Mom's Anger Through a Jungian Lens - Lisa Marchiano

24:37And this little girl, like I watched her, she just pushed my daughter for no reason. And I said, hey, we don't push or something like that. And the mom came down and she said, oh, you know, she doesn't push. and I was like well she just did but it was my my kind of analysis of that later was it's like the mom couldn't allow it in herself so there was no way for the little girl to relate to her own anger and aggression which are actually important for us to have a relationship with which is that's kind of the thesis of my second book the bio spark you know but but like yeah it's problematic and it can be destructive, but you don't want to amputate it.

25:24You need to figure out how to have your teeth and your claws in life. And what better way to do that than to be in relationship with it and have your mom in relationship with it and managing it, hopefully, but also sometimes You don't manage it perfectly. Anger's messy.

25:49Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, it's not always going to be wrapped up in a perfect rupture-repair bow. Right. It's going to be, yeah, the middle path is messy by its nature. The extremes are so clear and I think enticing because there's clarity in them. But in the middle where the wisdom is, is like, is very, very messy. Yeah, there's a saying that this all reminds me of, which is to walk with your shadow in front of you. You know, and I love that idea of like, walk with your shadow in front of you. It's, you know, when it's behind you, it's like chasing you. It's big, it's scary. It's something you don't want to look at.

26:34Hunter Clarke-Fields:And when it's in front of you, you're there in relationship with it. It's not something, and you call these outlaw energies in that second book, The Vitals Part. So how, I mean, what does it look like if we're thinking about practical practices, maybe, or looking at things? I mean, I have this beautiful dream journal, and maybe this is part of it, for a mother or a parent to reconnect with that inner fire without the guilt. It's a year. Yeah, I mean, in some ways, those two books, I mean, The Vital Spark is not written for mothers, but there's some overlap in content. And I think in some way they really follow on each other.

27:19Because one of the things that motherhood taught me was, you know, gee, Lisa, here's your anger. Look at how big it can be. Can you make friends with it in any way? Can you get curious about it? can it maybe be good sometimes? And, you know, I mean, honestly, that kind of like, that fierceness is really required when we're mothers because we're going to want to mobilize that ferocity at times to protect our kids. So it's good that it's there, you know, you just want to be able to figure out how to channel it. And then the second book, you know, there's something about being able to sit with your darkness that helps you really claim your authority.

28:08And so there's two overlaps between the books. One is anger and the other is authority. And so both books have chapters on anger and authority. And The Vital Spark is basically it's a book about reclaiming shadow. So the Jungian idea of shadow, and it was a term that he coined is that we all had a shadow. We learn in the process of development what is valued and okay in our culture, in our family, what traits are acceptable or valued, and we learn what parts of us are not okay. And I mean, there's obvious things like, you know, hitting your little sister over the head with a, you know, toy. It's like, that's not okay.

28:56But also families have their own cultures. And so a lot of times there's, there's like something that you're absolutely not allowed to be in your family of origin. It's a little more subtle. Like maybe you were not supposed to be lazy. Like sitting around and reading a book was not okay. In my family, it was not okay to be drawing attention to yourself. You were supposed to be very humble and melt into the background. But probably every family has something like that. You're supposed to be high achieving or you're supposed to be athletic. And going along with that is there's something that's in the shadow.

29:40So most of us have a whole bunch of stuff that's in the shadow. I also think that women, honestly, by dint of probably both nature and nurture, have certain qualities that we don't feel comfortable claiming and developing. Now, I know plenty of women who are really good with anger, who are really good with assertiveness. but as sort of on a population level, we're more agreeable, we're more likely, for example, to tell someone a white lie than an uncomfortable truth, these kinds of things. We know that this is just true. So something like being really bold, being kind of unapologetically angry, being really assertive, being ruthless is one of the chapters in the book.

