Transcript for Healing From Complex PTSD with Stephanie Foo

Hi! Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much. And it's always the highest compliment when somebody tells me that they read my book more than once I never read books more than once. So that's quite the investment.

Yeah. Yeah. So I always struggled with anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember. But it didn't really affect my career that deeply for a long time because work was my favorite form of dissociation. So like after breakup, I would just go into the office and then I would just stay in the office until four in the morning. and drink four shots of Jamison at my desk and then go home and then come back at 9 a.m. And that way I didn't have to think about the way that my relationships might be failing or think about that my body was shutting down. I just kept working and working and working. And in 20 18, the beginning of 2018, end of 2017. I had just been reporting a lot on Trump's first year and there was so much stressful immigration stuff that I had to report on as an immigrant that was like not fun. I remember an interview in which I had to interview some white supremacists who one of them was saying like, oh, you seem like a nice person on the phone, but if we were, if the war really came down to it, I wouldn't hesitate to kill you. Oh, my God. Yeah, so you know, to be fair, I was facing some triggering stuff. But it just all got to be too much. And I started having panic attacks every morning on the subway on the way to work. I couldn't concentrate and I couldn't access my favorite form of dissociation anymore. It was getting so gnarly and also I had just turned 30 and I was like, I have been sad for so long. I've been sad for more than half of my life at this point. I got to change something. I got to switch something up. And so I asked my therapist, do you think that I'm bipolar? What do you think? And she said, no, you have complex PTSD.

Yeah, I'd seen her, I've been seeing her for eight years. And she just casually dropped that on me at the end of a session. And then was like, OK, times up, I, so she left me to go Google that on my own.

So if you get in a car accident and let's say it's in front of a crispy cream. Your brain encodes all of these details around you like maybe. The guy who hit you had a blue sweater and you're in front of this donut place. So it encodes all of this as potential threats because you're going through a traumatic incident. So in the future, your brain isn't trying to be sensible, it's trying to save your life. And so it's encoded all of these things in the back. And so you might see a donut and you might feel panicky and that doesn't make any sense, of course. But that's how your brain works. This is the adaptation that our brilliant bodies have come up with to try and keep us alive. So the problem is you might have a limited number of trigger points in a single car accident. But complex PTSD is like if you've gotten a car accident every week for three years. So all of a sudden, you have a lot of different trigger points because this is happening over and over and over to you. So it's not specific things like the donut that are frightening. It's kind of the whole world, other people in general. Because with complex PTSD, you're not getting in that weekly car accident. probably unless somebody really close to you in your life is hurting you over and over again. Mine comes from child abuse. This could also happen from living in a war zone, being in an abusive relationship. So yeah, that means that healing it, teaching your body that these triggers around you aren't going to kill you, that you are safe. is a little bit more complex than with traditional PTSD.

Yeah, absolutely. And specifically because of the nature of complex PTSD, because it's probably somebody who is close to you. In many cases, the formative people who you should have been able to depend on the most relationships in general people become terrifying.

The dread for me was sort of this underlying current in my whole life that made me believe that I had to be perfect in order to be loved, or not even be loved. I had to be perfect in order to be not hurt, to be safe. And so that meant that there was this constant anxiety over, am I saying the right thing? Am I eating the right thing? Am I making the most perfect, wonderful work professionally? And I think that that was such a burden to constantly have on me that I tried to dissociate and disappear a lot of the times in order to not feel that immense pressure. So what was drinking, smoking, working, partying, probably my favorite, drugs of choice.

Everything was a crispy cream and I couldn't pull out what actually was real, what was scary, what was making me feel bad at any given moment. I would just feel bad and couldn't pluck anything out.

Right. Yeah. And a lot of the people who are at the top also to get there, you have to climb on a lot of people. Okay. In order to be like very successful capitalistically, you kind of have to use and abuse maybe. People. And I don't know if that's necessarily quote unquote saying behavior. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah.

Right. And so are these people really so resilient and successful or did they just choose better tools of dissociation or were they lucky to have at hand more privileged tools of dissociation? Yes. It's good. Then somebody who is addicted to crack, let's say, you know, or yeah, or alcohol. It's all the same thing. Sure is. And it doesn't make you a better person necessarily. That's right.

