who's stable, it's a little bit easier because if you're with somebody who's unstable, you don't know what kind of reaction you're going to get.

25:06And it can be very, very scary. So you really have to look at, if somebody is kind of out of control, struggling with their mental health has a personality disorder, if you're going to get screamed at, if it is going to cause you distress, email, keep it really, really safe. You don't have to get on the phone with people who are going to scream at you. And if they're raging back at you by email, you don't have to read it. You don't have to accept those emails. But I think it is important to be clear with somebody and say, I need a break. And if you want to say why or what the parameters are. But I think you have to think about it like this.

25:47When we did our separation and we were both dealt with like suicidal depression around it. It's not an easy thing, but I needed to go and work on myself and I had professional help. So I was seeking professional help and professionals were saying, here's what's wrong with you. Here's what you need to go do about it. And then I started to follow those steps. And in terms of the shame and guilt, as much as it was sort of humiliating to have people say to me, you don't talk to your mom and what's wrong with you? It's your mom. Like I needed to grow up. I needed to do those things for myself. And trust me, she's happier today that that happened.

26:28And I went out. And by the way I appreciate her so much more. So you have to look at that guilt and grieve it because you need to grieve people even when they're alive and acknowledge that this is unnatural. This is not what you wanted. This is maybe even not fair, whether it's your mom or your daughter, because there are a lot of daughters who lose their moms because they're drinking or whatever else. And you just think, where's the mom I wanted? Like, this is so unfair. But you're in self-preservation. You're making sure that you stay mentally healthy and you're doing what you need to do. You need to have more pride in the fact that you're able to put yourself first and take care of yourself than shame over the fact that it isn't perfect.

27:16I would say that, first of all, if you're in a very difficult situation, the person that you love is not willing to change. You don't want to break up and you're very enmeshed. And I think that mothers and daughters can be very enmeshed. The way you begin to detach is you get some help. You get some other people who can talk to you and assess your situation and say, oh, this is really causing you more distress than you need. This is preventing you from having a happy life. Either this person is encroaching on you too much, taking your time, taking your money, taking whatever it is, is putting you down, not appreciating you, whatever it is, you have to be able to recognize that whatever that relationship is, it's really damaging you.