30:32These are things being disagreeable. These are qualities that for most women are like, oh, no, I can't be that. You know, I can't be that. I had a friend call me up the other day who was having a kind of fairly minor conflict with someone in her life. And, you know, I know this person too. And it was, you know, it was like this third person who she was having conflict with. This is a really lovely person. And she was like, I need to tell her something, but I just can't. I just can't. I don't want to ruffle feathers. And I'm like, it's okay. It's okay to approach this person and say, there's something that I need to talk about.

31:24But most of us just feel like this is going to be world shattering to confront someone, to make someone else uncomfortable. Again, not all women are like this. I actually tend to have a lot of female friends who are very disagreeable. I think I really like disagreeable women. I'm not one of them by nature. I worked on it. And I have these disagreeable friends who would not have any trouble at all doing this. But for most of us, it's like, no, no, I can't do that. But when we don't allow ourselves to develop those skills, we're really cutting off a source of vitality, a source of strength, and qualities that can make a huge difference in terms of being able to stay connected with ourselves.

32:17Those other qualities of nurturing and kindness and attunement are beautiful, wonderful qualities that really help us get and stay connected to others, which is a very important thing in life. But to get and stay connected to ourselves, sometimes we need to make other people unhappy. And for some of us, that's a hard thing to do.

32:41Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. I mean, I can see that's a hard thing to do. And a lot of parents I talk to and a lot of moms I talk to, you know, I do, when I'm coaching parents and moms, one of the things I teach is a funny little mantra that we talk about in Mindful Parenting, this idea of like, not my problem is something I teach them to say silently to themselves. And this idea that, and it can be really awkward and uncomfortable, but also really freeing to say not my problem to a lot of the problems your kids have. But I also think it's so, so helpful for you to just be grounded, you know, your own person, your own person with your own needs and wants.

33:31Hunter Clarke-Fields:And also, if they're having a big problem, it doesn't have to throw you off kilter. It doesn't have to upset you. It doesn't have to upset your world and make things a problem in your world. When your kid has a problem, they, you know, maybe you've held a boundary and now they have a problem. they have a problem and it's okay for them to have a problem it's not my problem and I and it's interesting to see people work with that and uh wrestle with it and for me I guess maybe I have plenty of disagreeable and I don't know you know I was always I think I was really encouraged to be very individualistic and creative and all that stuff and so it's okay for me but it's really been interesting for me to like work with other women and moms and to help them you know claim this idea of like oh I don't I'm here for you like I'm here for you but I don't have to solve your problem

34:36Hunter Clarke-Fields:stay tuned for more mindful mama podcast right after this break emotional regulation is a huge topic in mindful parenting for obvious reasons we want to have a more peaceful home. We want our kids to not be dysregulated. We want ourselves to not be dysregulated. We want to be able to stay grounded in the chaos. And one of the things we talk about very rarely on the podcast when it comes to dysregulation is sleep and our sleep quality. We know that sleep affects the whole house. A child's nighttime breathing and a parent's sleep quality can really shape the tone of the next morning. When kids sleep poorly, the whole family can feel it.

35:15Hunter Clarke-Fields:One of the things that can affect kids sleep is mouth. A simple option for kids and adults is muzzle sleep. Muzzle is a small, low-tech habit that can fit naturally into your bedtime routine. What is it? Muzzle sleep makes comfortable mouth tape for kids and adults that is designed to gently support lip closure and encourage nasal breathing during sleep. The whole thing is built around a very simple idea that better nighttime breathing can be supported with the practical low effort bedtime habit that really fits into family life. So if you are worried about your kid's sleep, or maybe you have a partner that snores, this is such a simple low tech way to help this problem.

35:56Hunter Clarke-Fields:And it's all super clean, BPA, forever chemical free, made in the USA. Go to muzzlesleep.com and use the code mindfulmama for 10 % off. That's muzzlesleep.com promo code MindfulMama. You know, going back to this idea about shadow and what we expect of being mothers, like we really, it's easy to get into this thing where you think that like a good mother will do anything for her kid, you know? And I mean, I, you know, learned the hard way that like, no, that's actually not what a good mother does. A good mother does what you're describing, you know, to a point you You set a boundary and, you know, it's you let your kid have a problem and you don't do it.