So basically, I was reading when I was Googling complex PTSD, everything seemed to say, you're a terrible person. Can't self-regulate. You can't self-serve. You struggle in relationships. You have anger issues. And just all of the symptoms just sounded like a very difficult person. And some of the literature that I was reading would just stop short of saying that we were horrible people actually because a lot of the literature was written for clinicians and not real people, real survivors. And so it was pretty disrespectful of us a lot of the time. It didn't seem to acknowledge the fact that I might be reading about myself. And so I think that really freaked me out and it just made me think, oh, if I'm a horrible person, nobody's ever going to love me. Like I'm never going to be able to maintain any of these relationships. I'm going to be sad my whole life. I'm going to sabotage my own career. Like this is the most important thing. I have to fix this before I can go on living. And so I love my job at this American life. And yeah, I just dedicated my time full time to reading books and articles about trauma and just trying different therapies and going to yoga and meditation classes and trying to fix my brain.

Yeah, I was saying, what parts of me are my trauma? What parts of me are this diagnosis and what parts of me are me? And I couldn't differentiate between the two.

Yeah, I think that everything that I tried was helpful in some way of shape or form. I think there were three real key elements to my healing. I think the first was the body piece. So when you are triggered, when you do feel that fear, it's a whole body thing. You have adrenaline, you have cortisol rushing through you. And the first step to being able to calm yourself and recognize that your safe is to calm that whole full body response. And so I think that yoga the breathing, the meditation was really helpful for teaching my body that I was safe. If not quite, my mind. Yeah. And then the second was processing trauma. So being able to look back at my past and recognizing that what happened to me was not okay. It was completely fucked up. It was not my fault. And then grieving that, being able to sit there and cry and feel the injustice of it. And so EMDR was really great for that. Mushrooms were really great for that. And the last part, and that's the part I think a lot of people don't put as much emphasis on is the relational aspect.

So Dr. Jacob Haam at Mount Sinai, he agreed to treat me. And I remember one of the first sessions that we had, I was talking about this fight that I had with my aunt. And she was saying some triggering stuff about my family, saying like, you really need to go make up with your dad and your your husband's family's and we're gonna really love you and it's just all kinds of nonsense and I was getting so angry and triggered and sad about it and I counted colors and I did some deep breathing and I calmed myself I did all the stuff that I learned about in yoga. And all of these self soothing classes. And then I was like, okay, let it go. And I told him about it. And I really expected him to come back and say, congratulations. Good job. You're really doing it. You're healing. Yeah. Hey, plus two.

Good job, little Asian girls. And he was like, And then I, because, you know, he always makes fun of me for wanting to be a tiger child. And I seek so much validation from him. And then he was like, uh, no, that's not good. Not good enough. You did a bad job. I was like, what, what? And he's like, well, you didn't repair with your aunt. Did you? You didn't ask for what you really needed from her. You didn't make your needs known, you didn't actually say how you wanted to be treated. You just calmed yourself and then you went inside and you disappeared. You weren't healing, you weren't re-engaging re-entering the world around you. And I was like, oh no. How do I do that? And um, One thing that we did, that was really awesome, was I don't know for training and sports or anything if you've ever recorded yourself and rewatched it. Oh yeah.

Because you might not have total bodily awareness of what's happening in the moment.

Yeah. So we did some sort of thing with Google Docs. We recorded all of our sessions and then I immediately imported all of that into a transcription software and then put it in a Google Doc and then I started commenting on it saying like, oh, what's going on here? I think I'm triggered or what's going on here? Why am I like rambling on and on forever? And he started commenting on it too. And we just absolutely took apart all of our therapy sessions. And, you know, I struggle with criticism, like many of us. But one realm in which I probably feel most comfortable with it is on the page because I've been a journalist for so long. And so this really worked for me because he was able to point out a lot of things that I wasn't doing. He was like, here you missed a cue. Here, you didn't respond what I asked you. You went on your own other rant. Here, you're clearly dissociating. And you was able to show me the ways that I was disappearing in conversation. And for me, I got that new perspective. And I was able to say, oh, I get it. This is how you engage with other people. This is how you ask for your needs to be met. This is how you show up. without fear. I realized in a lot of these early sessions that I didn't understand what he was talking about a lot of the time because he got really jargony sometimes with psychological talk and I would just pretend to understand. and then maybe hurt later on because he said something that I misinterpreted or I would get confused and then change the subject because I was insecure and I wanted to go back to something that I did understand and he called me out on it and I realized that I needed to be able to ask questions of people just like, what did you mean? What are you feeling? Hey, that expression on your face, that was judgmental or whatever it is. Wait, hold on, sorry, one second, like what was that? What was that rupture that we had in this conversation? And so yeah, he taught me about ruptures and he taught me about repairs, how to really investigate how other people I just, I had been living life guessing that everyone was mad at me all the time. Yeah. And I needed to actually program to that and learn how to find out if it was true.

