Postpartum Anxiety Specialist: Brutal Truths Every High Achieving Mom Needs to Hear

Postpartum anxiety in high achieving moms is more common than most people think.

In this episode of the Health Pioneers Podcast, Jim Rohr our head of marketing at Healthpreneur, talks with Kate Kripke about why the same drive that helped women succeed at work is the very thing that holds them back in motherhood.

Kate is a maternal mental health specialist with over 20 years of experience.

She has helped thousands of career driven new moms move from overwhelm and anxiety into calm, confidence, and deep connection with their babies.

In this conversation, you will learn why your "achievement brain" blocks the presence your child actually needs from you.

Kate also explains the neuroscience behind why overachieving shuts down the part of your brain needed for creativity, learning, and connection.

She shares how to start regulating your nervous system so you can feel grounded at home and at work.

What we cover in this episode:

00:00 Why high achieving moms struggle with anxiety
01:17 What is postpartum anxiety in career driven moms
02:44 Why overachieving does not work in motherhood
05:34 What is secure attachment and why it matters
08:57 How generational trauma affects your parenting
14:17 The real cause of postpartum anxiety (it's not hormones)
19:34 The good mom myth and what kids actually need
29:17 The neuroscience of fight flight or freeze in moms
38:41 How to regulate your nervous system as a new mom
53:45 How working moms can build a bond with their baby

This episode answers:

Is postpartum anxiety the same as postpartum depression?

No. Postpartum anxiety often shows up as constant worry, a need to control, and trouble being present. Many high achieving women do not realize they have it because they see it as ambition or drive.

Can you be successful at work and still be a calm, present mom?

Yes. Kate explains that regulating your nervous system actually helps you perform better at work and connect deeper at home.

Find Kate Kripke:
Website: https://www.katekripke.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katekripke/
Podcast: Motherhood Uncut

Health Pioneers Podcast

If you’ve ever left a medical appointment feeling rushed, dismissed, or more confused than when you walked in, you’re not alone.

Health Pioneers is a podcast featuring clinicians and health practitioners who looked at the conventional system and decided to do things differently.

Each episode highlights a practitioner who stepped off the beaten path to build a better way of helping patients…one focused on root causes, deeper thinking, and care that actually makes sense.

These are thoughtful conversations about how great practitioners think, what they see that others miss, and why they chose a different path.

Health Pioneers is a Healthpreneur production hosted by Jim Rohr, our head of marketing at Healthpreneur.  

Healthpreneur is on a mission to help the best health experts serve the most people, and Jim has spent the past 20 years as a practitioner, author, and advocate for root-cause medicine.


#postpartumanxiety #newmom #maternalmentalhealth #motherhood #anxietyrelief #workingmom #healthpioneerspodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Many high achievers, overachievers would never say they have anxiety. They would say they have ambition. These are women who have achieved phenomenal things in their lives because they never stop, they never slow down, but they're using a part of their brain that I call their achievement brain.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

What happens when mom is doing it all?

SPEAKER_03 0:16

Motherhood is inherently unpredictable. The way we've learned to get things done by doing more is the thing that gets in the way. It's totally counterproductive to be an overachiever. It holds us back. And you have achieved this much, this far from an activated nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

How do you even access some of that?

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Well, you access it by asking yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

My guest today is Kate Kripke. She's a maternal mental health specialist, and for over 20 years, she's helped thousands of high-achieving, career-driven new moms move out of postpartum and ongoing anxiety into calm, confidence, and deep connection with their babies and young children without giving up their careers that they worked so hard for. She's also the host of the Motherhood Uncut podcast, and I get to spend some time with her today. Thanks for being here, Kate.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

Thanks, Jen. Psyched to be here with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, I'm excited because you solve a huge problem. And um, you know, women need as much support, especially moms, as much support as they can possibly get these days. So tell me a little bit about the work that you do and yeah, start there.

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Yeah. So maybe I'll start by just saying I am a mom of two. My daughters are now 16 and 19. The work I do is really in helping for those women who are so used to being successful and getting things done. And then their world flips upside down when they become a mother. One in five, if not more, new moms are going to struggle with pretty significant anxiety, guilt, overwhelm. And it interferes with their ability to live their lives and do the work they love, and it also interferes with that connection and secure attachment. So I like to think of it as helping the whole family thrive, but really I am helping those women really have the experience of motherhood that they've wanted from.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

One of the things that I've heard you say is that like what helped these successful women have the success that they had, that something switches when they're now moms. And they, it's like they can't rely on the skills or the grit and the like, I'm just gonna try harder and figure it out kind of approach that helped them have that success in their careers, but now isn't working in motherhood. What is it about motherhood that sort of throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing?

SPEAKER_03 2:34

Well, I think for must, most of us, and I'll put myself in that category, let's talk about sort of overachieving for a minute. Yeah, right? The the those of us who have moved through life being taught directly or indirectly when we were young that messiness or uncertainty or unpredictability or God forbid, feeling emotions are something that we need to fix and problem solve. We've gotten really good at that, right? These are women who have achieved phenomenal things in their lives because they never stop, they never slow down, they problem solve, they're doing all these things, but they're using a part of their brain that I call their achievement brain. Motherhood is inherently unpredictable and uncertain and full of emotion. And one of the things I hear over and over and over from the women that I work with is I just want to be more present. But we cannot be more present with our little humans if we can't, or our nervous systems aren't ready to slow down, if we're not willing or ready to feel like nets feelings that any parent is gonna feel. So I think it's really about, you know, the way we've learned to get things done by doing more is the thing that gets in the way of feeling the way we want to feel as moms and having that relationship with our kids. So it's interesting, right? It's like the thing that's works so well suddenly gets in the way of what we want.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

And so what is that like like what happens with the superwoman myth, right? It's like we hear this idea of like, oh, I'm just gonna bring that same overachievingness to motherhood.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Women tend to do motherhood. They think, what do I need to do to be a good mom? That's that achievement brain, right? And it's not the brain that's focused on this moment. That's the brain that's thinking about what needs to happen for the moment I want later. And the supermon, I mean, I I don't know how in the world of mothers you are, but like the super mom, when we imagine her, shh am I allowed to swear on the spot?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Sure, of course.