36:40There are things you don't do for your kids because it, you know, it doesn't help you and it doesn't help the kid. But that orientation towards the other, like I'm going to be attuned to you. I'm going to be attuned to your needs. and um and then you know things get blurred because um you know uh um so so i'll tell a sort of long story um when my daughter was a few months old a friend from out of town was close by and i wanted to go see her it was the first time that i had driven on the turnpike with my daughter oh i remember and i was like all right i'm gonna do it she was maybe like a couple of months old I'm going to do it.

37:25And I'm like, okay, I just have to remember the most important thing is to be safe. If she's crying, that's okay. She's okay. Like she's in the car seat. She's with me. She may be unhappy, but my focus is to drive. So the drive there was fine. The drive home, she was fussy and she started crying. And I was like, Lisa, it's okay. She's okay. Just focus on driving. And I was so proud of myself because I was like, I'm just driving. I'm just driving. And then I looked down and I realized that I was doing 95 miles. Oh, my gosh. And like my brain was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. But my whole nervous system was activated.

38:09Yeah. To the point where my foot was doing something totally different. And it took me a while to realize that like that is a thing, right? Your baby's cry just gets your whole nervous system activated. and it's almost like you can't really control it but there it is and I remember when they were much older just so happened I think they were like in high school and junior high or something like that they were both gone for the weekend they were you know doing different school things and I felt so relaxed and I thought wow like what is this and I realized that when they were around I was constantly listening for like who's going to start fighting who's going to come home and be unhappy When am I going to hear a door slam?

38:53And I thought back to that moment in the car. My nervous system was so keyed into theirs that it was very difficult just to sort of relax. Okay, so fast forward another bunch of years. My son was a freshman in college. He was having a struggle. I knew he was having a struggle. I was so anxious that I wanted to like jump on a plane and fly to where he was going to college and like sit him down and tell him everything he needed to do. Of course, I didn't do that. I didn't even think seriously about it, but that was my impulse. And I thought about that and I thought like actually what I wanted, like I did, of course, want him to be okay.

39:33But I wanted him to figure it out so I would stop worrying. That it was about I wanted him to be okay so I wouldn't have to worry. Like, right? Yeah. And it's like, it's not his responsibility to keep me from worrying. Like, that's actually mine. So in my distress, I actually did a dream incubation, which is usually kind of my go-to thing when I'm struggling with something. And a lot of times when I do a dream incubation, which that's where you like ask your dream, you ask your dream maker a question before you go to sleep. And a lot of times I wake up with a dream, but occasionally I just wake up knowing something.

40:07And this was one of those times. I woke up and I thought, Lisa, you have no idea what he's doing to fix the problem. And it was like, it was like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water on me. I was like, well, of course. I mean, he's this great kid. He's very, he's got a lot of strengths. Like something was going a little off the rails. Why would I think that he wouldn't be dealing with it? And of course he was. And like a week later, he fixed the problem with no help from me, I wouldn't have been able to fix it anyway. And it was. And that's what he needed. And that's what he needed. And again, it was like this.

40:44Yeah, the fact that I was having a reaction to watching him struggle, that actually wasn't my problem. And my anxiety wasn't his problem.

40:54Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. You know? Yeah. That is a tough, tough lesson to internalize. And it does help to get out of the kind of giver mode, the sort of the caregiver position where we're just focused on the other person's needs. Obviously, that's the right place to be when you have an infant. Yes. But it changes as they get older. pretty quickly in some ways. I know you're still, your needs are always as important as your kids' needs in some ways. Just an infant's needs are so much more urgent. Yes. You know, but it's not like you can push your needs off forever, right? You can push them off for a little while.