I wonder sometimes. I guess. Well, I do think that it's very appropriate to dissociate actually a lot of the time. The very fact that I am sitting here talking to you about my complex trauma, means that I'm dissociated, right? I mean, and that's a skill because I sit on these interviews all the time and talk about the most horrible things that ever happened to me that I say to the world, hey, my parents tortured me and I'm often about it and it can be really protective and I think that I, you know, dissociation can often be pathologized a lot as a bad thing. Like I literally saw some TikTok this morning It was like, oh, I just found out that reading is a form of dissociation and I read so many books every year and that means that I guess I'm like hiding from my trauma and I'm like, maybe you just like to read, read, it's fine. Whatever. Yeah, so it's a form of dissociation sounds like you're having a good time. It doesn't matter. I still work to dissociate and I like working. I made this book well half dissociated. That's fine. It seems like it has benefited the world. But in terms of why ask for your needs to be met, it sounds so weird when you say it like that.

Yeah, I think because otherwise, You live in a state of sadness and rage. And resentment.

It builds and builds and sides you. Like I had a conflict with a friend recently where she wasn't showing up. And that's hard when you like just had a kid. And I just had this resentment building and building and building, but I was also like, you know, she's busy. She's got her own thing. She's got her life. But then it built so much that then when I did speak to her, I just lashed out. I was like, Why haven't you been here? Because it just has to come out at some point eventually. And that's not a healthy way to communicate with people. And she couldn't meet me and provide me with what I needed. If she didn't know what I needed, if I wasn't telling her that. So that's really unfair to her. because we all mess up in our lives. And if you're not going to tell people how they're affecting you, then you're missing out on all these chances for repair.

Right. And then I think what do we do? Like in I've disappeared in relationships. And I've ghosted people. And that's unkind as well. When you are like, well, this person isn't going to understand. So what's the point? I'm not going to talk to them anymore. You're not giving them a chance to be there for you, to be in relationship with you.

Right. And it was terrifying when Dr. Homes started doing it to me. He would always be like, what happened? He would be reading these little micro things in my eyes or, I mean, and sometimes he messed up and he'd be like, oh, you tear it up. And I'd be like, I yonned. It's not that deep. But a lot of times he'd be spot on and he'd be like, what just happened? And I'm not used to people. Calling me out and interrogating me, but I mean, I feel so close to him. I feel so safe with him. And I feel like I can call him out too. When he was vulnerable enough to do that and just be like, wait. How are you feeling? Did you just get mad? Like, like, did really plum my debts. I felt safe enough to to constantly ask him for help and ask him in these Google Docs. I came around to asking him, what did you mean here? Or you hurt me here? And that's hard for me. But I was able to go in there and say, like, hey, what you said here, you're phrasing about complex PTSD survivors. I feel like it's kind of mean and then he'd be like, you're right, that was a really shitty way of putting it. And that was also really great. It's great to hear from anyone that's a repair, but it's also really nice to hear from like a fancy smart therapist, like a fancy fancy doctor to be like, I'm not the expert in the room here. I fuck up just as much as you. You're not especially broken because you have complex PTSD. We're all little fucked up. We all don't know how to read other people. We're all just floundering around in these conversations. And that was really destigmatizing.