SPEAKER_03 4:43

She's getting every fucking thing done all the time. Like that, like let I use that word on purpose because it's like annoying. It's like, uh, that thing, but I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna get it done. And it just is literally the roadblock to having the experience in motherhood that our kids need and that we want. So it's really counterintuitive to ship that off because we do we kind of want to do it all, but we don't have to do it all.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah. So what happens when the mom is like is doing it all? Is is there uh like is she compromising? Like, what is she compromising by having that drive?

SPEAKER_03 5:24

She's compromising her connection with her child. So the the term we use in my world is secure attachment. What we know is that that attachment is required for healthy emotional, psychological, and mental development for little humans. It's about the connection. And the connection happens in the moment. So if I'm running around doing, I'm actually not right there in the moment. And I think the reason it's counterintuitive is because there's actually so much to do in motherhood, especially if you're a working mom, especially if you're also building a career. So we really have to shift the way we're approaching motherhood in general to access the thing that we want most. And the thing we want most is also the thing that scares us the most because it's slowing down and it's pausing and it's actually feeling.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

I saw this, I saw this thing on the internet. Maybe you've seen like the memes going around where they're like, um, what's the most unhinged thing a therapist has ever told you? And the comment sections are amazing. And I saw this one, and uh, she said, My therapist told me that my entire personality is a coping strategy. And I was like, oh my God, this is speaking to me, I think I get in.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

100%. 100%. And you know what's so interesting about motherhood or parenthood in general is that we can't approach this brand new kind of relationship we've never had before with a child. I think you're a parent. Yeah, so you know what I'm thinking about without thinking back to how we were parented. Whether that was, you know, on whatever end of that extreme, right? We can't do that without remembering. And so if we're not paying attention, we will bring that those coping mechanisms that we've learned into that relationship. And a lot of that lives under the surface. We don't even realize we're making the choices or having the beliefs that we have. And so it is coping. It's coping, and it's also generational trauma and relationship trauma. And doesn't mean we had affordable parents. It just means maybe they weren't equipped to get what we needed.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

I remember when my son was born, uh, and especially like that first year, there was just like so much stuff that came up. And I would tell my friends, I was like, like, you have beliefs about shit that you don't even know about until all of a sudden you're in an argument with your wife about whether or not your kid needs to wear socks. Like that was like a whole thing. She was Polish. She's a my ex-wife, but the ex-wife is Polish. And so it was like, you know, the kid needs socks all the time. I'm like, who cares about socks? But like now we're arguing about whether or not we put socks on the kid.

SPEAKER_03 8:03

Which is, of course, not what you're arguing about.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

A thousand percent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

We like to play it on the socks, not the socks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

But it's just like the the the way that like bringing in that new life just like stirs up the pot was like really jarring and is overwhelming.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

You know what's really interesting, Jim? Uh at least see if I can say this in a way that is clear because it can get complicated. But with the women I work with, we talk about a really important concept, which is what I believe to be true about myself is what I will believe to be true about my child. And what I believe to be true about my child is what they will believe is true about themselves. And that's that generational passing down of the unhelpful coping, right? So for me, when my now 19-year-old was a baby and I had horrible postpartum anxiety, I was raised by two very high-achieving but very anxious parents. Little side note, my mom passed away nine years ago from a um stress-related incident. And she was like a frickin' powerhouse in the world of law and mediation and arbitration in New York City in the like 80s and 90s. I mean, she was doing incredible things. Last time I saw her, she told me, said, you know, we were driving to the airport. She's like, Kate, I've been running for class president every day of my life. And what was amazing about that is she won every day. Like people loved her. She was doing amazing things. But inside, she was kind of quietly killing herself, right? So um, you know, and her sort of version of what I'm talking about was, I'm not enough. I really believed that she had to achieve all these things, which many of us high achieving overachievers do. We get our sense of self from what we're achieving. And then, of course, she raised a daughter who inevitably was somehow going to believe I'm not enough if I'm not doing everything my mom is doing all the time. That kind of morphed for me into I'm not okay. I had like horrible panic attacks and hypochondria and social situations. I was so anxious. I just had this like deep sense that I was not okay. And then I had this beautiful baby girl who was like as high as you can get on the Afghar score. And I was convinced she was not okay. Everything. She wasn't looking at me enough, she wasn't eating enough, she wasn't, you know, gaining enough weight. She, I mean, everything was coming from that, like there is something wrong with her. And it was never about her. Like it was always about me. And so I had to learn how to shift that undercurrent of belief I had about myself so that I could approach her from a grounded, steady, observant, curious place versus that fear-based turns into micromanaging and making sure your kid is always wearing socks. You know what I mean? It's not about the freaking socks. It's about what's gonna happen if they're not wearing the socks. So I think there's a really interesting generational dynamic to this as well in parenting.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Where does your dad fit into the picture?

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Oh, my dad, who just got a little teary, he just passed away um a few months ago, which by the way is we were desire to be at least we're like no parents. Right. My dad, also anxious, but was sort of the chronic, also a lawyer, but the chronic, like not enoughness and everything. So he taught me very unintentionally, I should say, like many women out there, I had on paper a stellar childhood, right? Like everything that I bring into motherhood that contributed to my own anxiety as a new model was energetic. It was an exchange of nervous systems. It wasn't about what was happening on the outside. And my dad was like my dad's emotions were terrifying to me. He was a hypochondriac, he was angry all the time. He would like beat his length. I remember my dad walking around the house when I was young, like calling himself an idiot.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Right? Like self-talk, but like out-salah, not just his head, like an idiot, right? Like, and I think that he um in many ways made me fearful of emotion as a kid because emotion itself felt so scary. And he wanted nothing more than for me to have a happy, healthy, successful life. But again, you bring into motherhood for me uh a sense of I'm not okay, I'm not enough, I have to be like class president for me to be okay. And feeling any emotion other than happiness is a problem. And that is a recipe for postpartum anxiety. So I think I had these two excessive achievers. My dad's was a little more like, I'm forever needing to prove myself, but I'm gonna call myself, you know, uh stupid in the meantime. My mom forever needing to prove herself, but like winning the gold stars and like feeling good for a minute until she went for the next star. I have that to come into motherhood with.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:26

Yeah. I don't think that's uncommon either.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

What is it about uh like motherhood? Is it that that sort of brings this stuff up? Is it or like the is it the hormonal shift? Is it this like blank slate? Is it this like subconscious belief of like I want to be better than my parents or do better than my that tells you my upbringing, right? It's like gotta do a little better every time. Bill Burr's got this great bit where he's like, you know, if I can just like be a little less worse than my parents, like we're moving in the right direction.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

And there's trick to that.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Um so, but what is it, what is it about motherhood that um just sort of like can be sort of like triggering?

