The Cycles We’re Breaking: Abby, Amanda & Glennon

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Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Today,

it's just the three of us again.

We're going to talk more about the interview we just did with Dr.

Marielle Bouquet about intergenerational trauma.

And we're going to just talk to you about what all of that means to us because it is the juiciest, most important topic in all the land.

And I think that the episode got so many people thinking and talking and having a million questions.

Us too.

So we're going to do that.

You said, sister, I'm just looking for little ways to like break cycles.

This is very on the spot.

I have no idea what my answer will be.

So if you guys don't have answers, that's fine.

But when you think about cycles you are wanting to break and ones that might be tied to intergenerational trauma,

or you don't even know if they are,

do you too have cycles that you can identify?

that you are actively, even if you're not like doing the work to break them yet, that you suspect your life might be freer or better if you broke.

Yep.

I 100%.

Yes.

Would you like to go first then?

Sure.

The thing that I feel most worried about

is my parents dying without saying the things that I need to say.

And It's funny because as I've done like kind of this work through therapy, the things that I would have said early on are very different than what I would say now.

And

I think that the work

of accepting them for who they are

is

what I

am doing.

And I think the thing that I thought that I needed to hear from them was like, I'm so sorry that

not even specific things, just like being in a huge family, being raised cat like all these things that had an impact on me i don't even think i need and i'm sorry specifically

but

i want to approach them when i do with

i

get it

like i understand

that is how they knew how to be people they only did what they thought was best

and

what they were taught and what their parents taught them and what those parents taught them.

And it's like,

I don't,

I have lost

the desire for like a kumbaya situation to happen between

me and my mom and dad.

I think that what I have come to understand is how I first get the chance to break this generational trauma is to

accept what has happened

first

and to not necessarily need an apology from them, but just say, this is what happened.

And I don't want this to keep going on.

I don't want the silence or the secrets to keep hurting our people going forward.

And I'm going to be that transitional character.

I am.

I know that I am that transitional character.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I'm sure our kids will have their own sets of trauma that they need to

unwind.

But I do feel like there's like a pit in my stomach that I know that I need to have that conversation with my mom at the very least.

I don't know if I'll ever do it with my father, but just like,

thank you

for having me.

I had a hard time.

I had a hard time.

And I think that that really shaped our relationship.

And I think that there's a responsibility I have

in kind of the rebellion and the hard-headedness and stubbornness that I took on as a way of protecting myself throughout my life.

And I understand more of why she had to be the way she was, you know, and I understand that there is no way I can go back and fix it, but absolutely I can.

try my fucking damnedest now to not implement some of the things and the ways that she was taught how to be a mother on our children in the way that I am a mother.

Do you have an answer to the question, what was the wound?

What was the thing

that you are trying not to pass on?

When you said, I have a hard time, there's no easy answer to that, but like in your

what happened that you're trying not to repeat.

It's really complicated because it goes off in a lot of different ways.

But I think at the root of it, it's this confusion in this line between power and parenting

and like

what i know that that probably stems from is fear like the base of it

and so being more in touch with the fear i have throughout my parenting will kind of slice the need to be in power over our children

which I think really did come into conflict with a lot of the struggles of all of my brothers and sisters, but I can only speak for myself.

That in the lines of being the oldest to the youngest, we all experienced my parents differently.

And we experienced that power differential very differently.

My sister Beth and my mom have a very different relationship than I do with her.

And I really struggled with it.

I didn't feel seen or heard or as loved as I needed to.

and i think that that fear

of whether you're a good or a bad parent makes you act in certain ways that make you in fact not such a great parent so i think my mom was so afraid of keeping control and keeping the power because she didn't want us to be hurt or bad things to happen to us or whatever mama bear you want to talk about it but it was really her inability to regulate her own inner world and her own inner fear around how the world will interact with her baby cubs.

And so, because of that, all of these things kind of display itself across the personalities of all of her children.

And I don't want my inability to not be able to deal with my nervous system to impact our children in any way.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Was that good

or bad?

That was so good.

You are so loved.

I see everything about you.

Okay, good.

What did Dr.

Bouquet say?

Like, yeah, that was really good.

Yeah, that was really good, Abby.

