Fresh Take: Dr. Cassidy Freitas on How to Stay Calm When Parenting Feels Overwhelming

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0:32Hey, everybody. Welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy. Today, I'm talking to Dr. Cassidy Freitas. She is a licensed family and marriage counselor. She's also the host of the podcast Holding Space. She is the mother of three children and the author of a new book we'll be discussing today, Mom Needs a Moment, how to stop your reaction before it starts and become a calmer, happier, more connected parent. Welcome, Cassidy. Thank you so much for having me. I am obsessed with your podcast. I mean, from the name of the podcast and beyond. Can I tell you the first five words of my book, Mom Needs a Moment, I think represent so much of what a lot of parents feel when they first enter parenthood.

1:23And it is so aligned. The first five words are, what the hell, Dave said. That's my husband. So we're just starting off on the right foot. There's some alignment here. What fresh hell is this? Yeah. And every day it's something new. It's always something. Usually, I like to say it's always a thing and a thing. There's usually two things happening. They're I'm like, what is happening? And then we lose it, just to segue to the topic of your book. And anybody listening is a really good parent who thinks about it, who tries to do right by everybody, including themselves. None of us want to lose it.

2:02All of us know it's not great to lose it. And yet, sooner or later, all of us do. It is the great unavoidable, it seems to me, of parenting. The great unavoidable. I love that. Yes, exactly. Exactly that. What do we mean? When we say lose it, it's a funny turn of phrase, right? We're losing who we want to be. We're losing our cool. What is that? What do you think that really is? Yeah. So this is the exact question that I ask in the book. I think in the moment that I actually use that exact phrase of what did she lose or what is it that we're losing, right? I share a composite story of another mom that's based off of many, many moms that I've worked with and talked with.

2:42She is us. She is us. She is me. like, right. And it's like, what is it? You know? And I think that it is so many things. And I think it's exactly what you just said, right? Like it feels like we lose, we lose the driver's seat, you know? And I think it's a part of us, another part of us that kind of jumps in the driver's seat in that moment. And I don't think that part is bad, right? But it does feel like a loss of control of our self being in the driver's seat, self being the version of us that can access things like compassion and can slow down and regulation and can be really like thoughtful and intentional in our responses, can access all that great parenting advice that we're scrolling through every single day.

3:28But, you know, I think that what is a big piece of this other part of us jumping the driver's seat and what it is reflected of is like regulation, right? We're losing our regulation in that moment. And that is because, turns out, we are human beings who have a nervous system. And that nervous system is just always, its job is to always be on the lookout for threats. It's a threat detector. You know, I could just walk you through this morning, right? Like, I did lose it this morning because, hey, I wrote the book. Because you're a human being. Right. You thought you'd try it out, see what it was like for the rest of us.

4:08Yeah, right. This is what they do, I guess. say yell or something. Oh, yes. They yell or something. My gosh, no. Yeah, I'm so bewildered why I'm so passionate about maternal rage. It's like, gosh, I don't even like, it's just a thing that everyone talks about. No, no, no. The muse is the messiness of behind closed doors in my day to day life as a full on human being over here, right? So I just flew in from New York yesterday at the launch of my book. I got to do this like incredible segment on CBS Morning News. can I just say career highlight was talking to Gail King about explosive newborn poop.

4:45Like, just what a career highlight. She was like, who knew poop could fly? I'm like, who knew? And she's like, you know what? Actually, we did because we lived through this, right? Anyway, I get back last night. I'm jet lagged. I'm also my nervous system has been a little wrecked this week just from, you know, like the nerves of it all. And this book feels really vulnerable. And so a little bit of a vulnerability hangover as well. And the kids have been, my husband has been handling it this week. The kids are going to like different camps. There's like a lot of moving parts. My dad has been helping with some of the like drop-offs and stuff.

5:22And this morning, we all stayed up late last night because the kids wanted to wait up for me. I slept in this morning, time change, you know, stuff. We were messy this morning, right? Like trying to get my son out of bed. He's supposed to go to some like math thing before the other camp. And my dad's supposed to take him. And long story short, I talk about this in the book, but I grew up in a home where achievement and perfectionism and those sort of things were very important. That was how both of my parents, for a variety of reasons, found safety and belonging. And my dad showed up this morning and he saw all of us kind of disheveled.