SPEAKER_03 14:07

Great question. All of the above. So let's talk about hormones just for two seconds, and I don't need to go into a whole lecture about hormones, but the hormone shift that women experience going from pregnancy to postpartum is intense and insane. And those hormones will have a direct impact in our brain chemistry, as will lack of sleep, right? So these two things that people walk around saying are the cause of anxiety in new motherhood are important things to consider. However, I believe that the real cause is all of the uncertainty and unpredictability and messiness that leads to a pretty big emotional experience for any human on this planet. I don't care if you're running a if you're in a C-suite or have written 27 books or you're a pro athlete, doesn't matter. There is unmet discomfort in early motherhood. And I think what actually really tips it for women and then has the anxiety last for a long time is that those women are used to fixing and problem solving and achieving their way through that. And you cannot do that with a little human who's a skin bag of unpredictable emotion. So if you don't know what to do in those moments when it's right here in front of you, right? Because moms want to be present with their kids. If you don't know what to do to stay present, if feeling, if being present means I'm gonna feel a lot and I'm gonna have to sit with not knowing the answer or not knowing what's happening or what's gonna happen the next second, if I don't know how to do that, I'm gonna develop a lot of anxiety. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, a hundred percent. And that's in my own journey, that's been uh a huge source of growth, right? Of like making that shift from how do I figure this out? Like I joke, we joke in my family, like if I if we were gonna talk to my dad about anything, we kind of had to have like a like a presentation. Yes, you know, it's like if you were gonna if you were gonna speak, you had to know exactly what you were gonna say and how it was gonna end. Yeah, right. So it's like being around people that just like talk. Totally always is a little triggering for me because it's like, do you not think before you speak? Like I would have never in my household like said anything without knowing kind of the beats, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Um I think uh what I'm taking what you're saying is that there is a way in which we enter parenthood with a roadmap of what's acceptable or not acceptable, okay or not okay. And we can live in our, I don't know if this is what you were saying, but it's we can live in our brains, what am I supposed to do in this moment, and think we're doing the right things. But really, parenthood is about what's happening in our nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Yeah, so yeah, that that that's it. It was like it's it's that journey from being like, I have to know where this is gonna go, to just being okay with like losing your friend thought, being okay with just like sitting and being like, okay, I'm here. Like this is messy.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

Yeah. And if you were taught directly or indirectly as a child that that wasn't safe, your nervous system is gonna freak out in that moment. That's why like my favorite thing about doing the work I do with my clients is to is helping them understand that there is nothing wrong with them. That is your nervous system doing its job, right? Well, we start to panic and we lose our train of thought or we're, you know, getting caught up in the million things we need to do and we're having a hard time being present with our child. That's not because we're not good moms or good parents. That's not because there's something wrong with us and we're incapable. That's because our nervous system is literally doing what it's designed to do. So the work has to start with getting brave, but getting really curious about what is the operating system, so to speak, underneath that. Like what are the beliefs I come into parenthood with about myself or being a parent in general? You know, what is what do I believe is okay and not okay? What do I believe is good and bad? What do I believe is it's all the rational stuff. Because that's where the anxiety is coming from. I'm not feeling anxious because my baby's crying. I'm feeling anxious because what I'm telling myself about my baby crying. Many high achievers, overachievers, like high-functioning folks are not even asking that question. They don't know the difference between those two things.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah. I remember I had in my acupuncture practice, I had this patient who was having chronic migraines, and she was a young mom with three kids. And um it all it struck me when I would talk to her because it's a the migraine is bad. Migraines are terrible, they're bad. Terrible. Uh, but the thing that was making it so much worse for her was the story that she was making around what it means, what kind of mother she was, right? She couldn't pick her kids up some days, had to be in a dark room, couldn't play. And that whole narrative of I'm a shit mom, I'm a terrible mom, I'm not there with my kids, like compounded exponentially uh however bad the physical migraine was.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Can I shift the conversation for a minute with that?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:25

So I think it's useful to talk about that. Like what we are told it means to be a good mom. Because there are a lot of myths out there about what our children actually need from us. I'm gonna make a huge generalization here, which is that women tend to be givers more than receivers. And I am not speaking to every woman out there, but it tends to be the way it is. And of course, men, you get my point. Yeah. But we're taught that being a good mom means that we're giving and giving and giving and giving. You hear that, like, you know, self-sac, you know, we're sacrificing ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Right? That statement makes me want to scream. And I think for the women I work with leading up to motherhood, these are women who want to be mothers. They love their children, they want to be good mothers, but they also have other things in their life that they're committed to and wanting to pursue. And there becomes a conflict of like, okay, but good moms are home to tuck their kids in every night. Good moms are the ones who are always soothing their children when they're sad. Good moms are the ones that are around for their baby's first steps. Good moms are the ones who are, you know, you know, putting their kids first all the time. My client does not want to leave her job. I want to make a distinction. If you want to be a stay-at-home mom, please. I think that is amazing. But the women I work with would not make good stay-at-home moms because there's something else, there's a fire in their belly outside of that. And I think there is this story we tell ourselves back to your client about what it means to be a good parent, a good mother, and what makes a bad mother that actually misses the point of connection. Because what our kids need most, and actually it's the same thing that you and I both need, is to feel seen, heard, and understood. And that starts when our babies are infants. Our our baby, we our mothers and and their children share a nervous system by design. I mean, that's just sort of what helps us keep our kids safe when they're little. Although now in 2026, our nervous system is escalated for a million things that they weren't escalating for when it was like life was simple. But that what can happen is that when we are, if our baby is crying, which we always do, and we start to free. Out because our baby is crying, we don't know why, and we don't have the answer. What should I do? What's the right thing to do? You know, this is the inside of the brain. Our nervous system stays escalated, which keeps our baby's nervous system escalated. And really, what a little human, all a little human needs at that moment is to know that their distress is okay. That's it. But we're so into trying to fix the distress that we miss the actual point of connection. And that is by far more important than the perfect sleep routine. By far more important than what your, you know, who your kids, you know, I mean I'm like what you're feeding them, whether you're breastfeeding or bottle feeding. Far more important than, you know, I have an amazing woman I'm working with right now who is a very high-level government position. And she her kid is two. And she is on a regular basis when she's home, she works a lot, when she's home with him, teaching him vocabulary, making sure she's reading the right books.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