That was really good.

Do you feel it come up in you?

I just am so obsessed with this true fact that I've recently learned that you can, I can, feel it in my body when it's happening.

It's not this like

weird, elusive mystery that you have to go back.

I mean, I experience memories from my childhood, like I experienced when I used to wake up after blackouts, which was when I was drinking was every single morning, literally every morning.

I would wake up and have absolutely no idea what happened after 4 p.m.

the day before.

But I would have a general feeling

like,

I don't know what happened,

but I feel

like I should be ashamed.

Well, I mean, that was a safe bet.

Yeah, that was always a safe bet.

But it would be like, often be a specific feeling.

Like,

I don't know what happened, but I feel like

the after effects of like something violent.

Or like, I feel the after effect.

And that's how I feel about childhood.

I'm like, I don't know what happened, but I feel

like

it was suboptimal.

Something.

There's a presence, a vibe of something that you can't put your finger on, especially because you're young and you don't know how to necessarily name or claim some of the feelings that you were having.

Right.

And when you're scared, you don't, you shut down.

You don't remember.

But what is an amazing and beautiful

thing that is true is that I can tell in my body now that I know how to pay attention to my body and be in my body when I'm about to be in trauma response.

So my question to you is this idea that you are trying to break the cycle of wanting to control and overpower,

which is so interesting and authoritative parents because what they do is they lose control in order to gain control

that's their strategy i will lose control of myself so that you will be so scared that you will fall into line right

how do you experience it now those moments like you said when maybe you didn't get enough affection from your parents.

So when the kids try to kiss you, you have a moment that you have to overcome to get past the trauma response into your new self.

How do you experience the authoritative moment with the kids?

Yeah, I mean, this has been something I have unconsciously been working on my whole life because I have been interesting in rebellion.

That was my need to take control back for myself, to not feel controlled.

And then I think throughout the course of parenting these three children,

the only way I can explain it is I,

this is so weird to say this out loud, but when I feel like I have lost control, I either feel like my skin can't go beyond itself, like I am, I am full up, like it's almost like the incredible Hulk

that I feel kind of this ragey thing.

Yeah.

And it's because of knowing what it feels like to be out of control as a child,

because essentially your parents are in control of you.

To know what that feels like and to feel like

I just need to get out of this body so that I can be in control in a different place.

I have this feeling of like becoming Mr.

or Mrs.

Hulk.

And what I've learned over years of this is, I just have to pause

because the swelling goes away.

That like, I do think it's a swelling of the ego in a way where my ego gets outsized and i'm like oh wow like that's definitely not a way that you want to be

and so usually the only thing that helps is for me to do literally nothing

abby i wonder though you're talking about it in the sense of like

your need to control mirroring your parents need to control like you are duplicating what was modeled to you but i wonder if it could be different like i wonder if it could be their controlling of you made you invisible, no one paying attention to you, no one listening or seeing you, and what you bring to the table.

Is what you're doing in parenting and that big reaction,

is that mirroring your parents' need to control the children?

Or is that the exact same thing?

Is that no one sees me?

I have good wisdom for these children.

I am bringing myself and I am being ignored and not being paid attention to you.

And why aren't they seeing me and what I have to offer?

Yeah, it's the same thing.

Sorry about you.

Yeah, yes.

Okay.

You can.

I think this is the most beautiful example of this.

It's just happened.

So

when you have big children, they start to just make their own big

things.

They just start to do things and they're out in the world and they make decisions and then things happen to them.

And you can't, you know, it's just

so the other day, our oldest child was

making some big decisions which were beautiful and brave decisions and still decisions that would have consequences our middle child is making big decisions she's

taking a gap you're gonna become a rock star we keep saying what could go wrong

yeah our youngest daughter had some injuries in in soccer whatever We just had this moment where we have had a hard year.

part of the hardness is that everyone just keeps doing whatever the they want

even though we have good ideas okay

and

we have lost completely the control that we never had yeah

but the illusion is

right

and so i think the truth is is like they're becoming young adults and there is this period of parenting time that it is confusing to know when it is your time to step in or when it is your time to just step back completely.

And that's something I'm struggling with just in terms of parenting.