6:03And like, I was like, you know what, we're going to skip the math thing this morning. We're just going to send everyone to one location this morning. Like, can you help us with that? He was like, well, this math thing, like I heard yesterday, it's supposed to be really important, you know? And I snapped at him and I looked at him and I said, that is not something helpful. Right. And I did it in front of the kids too. And my five-year-old's eyes go wide. And really what that moment was about was I think there is also like a much younger version of me who in this moment where we're just trying to make it work and get there.

6:36I'm trying to have a career. I'm trying to also get sleep. I'm trying to like not rush my kids. And we made this decision. And my dad in that moment activated this part of me that always felt like I can't disappoint anyone else. I have to be perfect. I have to also like achieve and like that's the priority over all other things. And I lost it. And it was I got dysregulated. But now that I can, now that I'm talking about it with you, right, is I recognize that that was, that's like a much younger version of me who actually also in that moment like stood up and said, stop. She didn't say it the way that I wish I could have said it, especially in front of my kids and set that tone.

7:18But it's because you had that, you talk so much in the book about generational cycles. And this one is particularly on the nose because you're talking to your dad and he's in the room with you. Literally all the generations. But you know, you could have said that is not bleeping helpful, whether or not your parent was literally there. And it's not to underline your childhood. Like we all bring our generational stuff into the moment and over apply it to the moment. And nobody's a bad person. 100 % of us do that. But there it was, So it's happening in that moment. It was happening in that moment.

7:51But a lot of times, yeah, he's not in the room, but it's still this part of me that feels like I need to make everything stop or I can't handle this or I can't let it out. And then I shove it down until it blows up. And what's been so helpful, though, about doing my own work as a human, because yes, I'm a therapist, also a client. I've walked through this myself and now getting to support others with this is being able to build a relationship with the parts of me, with it, with it that gets reactive and yells and cusses and says all the things I said that I wouldn't say, you know, and then goes and hives out in the bathroom and opens Instagram and feels even worse about it because like - That's a good place to go when you already feel bad about yourself.

8:43Right, exactly. We all are. We all do it. We all are. It's actually a stress response reaction. There's fight, flight, freeze. There's fawn, which is putting everyone else's needs before our own. And there's flock, which is like flocking to where others are as a way to feel safe or connected to. And I think now in modern day life, we have Instagram to flock to. It's phone flock. Yeah. It's phone flock. Exactly. And so it is our regulation. But I think we can't talk about regulation without also talking about generational cycles and the little us who is still there, who learned long ago how to survive.

9:24And gosh, our kids can trigger the heck out of those parts of us. Particularly when, just speaking for a friend here, when your kids do or say or behave in a way that would not have flown in your own household, when your kid is right in front of you getting away with something you wouldn't have been, quote unquote, getting away with. That, for me, is a trigger. And it's a generational cycle, isn't it? I mean, it's a different version of like, I'm seeing something that wasn't allowed reflected back to me is allowed by me in my house, but you know but it's triggering exactly i find when i look back at my oldest is 14 and when i look back at videos of when she was you know really little and i cringe at just the way that i'm like hovering around her trying to micromanage her feelings her behaviors especially when we were like out in the world you know my youngest who's five she doesn't get the all of my attention like my oldest did, but she definitely gets a more healed version of me.

10:26And so one thing that I do a lot of now as part of the repair is when I'm parenting our five-year-old, again, not perfectly, but different, different than how I showed up with my oldest. And I will turn to my 14-year-old in moments with the five-year-old that are tough after the moment and be like, hey, you might not remember this, but your body probably does. I didn't handle these situations in the way that you're seeing it right now. And I'm sorry. And you might not remember it, but your body might. And let's explore what that might look like. And she rolls with it. She talks about her own childhood trauma.

11:02And I'm like, you know what? There's moments where I'm like, oh, yep. Uh-huh. Okay. And yes, there are absolutely moments because she has now gone to her own therapy and she's done her own EMDR. Her core memory that she did when she did that work for her own anxiety and things that were triggering her as a teenager were moments where I came in really hot or my husband. And to be able though to then sit with her in the car with a boba drink on our drive home from therapy and talk to her about these moments that came up that her body remembers and to be able to like sit with that and be a witness to her sharing, that was hard.