And is so stressed about whether or not she's doing it right or wrong that there's no connection. So I kind of went off in a tangent, Jen, but like I feel so deeply passionate about that piece because of the niffs. What we're told it means to be a good mom, we're actually getting in our own way of what our kids really need.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yeah. And what she said there makes a lot of sense. Where if I'm hearing it right, the baby just needs to know that it's okay, even in distress. But if the mom, I'll speak for the dads for a moment, the dads too, right? If if the if my wiring is I'm not okay when I'm in distress, then how could I possibly give that to the baby?

SPEAKER_03 23:43

That's it. That's it. And now we go to I'm not gonna be okay unless my baby's distress ends. So now I'm putting the responsibility for how I'm doing onto my child.

SPEAKER_02 23:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:56

And I'm telling you, while I work with most people from zero to five, I have mothers come to me when their kids are school-aged, teenagers, and by that point, this is much harder to shift because their children are feeling responsible for that and then rebelling in ways that like not just your typical, you know, muscular, but you know what I mean. Right? It's really problematic. And I think there is, again, what I believe about myself, I'll believe about my child. If I don't believe my distress is okay, there's no way I'm gonna believe my kid's distress is okay. And distress or emotion is just a part of being human, whether you're a one-minute old human or wise humans like us.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah. My sister is this like typical overachiever. She was valedictorian of her law school, went to Cornell. She was amazing. She's the oldest. We were always compared to, you know, what Becky was doing. Uh, she's had a really nice career as a lawyer, and she's got two kids. Yep. And uh one her daughter, when she was like, I don't know, like 10 or 11, uh at school, they were like, What do you want to be when you grow up? And her daughter said, uh, I'm gonna be a lawyer, but I'm gonna be a lawyer that's able to pick my kid up from school. You know, it's like dig at her mom.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

Really? I I'm with her. That's how I felt. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah. And my sister was just like, she was like, Well, good luck being a broke, you know, not very good lawyer if you're picking your kid up from school. Which is just that, like, you know, it's I saw that as this kind of like, you know, reflex of uh, you know, protecting all of you know her feelings of, you know, and that guilt that's there, I'm sure. I was just like, oh, I don't pick up my kid as much as I should. Getting back to like the good mom myth and what is that, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Let me share a really little short story about what it was like to be raised by my mom. Because I, you know, I would have said that I had, we don't need, but I would have said I had a secure attachment with my mom, which I did not have. When we have secure attachment with our parents, it's very unlikely we're gonna develop clinical levels of depression or anxiety. Okay, many things can lead to depression and anxiety. And if we have a secure attachment, it's unlikely, if we have a healthy brain in general, that we're gonna end up with clinical levels of depression and anxiety. But my mom worked all the time. And when she was with me, she would overcompensate. She would like, I learned, you know, after she had passed away, and I kind of did a lot of my own work around this, that what my mom needed more than anything was for me to feel like she was a good mom. She felt like she was, she was so guilty for working so much that the only way she could feel good enough in mothering is if I told her she was a good mom. So when she came home, she would overcompensate, you know, like I mean, we have boundaries, but you know, just like nothing else mattered except me, which felt really freaking good.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:02

But when she was gone, I would pant. I I it was so all or nothing that I had no space in between. If she was with me, I was okay. If she was not with me, I was not okay. So she flip-flopped between being at work and, you know, I I do think side note that there's a way to be really successful at work and not be overachieving. I don't think we have to overachieve to be successful. That's another podcast interview. But I think she would be so busy and to excess that when she came home, she would excess it, you know, give me too kind of too much. So then I was totally unstable. I mean, I had panic attacks and so much anxiety as a kid. But I think that's what happens. We feel so guilty that we overcompensate, and it's just swinging. We swing from extreme to extreme, which is exhausting for us.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about overachieving. So in my acupuncture practice, uh, I used to work at this at this spa in Miami. It was like this high-end spa. And so we get a lot of New Yorkers. New Yorkers are New Yorkers. Uh I am in New York. Yeah. Yeah. I I used to, I lived, I have I left there and I actually moved to Brooklyn. I lived there for like six years. That's right, Bruh. Oh, we're in Brooklyn.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

Brooklyn Heights.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Okay, I was in Green Point. Yeah. Practice was in Williamsburg.

SPEAKER_03 28:22

Yeah. Um very hip now, not so hip in the 70s and 80s, but very hip now.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

I heard that the uh when I lived there, someone said that the the law that New York has where like once you're in a cab and the cabby has to take you wherever you want to go, uh happened because cabs didn't want to take people to Williamsburg.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Yeah, I believe that.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah. It's changed something. It's so different now. Yeah. Like the Apple store, like Whole Foods down the street. But anyway, so people would come to they they'd come down, these new workers would come down to Miami and they'd come for rest and relaxation. Uh, and we I would talk to them about stress management, all this stuff. And there was this like this fear. Sometimes they would voice it, sometimes it was just you could feel it in the room of if I relax, if I'm present, if I have a regulated nervous system, I'm not gonna be as productive at work.