Anyways, go on.

Yeah.

But this one night,

somebody brought something to us hard, and then another kid, and then Abby just had been keeping it together and trying to guide them and trying to for so long.

And she just, the kids weren't here.

She sat on the couch and she just started bawling.

And she said,

Chase is doing this hard thing.

Tish is doing this hard thing.

Nobody's making good decisions.

And Amma won't eat enough protein.

She's bawling about protein.

I know

she just needs to eat more protein.

And I just thought,

I think

she was having muscular issues.

She pulled her quad and, you know.

But it was, I, to me, I felt like, this is the difference.

This is the difference.

Instead of hulking it up,

she's crying.

Yeah.

That's not trans, that's transforming it because actually what it is, is grief.

What your mom had was grief knowing like, I can't protect anyone.

So I will just be so controlling.

I will force feed them their protein every fucking day to make them okay.

And they did, like your mom was doing a glass of milk milk at dinner.

But I think you had had enough therapy and safety and a moment to just actually break down about it and admit to your powerlessness.

And I don't know.

Nobody will listen to me.

She kept saying, I have good ideas.

Nobody is listening.

And they keep making decisions.

They keep deciding differently than I would.

But I feel like I just, I, I don't know how to explain it.

I just felt like that was it because you didn't rage at them.

you didn't shame them you didn't once again strategize like we always do like we're one good plan away from like fixing everything we just sat and like

you cried and I just kept saying I don't know

I don't know

and it feels like in some ways this work is making us dumber yeah it's like we finally are wise enough to know we don't know shit yeah or that it doesn't matter what you know exactly i mean it matters what you know for you But like, you know, enough to know that

acting on your rage is unhelpful to all parties involved.

And that going to the pain or the fear under the rage is the correct thing.

And that crying,

mourning, and grieving your lack of control is more productive than continuing to exert the control that you never had.

Yes.

It's the Al-A-Don shit that helps me so much.

These little things, like all the things happen.

And then I just say to myself, well, I guess we'll see how God's going to handle this.

And then Abby will say, Do you believe in God?

I say, I don't know.

I believe in that sentence.

I just said, Let's see how God's going to handle this.

But it helps me instead of thinking, Let's see how I'm going to handle this and like strategize four million things.

And

what I'm saying is, I think even when we think we've lost it and we think, oh, that was like a not a good moment for me, that those are our best moments.

I know.

You took a picture of it and sent it to me.

And I was like, really?

I sent you a picture of you crying on a chair and I said, this is how much you love our babies.

I think it's one of my favorite pictures of you ever.

I'm not going to post it.

I'm just saying.

I was so upset.

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It is upsetting to experience the generational

trauma

for the past.

But here's the deal.

You're experiencing it, which I feel like is at least three-quarters of the battle.

For me,

what I'm most afraid of is not experiencing it.

I think like I'm the whole epigenetics world, these,

I've been thinking of myself a lot lately as a mouse and trying to see how I'm living like a mouse because they did these studies where, okay, bear with me because it's very interesting.

So they did these studies of mice where they took male mice and eventually they replicated it with female mice, but they put them in this little cage.

It's terrible.

So bad news for the mice, but just bear with me.

We did not conduct the experiment.

We did not.

We are in no way affiliated, nor do we condone it.

I'm just telling you what happened.

We are pro-mice.

We are pro-I am a mouse.

That's what I'm telling you.

I'm a mouse.

As a mouse, I reject this study, but I find the findings informative.

Okay.

So they put these male mice in this thing.

They have a smell that's a fancy word.

It's like a Cedophenome or something, but it smells like cherries and almonds.

Every time they put the smell into the container, they do an electric shock.

Smell, electric shock.

If there's no smell, there's no electric shock.

They do it, they do it, they do it.

Then eventually, these mice breed.

Okay.

The pups of these mice

never,

ever,

ever have a shock.

There's no actual shock experienced by them.

But three generations,

when they smell the smell,

the mice freak the fuck out.

What?

The children and grandchildren pups that have never been shocked run around smelling the smell, freaking out, hiding on things.

Their nervous systems are jacked.

They're trying to escape the cage.

They also replicate this with the females.

It works the same.