Yeah, I watched this video and now I see this all the time where this Woman was telling her dad how he had heard her. And he was just like, I'm the worst dad. You know, I never knew how to carry a lot of saying all these horrible things about himself. And she just got so angry because she's like, that's not what I want. I don't want you to stand in front of me. and hurt yourself, I just want you to do better. And I think, too, then when you stand there and you're like, I'm the worst, I'm terrible, then the onus is on the other person to now comfort you. Instead of reaching out and comforting them, they're like, oh, no, you seem not okay. Let me just comfort you. And that's not great for repair either. And so I saw then that when I got into my sort of falling state and when somebody called me out on something and I just prostrated myself on the ground and I was just like, I'm the worst person. You know, that worked for me to keep me alive and to keep me safe when I was a little girl who is being abused. with like narcissists parents. That's what you do and that works. But in regular relationships that was not going to keep me safe. It was actually going to make my ruptures worse. And so what was going to work was not going into that shame spiral. And instead saying, how can I make this right? Or I understand I see how much this hurts. So I fail at that like every day. But I know now what I'm supposed to do and I try to make the right choice sometimes.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Positive feedback.

Yeah, because I never got taught how to be in relationship, right? Because I had crazy psycho parents who, you know, when there was a conflict, they would just beat the shit out of me. And that is not how you should live life if you want to stay out of jail. So yeah, I had to learn a different way.

And it's so scary to be seen in that way when you're so used to disappearing, especially as women, when somebody wants you to take up so much space and be a full person. with all of your sadness and all of your fear. And they want to witness all of it. All your ugly things. It's a beautiful thing. And it's such a healing thing. So yeah, I mean, I tease him a lot about how mean he is to me. But no, I mean, it's a, it was a very loving thing.

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Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey is the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes Joey drops the driver. Sometimes I had never experienced unconditional love. And so, well, I don't even want, I don't want necessarily want to say that I've never experienced unconditional love. I have some very, very long lasting friendships that are really beautiful. But it's like certainly in a, like the everyday sort of intensity of a romantic relationship, you know, it's never experienced unconditional love. Yeah, it allowed me to have this face to fuck up.

shape yeah i think he affirms what i'm going through and if something is scary he's like yeah i know that's scary and and doesn't shame me for it or isn't like you know Oh, you got scared at this tiny thing. That's so petty. Your coward, whatever it is. And he's like, no, that makes total sense. And he talks trash on my parents all the time and they appreciate that. Yeah.

Defend thank you for your detective from my inner child for sure. He listens a lot. And I think different people. like to receive comfort differently, but I do like that he gives me a lot of advice. If you'll save coming to him to ask him, am I crazy about this? What should I do about that? And he always drops everything and he's like, all right. Yeah. Let's work through this together. We're going to dissect it. We'll figure it out. He just makes it clear that me and my happiness and my safety is a priority.

Yeah, so when I was a little girl, I went back to Malaysia a lot. I was born in Malaysia and my whole family still lives there. And I loved going back so much because the food and the heat and most of all that I was so loved there. My family always spoiled me when I was there. And I remember Everyone in my family being whole why, whole why. Like they were always saying that I was such a good little girl. And that was not messaging that I got it. They were always rewarding me to for how good I was. Like I would help. My auntie snap off the tops of a bunch of green beans and she would just give me this big dessert. I was just the best girl, the best helper. And then what was hard was, you know, after my parents got divorced. My family sort of distanced themselves from me because I became very rageful and they only heard my dad's side of the story. They didn't really understand that both of my parents had abandoned me and I was living by myself in high school. And so they were just like, why are you so mad at your dad? We don't get it. Why did you throw his car keys in a bush? And I was like, well, because I'm hungry and alone, but they didn't quite understand that. They thought I was exaggerating. And so when I went back, they were just like, oh, this American girl. She's so disrespectful to her parents. And then years, years and years later, when I was in my 20s, I was talking about all of this with Auntie and She gave an inkling that the whole family did kind of understand at a very young age, what I went through. She was like, um, actually, you know why everyone treat you so well, because your mom hit you. And I was like, wait, what? I thought I was just the favorite on my own merits of being awesome, the best girl ever. And she was like, no. It was clear that your mom was physically and verbally abusing you throughout your whole childhood. And so when you were here, we all went through the motions of trying to show you how you deserve to be loved. So I wasn't the favorite, but I was loved in a kind of way.