SPEAKER_03 29:10

You want to know the science behind it?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Yeah. The neuroscience, yeah, let's nerd out.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

Let's nerd out. I love neuroscience. This is the curse of the overachiever, right? Because we have told ourselves that rest and slowing down is dangerous. And so we don't do that and we take on more and we do, do, and do. And then we also talk badly to ourselves if we feel like we're being lazy or not doing enough. That disconnect, that critical self-talk turns on our sympathetic nervous system, fight floor, freeze, which fuels many high achievers, overachievers don't would never say they have anxiety. They would say they have ambition.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 29:55

But what's really happening is that their nervous system is on a heightened alert, which feels like it gives them energy to do more, but it also shuts down, you probably know all this, the executive functioning, our frontal cortex. So we can't both be in fight flat or freeze and frontal cortex at the same time. So we think we're getting more done, but we're doing it from a fear-based place, which turns off the parts of our brain that are required for learning, taking in new information, connecting all those things that we actually need, creativity, curiosity, all those things that we need to do to actually grow and achieve and succeed. So it's totally counterproductive from a neuroscience perspective to be an overachiever. It holds us back. And one of the other things I love saying to the women I work with is dang, you have achieved this much, this far from an activated nervous system place, has to you wait. Just wait till you figure out how to regulate your nervous system on the inside, regardless of what's happening around you. Like you are gonna fly professionally.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

You must hear crazy aha moments. Like, what is what's that like for some of your clients when that first starts to like click into place? Not the like, not the final outcome, but that I'm really like that aha moment of like, oh shit, like the first time they feel that nervous system downregulate.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

I mean, it's a lot of rich relief. I think a lot of my clients are proud of their identity of a high achiever, but they don't actually want to live that way anymore. It's so exhausting. It's so exhausting. I mean, burnout is like a medical condition at that point. So, but oh, let's talk about the chronic overwhelm. It it people do not want to live that way. So I think there's something so relieving about the idea that they don't have to give up their desire for excellence, that they don't have to settle with, you know, in my work, there's this term good enough, which I actually really believe in, but we have to actually talk about what it really means because people who are high achievers won't, they won't settle for good enough. It's not okay. But there's a difference between striving for excellence in a way that allows you to also feel regulated and rested and deeply connected to the things in your life and the people that matter. Um, that feels good. And I think it's just so different from the this achievement brain, again, that says there's no other option to go, go, go. But I don't want to keep go, going and going. And so where does that leave me? And I yeah, I think it's like a total, I mean, it's it's a pause. It's a safe pause where their nervous system doesn't start freaking out when they slow down.

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I remember for me, I had a good friend of mine, and he used to say, I hear him give talks and stuff, and he used to say, he'd say, you know, if all you if all you did in life was bring a good mood wherever you go, that's a good life. I tear up thinking about it, because it's like I heard him say it maybe three or four times, and I just watched like you know, my Stanford graduate brain go like, that's bullshit. Like, it's not about a good mood. Like, you have to do this, you have to do this, you gotta achieve this, you gotta be like this, and all of this kind of like all of that wiring. And then one day he said it and I heard it, and it was just like, oh, if I can just bring a good mood. And what I love about that is it's like simple. It's like you like you kind of know if you're bringing a good mood or not. You know, it's like there's still some achievement, like you, I mean you could you could distort it, but like the idea is like you don't have to be like a particular way, it's not about achieving something, it's just about being mindful of like what's the impact we're having on people.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Right. So let me ask you a question. Yeah, what's your definition of a good mood? Like for you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

What does that actually mean to you? It's like it's contributing without like expectation of like getting anything in return. Like not not having to it it's not like I'm trying to achieve a particular thing other than just like what can I bring? It's like a it's like a party game. Like, what can I what can I bring? Nachos, salsa, guac. Like, what can I bring? I say, oh, I'm gonna contribute a good mood. And that like, and that's it. People will interact, however, they interact with whatever I say and whatever I do. But if I at the end of the day, I can be like, ah, I brought a good mood, you know, it's like that's nice, it feels good.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

So from the perspective of my work, I would call that connection. I would call that an internal steadiness that allows you to be present with what's happening in the moment and to connect. And I asked you the question, because a lot of people think a good moon means being happy.

unknown 34:56

Woo!

SPEAKER_03 34:56

Jen's here, look at what a good mood he's in, right? And again, maybe that is the case for you sometimes, but but I think there's something that happens a tagline, something I say all the time, is the feelings are never the problem. So you could wake up someday and you could have, you could be having a very human, normal response to the conditions of the planet right now or what's happening in the world around you, or your your wife is going through something that's not easy, or a parent, or right? It and you are feeling, if you're healthy, you're feeling the normal human responses to those things. And you can show up and move through your day with total acceptance that you can feel those things and still be okay, because I think that's the crux. Oh, I can feel the reality of the pain of our planet or people who are suffering. Oh, I can feel my wife's struggle right now. I can be in connection with those things and still trust that I'm okay and be present with those things and present in the moment and show up from that place, that secure attachment.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

And that's what our kids need from us. They don't need us to be happy all the time. They don't need us to feel like, you know, I've got Superman energy and I can, you know, do the PTA and drop my kids off from school and to have all the meetings and have the perfect birthday party and make all my homemade. They do not need that. We just need us to be in your definition of a good mood.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

And it also feels that right here.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's like it's not a there, there, it drops all the performative aspect. All the performance is gone, and you're just like, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

You're like, here I am. I get this.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

Yeah. Yeah. Because that um, yeah, it's keeping up with the Joneses, right? Like that performance and the especially as a new parent, all of that the comparison game is just especially bad for moms.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah. I don't know what happens in the dad world. It's not like that. But she is, it is freaking intense.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Yeah. So how do you like, where do you even begin with with your moms? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Well, I think it starts with being willing to ask the question, how do I feel? Because on paper, you know, we talked about our chat, like on paper, like they they many of the women I work with on paper have that perfect life. They don't feel the way they want to feel. So when I work on my own life and with the women I work with, we're really using that feeling in the body as a gauge for what choices am I making. So first we have to ask a question, because many of those people aren't even pausing to say, how do I feel in my life? At the very beginning, we have to identify what the beliefs are that we bring into motherhood with us about ourselves, about good mothering, about our children, our perceived beliefs about who our children should be. We have to start there. So there's a lot of great advice out there about self-care tips and parenting tips. There's a lot about parenting. You know, I'm telling you, you could follow the best parent coach in the world. And if you're doing exactly what they say from an activated nervous system, none of it's gonna work. Your kid is not gonna sleep, they're not gonna breastfeed, their tangents aren't gonna end, right? So we have to start, I think, with that underprint. Like, what am I actually telling myself about myself and who I need to be to be successful? What is a good mom? What am I expecting from my child? We gotta start there.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

How do you, I mean, so much of that stuff, it seems like is is unspoken. It's like that subconscious operating system, right? Like, how do you how do you even access some of that?