So they're never even living together.

It's not like the baby mice are looking at the adult mice and being like, oh, I learn when the smell happens.

I run and hide.

Totally independent of the parents.

Also, their brains, the mice's brains, have more neurons that are made to be more heightened ability to smell things.

So they have been genetically passed down in one generation.

Their genetics are different for multiple generations.

So they've never experienced it.

And they have the fear as if it were real to them.

And their brains and bodies are designed to be specially suited to smell the things that they are afraid of that they shouldn't be afraid of.

Okay.

This is why I'm a mouse.

And that's why I'm afraid.

What

is my brain looking for constantly?

Because if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

What is my brain predisposed to be searching for, to be afraid of?

And what is my smell reaction?

That if I knew, if I could assure my body and my brain that there are no shocks coming in this department, then I could stop running and jumping on top of things to hide for them every time I smell something that represents something that doesn't exist for me.

Damn.

Yeah.

Dr.

Marielle Bouquet tells a story about a woman who came in to her office.

And one weird thing about her was that she could not stand the smell of coffee.

She was allergic.

And her daughter, same thing.

They found out that her grandfather had been brutally attacked.

And the man who brutally attacked him was just, had had a huge coffee.

It was like reeking of coffee.

This is not a story that had ever been told to the family.

Evolution helps us learn things in our bodies that will protect us.

Yes.

But our bodies bodies are not wise enough to know that we are not in that generation and we're not in that situation anymore.

And so we are

allergic to coffee

and miss out on coffee.

Which, when you think about it, is the biggest intergenerational tradition I've ever heard.

That's why it sticks with me.

It's so tragic.

God.

Sister, what do you think?

What is happening?

Like, what do you believe

made you this mouse?

And what does it feel like?

How do you experience it on a daily basis?

I think I experience it as not being at ease.

I experience it as, like, ease is synonymous with danger.

Like, what a foolish thing to do.

And I mean, just,

you know, keeping your head on a swivel.

Got to know what's around.

Got to know what's happening.

Got to know who's doing the right thing and who's not doing the right thing.

And I mean,

always being critical,

always

being

like looking for ways that things could be better instead of just being pleased with how they are.

All of those feelings are reflective of like.

a nervous system that is not at rest,

that is continuing to work and work and work work and look and look and look and monitor and monitor.

I think, I don't know, I'm trying to figure out my categories of weirdness.

And also, I'm going to stop saying things like weirdness.

Like, it exists for a reason.

Right.

Probably those mice looked really fucking weird when a random smell came in and they started jumping on things to escape it.

That's weird and odd.

And you'd be like, what a big weirdo.

But actually, their brains were telling them because their genetic coding said fire, danger, run.

So like, that's why I'm trying to be compassionate to myself as a mouse.

But I think that

my mouse wiring is like,

it'll always be up to you.

You

should not stop.

I don't know.

I'm trying to figure all of that out.

You know, my friend V was over this week and I was just talking about how, like, I'm so tired of myself and the ruts that I'm in, that like my patterns of thinking and my neuropathways that are just the same shit all the time.

And I was talking about how critical I am.

Like, I find myself looking for bad things, not thinking I am, but I think I'm like looking for bad things, even in like being critical in my relationship and whatever.

And she was like, Do you think

that you

are unwilling to

not give a break and not be critical in your relationship because like look how hard you're trying

and if you're operating at an a

and you won't even stop being critical of yourself

ever

how are you ever going to

not be critical of someone else

i don't know i just i i'm like wondering if that all relates back and like my critical internal voice of myself

comes from a critical externalized voice

of growing up that might

out of fear

been pushing me to beat that at best I could be

or maybe it was a role connected to a external voice that became an internal voice that would never let me let up therefore I'm can never let anyone else let up either.

I don't know.

But I smell,

I smell the things.

Yeah.

And I react to them

as if they are threats.

It feels to me like

a real threat.

I believe you, that that's what is happening.

And I'm sorry.

Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Does it?

Yeah.

What about you?

I mean, I have a lot of that, I think.

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I think that it would be really interesting for you two to do some therapy together in the same room.

Ooh,

to talk through what each personal and collective experience through this stuff

might be.