11:43And here's the work that I'm doing to try to understand it. But oh my gosh, what a gift that would have been. And when I think back to little me and like if I could have had those moments then, I'm getting to have them more so now, right? Like as an adult. But it just takes an adult coming in and saying, hey, that wasn't about you. Or hey, I'm sorry. Or hey, like let's talk about this. And it's safe to talk to me about it. That's everything. I'm talking to Dr. Cassidy Freitas, author of Mom Needs a Moment. And we'll be right back. Summer is definitely a time when you want to be able to throw something on just before running out the door while also somehow looking like you definitely didn't just do that.

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16:04That's Nutrafol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L.com, promo code laughing. What I like in the book is that you talk, I feel like you really successfully reframe, these are not moments of bad parenting. There are moments maybe we regret. There are moments we wish didn't happen or had happened differently or whatever, but they are a result, as you say, of an overloaded stress response. Yes. Not a moment that you became some, you know, evil stepmother from a Disney movie who was not you, right? It's like, no, that was still you, for better and worse. That was still you. It was maybe five-year-old you overreacting to something in the moment, right?

16:42Yeah, exactly. Reacting to their four-year-old, whatever, but it is an overloaded stress response. I feel like that takes some of the shame. It reminds us of the humanity of it. It takes the shame out of it and lets us show up and admit that that's what it is. Exactly that. And can we contextualize this? Because I think that this is so critical to this conversation is the context. And yes, when I say context, I mean, okay, let's look at just like the family system around you and like the system you grew up in. And what were the rules? And how did people handle emotions? And how chaotic was it?

17:18And what was your little nervous system trying to attach to the caretakers around you because that's what you needed to do to survive? What was that little nervous system learning, right? That context is important. And then we have to talk about the context of our modern day lives too, right? where, gosh, women are expected to parent like they're not working and work like they are not a parent, right? And even if you're a stay-at-home mom, we are living in an intensive parenting era where it feels like we are expected to optimize everything. We have at our fingertips so much information, information that's helpful.

17:57Also, parasocial relationships with so many people where we're getting access to how other people are living. And our parasocial is like, that's how they are all the time. No, this is their highlight reel. But to me, that's just how you do it all the time. And I truly think that we're smart and like we know this is just curated chosen moments because I'm doing the same thing and attaching it to some emotional evoking music. You know, like we're all sharing, you know, just the highlights of like our family trips or whatever. We know that cognitively, but I just don't think our nervous system has caught up to that yet.

18:29Our nervous system still, when we're hiding out in the bathroom after we just yelled at our kid or screamed at our partner or just like, gosh, the poor dog, the pets too, they get to be the targets as well for our rage. And we're hiding out in the bathroom and we're scrolling because we're looking for some sort of distraction or connection or just, gosh, it's an addiction. It truly is in our modern day lives. We can know it. This is a lot of parenting advice. This is not a real interpretation of someone's life, a real reflection. And still, our nervous system will take it and our shame will whisper to us, what is wrong with you?

19:09There is something deeply wrong with you. Look at what everyone else is doing. You even knew that you have this script. You've read this before. And why can't you access it? And I think that in this intensive parenting era, in this digital era, the stress load on parents. The US Surgeon General warning came out. It's an epidemic, right? And it named social media as a piece of this. It is so real. And we also have to name things like the gender biases and the gender expectations for women, the invisible mental load that primarily defaults to women. We have to name these things so that women don't gaslight themselves into, mothers don't gaslight themselves into feeling like I just must be weak.

19:56There's just something wrong with me. It's only me behind closed doors who keeps showing up in this really rough, messy way. If I can ultimately, with the book, with this conversation in any which way, make someone feel a little bit less alone so that that shame can't fester and they can take a step to get support and realize that no, you're not a monster. The system is rigged against us. Yes. And there's deep, deep work here that you are so deserving and worthy of healing so that you can also show up for your kids. And they don't have to be the separate things. You know, I think it's like, I can't, I don't deserve a bubble bath.

20:35I yelled at my kid today. It's like, yeah, but if you take the bubble bath and you won't yell at your kid that they are in fact the same thing. Right. So guilt, you named this earlier, like guilt pops up and it's like, Hey, I messed up here. Right. I have some regret of how I just showed up. You know what? Thank goodness. I talk about like being the driver's seat. Thank goodness guilt is in the backseat popping up once in a while and being like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That feels out of alignment with our values here as a parent. I love that for guilt and for me because it has, it is the reason. You go guilt.