SPEAKER_03 38:43

Well, you access it by asking yourself, how do I want to feel in this season of my life as a monk? And again, for my clients as a working monk, how do I want to feel? And then the question would be, what would I need to believe about myself in order to access that feeling? And if most people, I mean, generalization, are gonna say, I want to feel present, I want to feel confident, I want to feel inspired and motivated. And it makes me feel a little teary, all the things. I mean, it's all the work I've done on it to on a daily basis still, right? I want to feel present, rounded. Okay, what would I need to believe about myself in order to access that feeling? Well, I'd I need to believe I was okay. I would need to believe I was enough. I would need to believe, you know, there's a lot of a lot of women move through life with this feeling of lack of worthiness and lack of value. I'd need to believe that I was worthy of feeling those things and valuable. And this is the point where many of my clients will all the yeah yeah yeah buts will come up. The conditioning, not facts, the stories. And that's how we get in there is to say, well, what were you told? Like, I'm okay if, right? That was mine. Like I'm okay if what everyone around me is happy. I'm okay if I'm winning class president every day. I'm enough if. And that's where we begin that process of saying, well, okay, is it possible that that's a belief and not a fact? And we just need that 1% possibility. And if someone says no, it's not possible, then I I can't help. Most of us want to believe that's possible. So we'll start there.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Yeah. I remember one of the sort of breakthroughs I had in my own journey was like the it it sounds so trite to say, but the like that I am enough like because I am, not because of what I've done or what I will do. And it's like, I don't know, I it's like a I minimize it now. It's just like, oh, it's such a cliche. But like when I felt it, when it when it became a new level of knowing, again, it was another of those like pivotal moments in my life that downshifted. And it's all this like, I'm vibing with you and your ideal clients. I'm not a mother, obviously, but like it's that overachiever language, right? Of just like, oh, I was just like, I remember just like my shoulders slumped, and I was like, fuck. Yeah, yeah, because I saw how much I've been driven to do and to achieve and to be the thing, you know, as opposed to just being.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

So many of us are really smart. Like the women I work with are very smart. So they might know that intellectually. I don't need to earn my worth. Like the fact that I how love talking about like, do you know how hard it is to actually be born? Like, what has to happen for you and me to actually come out of the room in one piece? Like, it is crazy shit what has to happen. So many of us can sort of rationalize and intellectualize, okay, I understand our nervous system doesn't know that yet. So it's catching the nervous system up to that. And our nervous system on every moment of every day is facing safety versus lack of safety on what we've been taught, directly or indirectly. So that I am Ena. I am valuable. What I had a conversation with a client on a call just this past week where she was talking about this idea of deserving. You know, she realized through this work that she doesn't know if she deserves to feel good. Right? She's been so taught that you you like you have to earn your good feelings. You have to work hard in order to take a rest.

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Right. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 42:43

That value doesn't just exist. You have to earn it. And we kind of have a conversation about like, well, what does the word deserving mean? And she couldn't get out of that um cause and effect definition of deserving. I don't even know what the word means in the dictionary. But if we sit with this, I am enough, I am deserving just for being, if we can catch our nervous system up to trusting that it's actually safe to just deserve or to just be enough. I mean, I do feel it in my body right now. Like my perspective goes from looking through this little tiny cylinder to like, oh my gosh, the world, oh my gosh, the world is my oyster. You and I are sitting in this beautiful place with this beautiful horizon. That's what it feels like. It feels like looking at a horizon with when we can land back in the just I am period. It does sound queasy, you know, cliche and cheesy, and many people are might roll their eye, but it is literally the core in my mind of mental health and well-being and of how I want to raise my children to what I want them to believe that about themselves. That's not gonna stop them from working hard. That's actually gonna fuel them moving in a direction towards making a big impact on this planet.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Yeah. I was uh I've been very like keenly aware with my son of like the language that I use and how like I don't I just don't I don't sort of drive him in like a what I felt like I grew up in a kind of a conditional way. Yes. You know, but it's it's interesting to watch him thrive. He's I mean we homeschool him, so he's got like a whole range of opportunities to like follow his interest. And sometimes I look at him and it just like I can feel this like short circuit of my old programming because it's so different than like how I've done it, like how I were was raised. But I love that feeling of having you know broken at least part of that generational movement of just saying, okay, like you know, the the end stops with me. And I would imagine that on some level, like your high achievers, they probably feel pretty good when they've started to regulate their nervous system and they've they've been able to. I mean, it's it's like still an achievement, but you know, it's like they're like, well, that bullshit stopped with me, you know, or I'm tuned into doing it differently.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Yeah, like it's not bad to want to achieve. So we also want to honor that. Like that achievement brain is so useful, it will get in the way of connection. And we all know all the studies out there. We know that the happiest people on the planet are the ones who have connections with other people, the what the people who are the most successful, like not just in your bank account or what your house looks like, but literally like have that feeling, the feeling of success. They're the ones with the close relationships, the deep relationships. And I think that there is a there is a pride that comes in realizing that we get to set up future generations. I will say to the women who I work with, again, I can feel if we want to cry, I can say, you know, we are doing this for your crane kids. It feels really good to feel better. It feels really good to step away from that exhausting, spinny brain that's feels like it needs to control everything and is micromanaging and is what ifing and is like that's exhausting. It feels good in our bodies to feel good, grounded. But we are also giving our grandbabies a gift. Yeah. Because when we raise our kids to move through the world that way with too deep trust in themselves outside of what they're achieving, just inherently, they're gonna raise their kids that way. It's my personal opinion of what we need to do to change the world.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Beautiful. That's incredible. So when you think about let's go back to the nervous system for a minute. When you think about the nervous system, one of the things that it sort of strikes me is this high achiever, overachiever ability to just reframe sensation. Yes. To minimize and reframe and like, you know, you said earlier about like it's it's not anxiety, it's ambition, or you know, it's like, let's just talk about that, about that, that reframe. Like, what are some what are some warning signals in particular that uh woman listening to this, you know, what what is some of that translation that happens?