Yes, I think it was. It was definitely healing to hear. It's always healing to hear from anyone in my family because I've tried to have some of these conversations going forward that what happened to me was not okay. And I think Auntie had a really difficult life. She lived through two wars. She starved as a child. She and her sisters had a shave their heads during the Japanese occupation to keep from being sexually assaulted by Japanese soldiers. You know, she never married. And my aunt, who was the closest thing she ever had to a daughter died of looking, she had a very challenging life. And so for her to say that what happened to me was not okay. that a mother should not have treated me like I was treated was so validating and made me realize that my pain was valid that it that I was entitled to my hurt. I will say that like in years after that, I've definitely also felt anger in terms of wanting to be protected, wishing that I had been protected more, wishing that people were reaching out to protect me or take care of me more now. Again, like having a young child, you want family to show up. You want somebody to show up. And that's really difficult. And so I feel a lot of different feelings about that moment.

Yeah, no, I think really helped. So I remember a lot of other kids being abused in the same way that I was when I was a kid. To the point where I think it sort of made it harder for me to recognize that I was abused because it was like, well, everybody's getting hit at home, right? Whatever, big deal. And then when I was diagnosed with complex PTSD so much of the literature, it was like, you're a freak. You're not like anybody else. You're different. You're worse than anybody else. Regulating it. Being a normal person. I didn't know anybody else with complex PTSD there because it's not a super frequently diagnosed condition. And so, but then I thought about my childhood and how many of us were going through abuse like this. And I was like, but I can't be the only one, right? And so I wanted to know if my trauma was personal or communal. And that's why I went back to San Jose, California, which is a majority minority community. And my high school was like 60% Asian and 30% Latino. And there are a lot of kids of color there. And I went back and I asked my teachers, is there a lot of trauma? Is there a lot of trauma? Is there a lot of abuse here? What did you see? And they said, no, these are privileged Asian kids. They have their MacBooks and all they care about is doing really well in their AP classes. And one of them said, they had a student who was suicidal because she couldn't add enough flair, pizzazz or shine or something to her essay. And I was like, that doesn't sound right. And I was like, but why? Why was she suicide? And they were like, oh, because Asians, you know, they have this really academic culture and it's a cultural thing. And again, I was like, that sounds like an exoticized oversimplified version of the truth. And then I talked to the guidance counselor at the school. And she said, oh, no, hundreds and hundreds of these kids are still being physically abused. And that's why we're so afraid of not getting those A's. There's a much deeper narrative to this whole Asian perfection, good grades story. And we don't get the care or the services that we need. And our parents are not getting the care and the services that they need in order to be good parents to us because it's all invisible because whatever, we have high GPAs. And you know, I was beaten severely if I got to be plus. And I know lots of other kids who were too. And that is a reality that we have to contend with. If you have some kid who was really, really overperforming in your class, what is driving them to do that? Is it them and their own desire or is it fear? And also, I mean, even our parents hitting us, that was also driven from fear and trauma. The San Jose has the biggest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of actual Vietnam. And, you know, there's a lot of Vietnamese refugees in that community. There's a lot of Korean war survivors. There's a lot of Chinese survivors of the cultural revolution. There's a big Cambodian population there who are survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Our parents went through a lot of really tough stuff and they came here and they were like, the way that you're going to survive is you're going to get cooked and make money and become a doctor in this world and then you'll be safe. They're terrified too. So I think what's important about understanding that I was part of a community of trauma. I think is that it allows you to take some of that self-loathing away. That part of like, I'm a freak. I'm the worst. That feeling that you get when you read the diagnosis and realize, I'm kind of a product of war. and capitalism and big global socioeconomic factors that are a lot larger than me. All of these things try to teach my brain to be safe and all of these other kids brains and all of these other parents brains to be safe and it went completely the wrong direction maybe. But I'm not afraid. My brain was doing it's best to keep me safe. One thing that Dr. Ham told me is that complex PTSD is not a mental illness in war. It's a normal reaction. It's going to keep you safe. If somebody was exhibiting all the same behaviors that I exhibit at my worst in Palestine right now that would be completely normal and healthy and good. That's right. It's only a disorder in this comfy, soft American culture.