41:45Hunter Clarke-Fields:Right. But you can't forever. You have needs as a human and they come back. That's interesting because that's like, that's like when a kid is really upset right and we want to be like you stop crying so i feel better total you stop having a problem so i feel better and that's not their job to to regulate their feelings emotions so we can regulate ours you know it's it's interesting like we inter are we affect each other. But yeah, that whole responsibility. Well, before we wrap up, I wanted to talk about the idea of, you know, in your podcast, which I love, This Youngian Life, you explore the idea of archetypes.

42:35Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I was wondering how might recognizing archetypes that were unconsciously acting out like the martyr or the rescuer, kind of to go back to what we were talking about help us show up more consciously in our relationships with our kids well so young's idea of the archetypes is that there are these kinds of primordial universal energies that are are always there there we're sort of born with them if you if you want to think about it i think it's a in a way it's um it's another way of thinking about an instinct and that we're just kind of born with the potential, I would say. And this winds up leading to different cultures will create images of archetypes.

43:22And so, for example, every culture has a kind of maternal goddess, whether it's the Virgin Mary in a kind of Christian culture, or, you know, the Venus of Willendorf, or...

43:38Hunter Clarke-Fields:on that note have you ever been to I mean maybe I'd probably never been to Abu Dhabi but I got to go to a parenting conference there and the Louvre Abu Dhabi is amazing in that it organizes all the artwork from different times around the archetypes oh my gosh I need to go all the like motherhood figures together from different cultures it's so simple I have goosebumps telling you about this because it was so profound to experience them all together by way of archetype. Now you have to get on. No, I do. And I believe, or at least buy the book. But yes, that's exactly it. I mean, you can look at every culture and there's some kind of version of that, that kind of mother goddess.

44:26So the mother is one of the big archetypes, but the mother has, every archetype has two poles. There's the positive pole and the negative pole. So that the negative mother looks like someone who's smothering or devouring. So you look at like the goddess like Kali that I mentioned before, there are other kind of, you know, dark mother goddesses. And I think that, you know, when we were talking about rage before, and I kind of said it's kind of an archetypal experience it can be like like when we first have that baby and we bring that baby home we can really feel like we're embodying that that um positive mother archetype it's it's almost you feel something almost a little more than human um i remember talking to one woman who had a really profound birth experience and she really just felt like she was inhabiting the goddess while she was in the throes of it.

45:24I certainly felt that way. I mean, nursing was just so wonderful, and you're just holding this beautiful baby, and you're nursing, and all that good oxytocin's going, and it feels something a little more than just an individual human experience. It really feels archetypal. Well, when we are just swept away in a rage, that's archetypal too. And I think that's how I understand it. And, you know, then the negative pole has been constellated and it's brightening. But it's, you know, I mean, the point is you certainly don't want to get identified with an archetype because it's a bigger energy than human, but certainly the archetypes get constellated in our life at times.

46:09And I think it's important to have a way to kind of come back and re-enter just ordinary human form and remember that that's something that we touch upon at times, but that's certainly not where we want to live.

46:23Hunter Clarke-Fields:Well, it's interesting. I guess if you understand it as this archetype, it's like this other, right? It's like mindfulness, right? It's like taking our thoughts and our feelings and kind of looking at them rather than being sort of subsumed by them. And that's the same idea of like taking these things and seeing them as an archetype. But in the moment, it's very difficult to do that because they're so powerful. Yes. But yes, later to reflect, it's like, whoa, what was that that took me over there? You know, it's like, oh, okay, it's good to be back with my feet on the ground, you know. In wrapping up for parents and moms who are, you know, listening, what you do have any practices and um anchors to kind of bring us back to feeling grounded to feeling present um for motherhood that we can you can share yeah i mean um there there's a there's a book that i i read um a number of years ago that i talk about in motherhood.

47:30And they have this great acronym of, I believe it's PACE. So playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy. And I love that list. And that's a good list for being with your kids. It's a really good list for being with yourself. So I think one of the main things that I see with women and with moms especially is that we can be so harsh on ourselves. We talk really harshly to ourselves, we judge ourselves really harshly. And if we can be a little bit playful with ourselves, if we can maybe kind of find the humor in things, if we can just accept where we are, if we can be curious, like I said before about anger, you know, the thing is that it's very, very difficult, perhaps impossible to be curious and judgmental at the same time.

48:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:They're on opposite sides of the pole. So if you find yourself doing something that you're disappointed in, and you know, hey, that happens, it's good to come at it with curiosity because judgment isn't really going to get you very far. And it is worthwhile when you see yourself behaving in a way that you don't like. I'm not saying you should just be like, well, you know, at least the Marchiano said it's fine. No, it's good to examine it and try to understand it and maybe see what you can learn. And maybe there is a way where you can handle it differently next time. But the energy to approach it with is curiosity.

48:52Like, wow, that was really something. I just totally lost it on my kid. That was upsetting. But can I be curious about it? Like, really curious. Like, wow, that was, look at how I was feeling. Look at what set me off. How surprising. I wonder why. Yeah. Where are these coming from? Right. And then, of course, empathy, which is, you know, sort of like applied to ourselves. that's like self-compassion. Can we have some compassion with ourselves? Because, you know, motherhood is difficult many times. And we're mothering in a way that we weren't kind of meant to mother if you look at the way center-gatherers mother.

49:33You know, they weren't home alone with two babies all day.

49:37Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's crazy-making. This has been such a pleasure to have you here in my house. And I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. I'm such a fan of This Young In Life. Can you tell the listener who wants to explore more where they can find you and a little about the podcast? Sure. So my podcast is This Young In Life, and we're at thisunionlife.com, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. We're also on YouTube. And my author website is lisamarciano.com. You can find out more about my books. I also have an online fairy tale group for women. We explore different fairy tale every month, and there are prompts and live events, and it's a really great community, and that's at spinningstraw.com.

50:22Hunter Clarke-Fields:Oh, I didn't know about that. I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes. What's that called? Women. Women Who Rest in the Wolves. Yes, I love that book. I've written that multiple times. Yes. It's so great. Now I want to explore your fairy tale community. That sounds wonderful. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you for doing what you do. And thank you for doing the podcast and for driving down from Philly here to Arden to hang out with me. Yeah. Really. Thank you so much. Really a pleasure. Such a treat, as I said, to meet you and to do this in person. Yay!

51:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, it is available to watch. You can watch the conversation on the Mindful Mama Mentor YouTube channel, and you can check out a glimpse of my living room as I hung out with Lisa. It was super cool. We had, she came, we recorded the podcast, and we had a lovely lunch afterwards. So I really got to know Lisa, and it was such an honor and a thrill to be able to do that. So, so wonderful. So if you have any feedback, let me know. I'm at mindful mama mentor and I'd love to know how you how is what you think about this I don't know do you track your dreams Lisa gave me the wonderful dream tracking journal and I have to admit I have not tracked my dreams since then I don't know I've always had like a weird relationship with my dreams where I'm a very, you know, visually imaginative person.

52:04Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I've always had like, I've had a lot of nightmares as a kid. And they've gotten less and less over the years, which is really, really a relief. So maybe I don't feel like diving into them too much. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it brought you some insights or peace or feeling of maybe being seen and heard and what we talked about. So yeah. And if it helped you, please, please do text or tell a friend, send them a screenshot of what you're listening to. And I truly, truly appreciate it. Word of mouth is the best. So thank you. Thank you so much for listening.

52:48Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I'll be back again next week. Namaste.

52:59Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hey, I want to let you know about a podcast that I love that I think you're going to love called The Longest Shortest Time. The show is hosted by Hilary Frank and she covers all aspects of parenthood and reproductive health. She's got an episode called The Staircase about sex ed at her daughter's school. There's one about birth control and the FAA and another that follows the wild journey of a single trans dad by choice. The stories are surprising, fun, edgy, poignant. They'll give you all the feels. So find The Longest Shortest Time on all podcast apps or at longestshortesttime.com.