SPEAKER_03 47:25

Well, first of all, I do think, and and I I'm gonna say in our American culture, although again, I know we could talk, we could spend hours talking about what that even means, but in general, many of us believe that we're supposed to feel happy. That feeling good means feeling happy, right? And I really do, before I dive into your question, wanna demug that because the definition of mental health and well-being is that I'm willing to feel all of it. I have to be willing to feel the discomfort in order to access the true feel, the deeper feelings of joy or motivation or inspiration or connection, all those things. Love, right? So I think that we need to really understand that if the the people who are walking through on this earth who are really truly mentally well, they feel plenty of sadness and disappointment and worry and anger and frustration. So I think part of the reason we decide that that feeling in our body is motivation instead of something else is because we believe that the something else is bad and the motivation is good. That if I don't feel motivated and instead I feel scared or angry, then there's a problem. And it's the opposite of a problem. It's like it is what makes us human beings and it's what connects human beings, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but I've been sitting here for however long we've been talking, and I've had many, I mean, I'm loving this. If you can't tell, like this is my jam. I'm so psyched to be here. But I've had Mobile talked about my mom and my I had moments of waves of sadness, or, you know, I've got a kid who's a freshman in college. You better believe I have moments of feelings of fear because I can't, she's making all our choices right now. So, so we don't want to get stuck in those feelings because the second part of mental health and well-being is that we have really healthy coping skills to move from unpleasant emotions back to pleasant emotions. But the unpleasant, uncomfortable feelings and emotions are not bad. I may have taken us on a tangent there, but I guess that's just what's coming out of my mind.

SPEAKER_01 49:49

Well, it's part as part of the translation, right? We talked about it. And I imagine like it's gotta be super interesting to be in your brain because you're you're, you know, you've had so much experience and help so many women over the years that like you're making these kind of you're decoding it on the fly, right? When someone's like, oh, I'm ambitious, and you're like, oh, I probably know that probably means you're feeling this thing, you know?

SPEAKER_03 50:12

I mean, it's interesting because the co the question, I mean one of the reasons I love my work is because I get to model what a secure attachment feels like for someone else. Because what I would say to my client when they said said that is sort of the same thing I asked you. If they said, Oh, I feel so ambitious, I'd be like, tell me what that feels like. What does that feel like in your body? What does that word mean to you? Right? That's how we begin to decode. And often at that part of a conversation, someone will actually be like, Well, actually, like it feels sort of tight. When I think about ambitious, I kind of feel tight in my chest. And I'll say something like, Does that feel good? And they'll be like, No. And there might be living off this value of like perseverance or commitment, but they're not really the perseverance and commitment that's gonna get us somewhere because it quiets our brain, our limbic brain, and turns on our executive functioning. It's the perseverance and it's the like, you cannot stop. That does not feel good in our bodies, right? So I think there's an element of, you know, it won't surprise you at this point to hear that like uh heart emotions do not scare me. They used to when I was having anxiety and panic attacks. They do not scare me anymore. I find them a deep opportunity for so much curiosity and creativity and connection. And that's what we want to bring to our parenting. We want to bring that first Esther with us, as you were saying. And then we want to bring that kind of curiosity to our kid when our whether it's an infant or a baby or a toddler that's freaking out because they don't have their blue cup or whatever it is, or a school-age kid who someone didn't sit with them at lunch, like it's the same thing. Or a teenager who's a freshman in college and didn't get invited back to her sorority or whatever the heck is. It's the same thing. It's really needing to be willing to get curious about the words and the feelings without running away or fixing.

SPEAKER_01 52:18

And I've heard you say, I mean, to me, this is like all of this circles going back to parenthood and motherhood, being okay with uncertainty.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

100%. We are wired to fear uncertainty. So I also think that's important, right? When I say that emotion is never a problem, someone's feeling anxious. And I'm like, of course you're feeling anxious. You do not know what's happening in that little human's body and brain. Of course you feel anxious. The anxiety is not the problem. The problem is the story about the anxiety or the thing that's happening. So absolutely, I think that there is um this uncertainty and unpredictability. And again, we're hardwired. Many of us were raised in families where that actually wasn't safe for us for a myriad of reasons. You know, my dad had horrible panic attacks and the hypochondria went out. And if I didn't really know it was happening for him, of course I was gonna have my own panic attack about that because I need my dad to be okay for me to feel like I'm okay. So it always makes sense. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

And so what is that? Let paint the picture for me of like this this mom who now is developing this this ability to be okay with uncertainty, who is able to be okay with her kid crying and being uncomfortable. How is she different in the world, both at home and I would imagine ultimately at work too?

SPEAKER_03 53:38

I love this question because it shifts the perspective from um problem to not a problem. So we can say, okay, what if this is not a problem? So let me take a very concrete example that happens for my the moms I work with who are in some form of a career. They may even be working from home, but this is gonna happen where they pass their child on to a nanny or a child care provider and their kid cries, reaches for them. I mean, as a parent, the feel like I can feel that in my body, right? We can use that as an opportunity for connection. And what our brains tend to do, what mothers' brains tend to do in that moment is use it as an example of failure or doing something wrong, as a problem. Oh, I'm dropping my kid off or leaving them with a nanny, they're calling, they're crying for me. I'm doing something wrong. And so we kind of pour kerosene on that fire by trying to fix and to we take 20 more minutes than we need to to say goodbye. You know, all that stuff that we feel. If we can see our child's distress as a normal human response to what is happening, my child loves me, she feels comforted when I'm with her, she feels safe in my arms. Of course, she's gonna feel distressed when I leave. That is a reflection of love and connection. That is not a reflection of trauma, which I hear that is not many of my moms will say it's so traumatic for my child every time I go to work. We have to redefine that. Is our children gonna feel big things when we leave if they love us? Heck yeah, of course. But that becomes this opportunity to connect with our kiddo in that moment. And even if, I mean, I'm using words that a baby might not understand, but the energy gets translated. Like, I know I love you too. Of course you're sad I'm leaving. I'm going to do work I love. I'm gonna come back. I can't wait to see you at the end of the day. That kind of steady exchange of energy is what builds secure attachment. So it's not the leaving that gets in the way of secure attachment. It's the giving space for the child's feeling and being steady with that feeling that builds it. We can, we can change. There's so many little micro moments like that that we can build this thing that we all want, which is like that bond with our kids. And it's not about whether we're leaving our kid with a nanny or being the one to spend it our whole day with her child. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 56:19

100%. And then what I'm hearing too is like when you extend that out to then so they leave the school or the nanny and then they get to work and they feel clean and good about like the drop-off in the exchange, that then they're they're present, they're productive.