21:06You got it. I will go into the room and I'm going to say, I'm sorry. Like in moments when I lose it with my kids now, I talk about this. There's a story in the book where my son in a moment when I lost it with him. He looks at me and he goes, you know what? You'll be saying the S word soon. And of course, like my eyes go wide and he's like, you'll be saying sorry. And he like stomped off and it was such a messy moment. Yeah. I love it though. I kind of love the exit line. Right. But then also I went and like on like little self-imposed like adult timeout, right? Because that's kind of what I've been used to doing is like just sitting alone with my feelings.

21:41I sat with it though. And then I was like, wait, you know what? Something in his body knew because that moment was not about him. He was just fully being a kid in that moment. Like my reaction was unnecessary. Somewhere in his body, he knew this isn't about me. And I can trust actually that she's going to come back and say sorry, you know? And like, yeah, he said it with attitude, but like still somewhere in his body, he knew you will actually. And I did. What a great thing for a kid to know that compared to kids of the 70s and 80s that, yeah, my My mom was going to come back and apologize for that as opposed to like something that will literally never happen.

22:15I mean, I was raised in a very different time. My mom, I remember my mom did apologize to me sometimes. First of all, my mother is and was a very, very calm person. But she did apologize to me for things and they really stuck with me. You realize that this, you don't want to lose it at your kids, but these moments of repair will really stick with them. You have to do them and they're worth doing. Right. My mom never said sorry. and it's not because she's a bad person. She's a Hispanic woman who, she's a judge now, right? Who like in order to survive in her white male dominated spaces that she was showing up in, there was no room for error and that followed her home.

22:55And her and I've had some really meaningful conversations about that now as I've kind of worked through my own sort of feelings of perfectionism and how hard it was for me to say sorry and to own imperfection. And so to come back to guilt, gosh, thank you, guilt, for like popping up and like letting me know like, yeah, that's not an alignment and I am going to come say sorry. And guilt does not always get it right. So guilt is about values, right? So I could be like you said, you said taking a bath, right? Like I could go lock the door. and actually there's a section in the book about like why all of our best ideas happen in the shower when like we can't have any other input and like our phones in there with us.

23:39Like I can lock the door and sit in the bath or in the shower and really give myself and protect this margin and start to feel like guilty about doing that, right? And there's like so many different things that we might feel guilty about, right? Like regarding our jobs and going to work or taking time away from our kids and having someone take them out of the house so we could just be in the house by ourselves and feel guilty about asking for help or for doing any of these things for ourselves. And guilt will say, ooh, but you value presence. And to that, I would say, you're totally right, guilt.

24:13I do value presence. And thank you for that reminder. And this decision I'm making right now of protecting this margin away from my kids, for myself, is actually going to support me being present and being more connected to them once I'm back with them. Yeah. I love guilt and it doesn't always get it right. And sometimes though, guilt, which says, oof, I did something wrong here, can slip into shame, which looks more like there's something actually deeply wrong with me. What's the difference between guilt and shame? So where guilt is like, I've done something wrong. Shame is there's just something deeply wrong with me.

24:50Okay. And that hits deep, that hits hard. And that's a hole. That's a spiral. Because what happens in that space is then we feel like, oh, I can't let anyone see this. So then we like put on the mask. We don't ask for help. We don't want to show anyone. We don't want anyone to see how dark it is. Right. So that's ultimately my goal in anything that I do on Instagram, on this podcast, in the book, is how to open the door of what it looks like, not just for me, but I know for so many, because it's the privilege I get in the work that I do, that there's not something deeply wrong with you. And actually others are in this too, having very similar thoughts and experiences behind closed doors.

25:34And if we can begin to see that, shame can't fester. Shame can't grow under the condition of connection and feeling seen. And so it allows us to kind of crawl our way out of that shame hole and shame spiral and ultimately get help. I'm talking to Dr. Cassidy Freitas. Her new book is Mom Needs a Moment. And we'll be right back. Listen, Amy and I talk about it all the time, how the world of cash has turned into just beeps and boops on your phone. And it makes it really hard to teach kids to be smart about money. That's why Cash App now offers managed accounts for kids ages 6 to 12. Your kid gets a customizable Cash App Visa card that you manage with no subscription fees because it shouldn't cost you to help your kid build good habits with money.

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