In short, yes. I didn't think that I would be a good mother. I never thought that I would be able to love my baby. Even a couple of weeks in the having the babies. I never held a baby before. They took it out of me and then put it on me. And I was like, what do I do with this thing? But no, I mean, he's the absolute best. I love him to absolute bits and I never get mad at him because I'm always empathizing with him and I'm always thinking about his well-being and how he's going to process things and I'm trying to constantly attune to him. I'm trying to learn to attune to his positivity as well as his negativity, like any time he needs something. I'm always just like, I'm here. It's all good, but sometimes when he's happy, go lucky, I'm like, how can this be? There's got to be something wrong, right? And Dr. Holmes is like, no, just like read him and he'll let you know. And if he's sitting there smiling, he's probably not traumatized. I spent all this time freaking out about how potentially I've traumatized him because I'm probably the worst person in the world. And he's the happiest, chillest baby. I don't know how to anxious people. This is such a confident chill baby. But maybe it's because of like my decent parenting. I don't know. I was reading about the still face experiment. Dr. Home was telling me about it. And he was saying that like if you do the still face experiment and the baby has X reaction, if they try to get your attention with smiles and then slowly devolve from there and then are able to repair when you come back that that is a great predictor for them being a securely attached child. Wait, tell us what the still face experiment is. So the still face experiment, was this experiment that Ed Tronic, this scientist came up with in the 70s and basically a mother would engage with her kid and then go still and just blank face for two minutes. And the baby would freak out. because they're trying a tune with you. And there's like a million of tunements that happen between you and your child all day every day. They're reading you and figuring out how they should feel. And so if you're totally still and you're not feeling anything and they reach out to you, they put all these bids forward, like smiling and then crying or maybe, you know, they go inside and they try to self-sue. They throw things at the wall trying to get you to react and if you don't, it's upsetting. And You know, apparently some more securely attached kids will reach out by trying to smile and engage with you and then they will evolve and that's fine. And apparently some anxious and avoidant children, they might be upset from the beginning and then they might not be able to repair when you come back. They might be inconsolable even when your expressions come back and you try to tune with them or they might not even notice that you've gone still and those are these are probably avoidant babies where they're used to perhaps you disappearing because maybe you suffer from PPD or you've just had a lot going on maybe you're impoverished and you can't give your full attention to your baby and so they're really they're not used to you attuning anyway and so they go inside and they self sue them they don't notice that you're not there. So I don't know. Basically, my baby looks like he's probably going to be a secure baby. I guess that means that I showed up. I guess that means I tried to tune with him. I guess that means that I loved him appropriately so far. It's only been seven months. I don't know. There's a lot of time to mess up. That stresses me out a lot still. But, you know, we have a really good relationship, me and him. And he, he feels really safer on me and he loves me very much. And do you feel safer around other people too? I can just give him to anyone and he's just like, ah, and I don't know. I don't know how this happened. It's great. It's possible.

It's so sad. It's really, really sad. I also just don't understand how you invest so much. Kids are so much work. It's 20 for seven. It's non-stop. It's physically arduous. It's emotionally, mentally arduous. I don't understand how you put that much into a child and then just abandon them. I feel really sad about the fact that when my mom left, she didn't take any of my baby pictures. And I think that my dad might have just thrown away all my baby pictures too. I don't know where they are if they still exist in the world. But I don't have very many of them. And I take so many pictures of this baby every day. And I love him so much. How do you even if you have conflicts with your adult child. How do you not want to look at that sweet face anymore? How do you hate a baby? How do you want to forget a baby? I'm a constantly like I want to remember all of this forever. I want to remember how you laugh and I'm writing it all down like today is when you got your first tooth and today is when you discovered that you really love the fan and and I drew like a picture of our light fixture on our ceiling because he loved the light fixture so much and I just want to show it to him one day. This was once your favorite thing in the world. Yeah, I don't know. It's heartbreaking. Pod squad.

Yeah, I'm working on a book about parenting with complex people.

I mean, it'll be a while. Okay. That's right. We'll be here once in. But I'm doing a lot of research and talking to a bunch of scientists and psychologists and yeah, I think that a lot of people feel the same way as I did about being really terrified about becoming a mom because we didn't think that we'd be good enough. Maybe because we didn't feel like we would deserve This kind of love, I don't know. So I want to destigmatize the pathologize that a little bit.

Yeah. Absolutely. You see that baby crying all night long. And you keep going in over and over and over. And I'm never like, Why are you doing this? You ask. I'm like, wow, you must be really struggling right now. And I don't remember my parents ever saying, wow, you must be really struggling right now. So I think there was something missing there.

Yeah. There's a reason to look at your kit and constantly attune and be like, what is going on with you? Tell me, let me in. I want to see all of you. Not let them disappear.