SPEAKER_03 56:36

So guilt is in essence the feeling we feel when we believe we're breaking some kind of a rule. And a lot of moms will spend all day at work feeling guilty because they believe they should be home with their children. And so if we can redefine like that whole new scenario I just talked about, where actually, you know, again, we all like to feel like good parents, so fine to want to feel like a good parent. But if I had that moment of connection in the departure, I go into work feeling like a good parent. I'm not doing anything wrong. I I haven't broken any rules, so to speak, right? Yeah. And in fact, maybe I have learned because I've done this work that that in order for me to be the kind of mother I want to be for my kids, I have to be pursuing this other work that's so purpose-driven to me and that I love and that uses my brain in a way that I feel really fulfilled by. And by doing that, I'm filling myself up so that when I come home, I have more to give. Now going to work and not breaking any rules. So the whole operating system changes, the whole model changes when when we can understand that difficult emotions are not a problem, they're an opportunity for connection.

SPEAKER_01 57:55

I'm just getting this image of like, you know, the bucket that just keeps filling and filling and filling, right? It's like the energy is just will keep compounding as opposed to that constant like drain and overwhelm and exhaustion and feeling like I mean, I remember when I looked at I looked at my kid once and I was just like, please, for the love of God, take a nap.

SPEAKER_03 58:15

Yes, of course. By the way, yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

I mean it's just like, what do we have to do? Like, go to sleep, you know. I remember the first night that we brought him home, uh, was changing his diaper, and I realized that I like my wife did all the setup, like, I had no idea where any of the stuff was, right? But she was she just giving birth. So we're like, I'm changing the diaper, and I'm just like, you know, and he's still crying, right? And I was just like, What do you want?

SPEAKER_02 58:39

Like, what do you want?

SPEAKER_01 58:40

I was like, You're cleaned, you're fed, like all the things. And the mother-in-law in the other room heard me, and she just started cracking off and was like, This will be a fun ride for you, you know. And it's like, but it even still, it's just like, what do you need as opposed to like who can I be with you, right?

SPEAKER_03 58:54

Exactly right. And I think that there is um so one thing I hear, or something I hear a lot, is this idea of it's like having your heart pulled out and all the guilt when you leave your child in the morning to go to work or a meeting or whatever. And then during the day, you're like, oh, I would, I would rather be with my child because I'm sitting with all this guilt and I can't wait to get home to be with my child. And then within like two and a half seconds, you're like, I can't wait for my child to go to sleep. Do you know what I mean? There's like this constant feeling of have to and should. And again, without going too deep down the route, well, I think another thing that happens in early motherhood or early parenthood is this experience of last lack of agency. Suddenly I feel like I have no choice and no control. That also is going to turn on our fight flatter-freeze nervous system, our sympathetic nervous system. So if I feel like I have no choice, I'm going to be engaging with my child from a place of an activated nervous system. And, you know, there's actually very little we can control, right? But I can control, oh, I'm feeling myself get activated. What can I do in this moment to bring myself back down to a state of groundedness? We're going to get activated as parents. Kids are annoying. No offense. Humans are annoying.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:17

So we're going to get activated. That we do not need to be Zen Lama and Zen Dad. But we do need to know how to get back down to a state of groundedness to really help our nervous system understand the difference between real and perceived threat so that we're not constantly on our heels in everything that we're doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:35

Yeah. Do you know um Marie Kondo?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

I saw this article, this interview. She uh she got a bunch of kids now, and someone's like, Oh, I was like your house. She's like, it's a mess. She's like, I got kids. And it's like, but having that ability, like I appreciate her honesty there, but also having the ability to adapt and to just be like, yeah, this is what's going on, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:58

It's adaptation. And so many of us are so rigid in our thinking, in our habits, in our behavior. And that rigidity is gonna blow up we parenthood. It won't work.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

Well, Kate, this has been amazing. Do you have um a final message, you know, for these young moms that are overachieving and maybe struggling right now? What would you what do you want them to know?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:22

That it makes sense. Those are probably the people that they may not be using this language, but they're saying what is wrong with me. There's nothing wrong. There's like truly nothing wrong. We just need to access uh a a different part of the brain. And it's the part of the brain that knows that it's okay, that taps into the nervous system and knows that it actually is okay to slow down and feel and be present. They want to slow down and feel and be present, but their their achievement brain is on overdrive. Um, and it really it really is possible.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:59

And what I've what I'm taking away from this conversation is that um it's basically it's a skill. It's a skill that's like that's developed and that you know most people weren't taught how to tap in and have that language and regulate their nervous system and and um that sort of that life that they they want and that presence and stuff is they're a few skills away from being able to uh transform that.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:26

Yeah, and it's interesting. It is a skill, but I don't know why I've been using this term lately, maybe because I'm not that I like computers so much, but it really is an operating system.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:36

You know, it's like the operating system that's been working, literally in many ways, until becoming a pres a parent, does not work in parenthood. So we just need to update the operating system. We just need a different system to navigate all the uncertainty and unpredictability that happens in this relationship that we're building in this time of life when we're, you know, holding this humid, which is really freaking intense.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:06

Um, but it's available.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

So, how can people uh find you so they can update their operating system?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:11

Thank you for asking. Um, my website, katekripke.com. Um, I have a lot of easy to access information over there. Instagram at Kate Kripke. Um, and I have my own podcast called Motherhood Uncut. And um people can find me there and you can find that anywhere you find your podcasts. And I will say I love having conversations with people. So if anyone listening to this or watching this um has questions about what we've talked about or wants to is sort of like yeah, but like really doesn't agree with something, like I really do enjoy those conversations. So um I invite people to come find me and introduce themselves and yeah, let's learn about each other a bit.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Be sure to check her out. See you next time.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

Thank you.