I don't know.

Maybe that's down the road, but I mean, I guess first we have to separate.

We have to do the work of separating.

Yes, we can do the work.

That's what, that's what it would be.

That's right.

That's what the therapy would be, I'm sure.

Yeah, I mean, I guess

how I would,

I feel like that's what I was thinking of myself a while back too.

And like, I really felt like I, all the like labels I tried to put on myself, like I'm just anxious.

I'm just depressed.

I'm just a person who lived as a straight person and now I'm queer.

I'm just, it was religion.

I'm just always trying to find like what the problem was, what's wrong with me.

And so for me,

There's also like this shame if you can't point to something in your childhood that was this one specific thing that was so traumatic that it's an excuse for everything.

That has been confusing to me.

It's like death by a thousand cuts then.

And there's a theory of that.

Yeah.

Well, it's, I think, the reason why the intergenerational thing happens to make

me have more peace is like, okay.

Well, I wasn't physically abused by a parent.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

Like, why am I like this?

Well,

the truth is that I have a parent who was physically abused.

When you are raised by someone who has extreme trauma,

even if they did the best they could, they are going to pass on a worldview that came to you from their being.

Their words could have said a different thing.

But their body, the way they are, their energetic, their worldview

that is based on real things,

that they were not safe, that they had to protect themselves, that they had to be vigilant, that they had to, because they really did,

right?

That can be passed to you.

That can be passed to you.

Like, look at the mice.

They weren't even living with the person.

They weren't seeing the mice jump on the things.

They just knew it because of their biology.

But if they had been living with the mouse

and both had it inside of them and were watching their dad freak the hell out every time the smell came.

That's a double with me.

Yeah.

I said to Abby the other day,

we were talking about something and I said something like, well,

I said out loud that I don't believe that I'm mentally ill.

And like, that's the first time I've thought that

or known that since I was 10 years old.

I do not in any way

believe that there's anything wrong with me inherently, or that I was born broken, which I wrote in my first memoir, or that I have this like debilitating mental illness that will always.

Now that PS

is not all great news for me.

I find that to be more terrifying than any of the other reasons that I had for being the way I am, because what does that mean?

That means I am entirely responsible for myself,

for my reactions to things, for the way I am in the world.

I am entirely responsible.

Wow.

Which

and you viewed when you were viewing yourself as having a mental illness, you didn't view yourself as entirely responsible?

No, because I'm just crazy.

Just like,

I'm just, I'm depressed.

I don't have to show up.

I'm anxious.

So I don't, there was always this like explanation, which has been given to me since I was little.

Like when I was going around saying I'm broken, nobody was saying, no, you're not.

Nobody in my family said, actually,

maybe there was other things going on.

Nobody corrected my narrative.

Everybody was more than happy to be like, that sounds right.

Let's go with that.

Right.

She's crazy.

Look at that one.

That's the crazy one.

Cuckoo, cuckoo.

God, if we could just figure out what's wrong with that poor little thing.

And then I am always causing the drama.

So nobody else has to.

There's just, there's a lot, which we can talk about on another episode, but.

Or in therapy.

Right.

I already do that.

So I guess my point being that it was maybe the most profound

learning of my life.

And it wasn't like a mental, like I had to do it all bodily.

It took me two years.

I don't even explain how it happened.

It just, it was, it had to be visceral that actually

there's nothing inherently wrong with me.

I am a little jumpy and on guard and scared

because I was trained to be.

And it is the work of my life

to understand that I am not now in a place where I was when I was a kid and that I don't want to pass on that worldview.

Not just not to my kids, which is the most important thing that I don't, but to anyone.

Yeah.

But changing that worldview

is a fucking exorcism.

It's absolutely, I've never done anything harder in my entire life.

And all I'm doing is sitting here.

You would think that I was running a marathon every single day.

I don't know how to explain it any differently other than it is the hardest, most confusing, most baffling, most uncomfortable,

most profound, important, life-changing, family-changing, world-changing

work I've ever done.

And all it is, is it shows up in two-second differences.

It's like getting outside of trauma.

Okay, so yesterday we're pulling into this parking space behind our house.

And there's this poor guy who's in the house next to us.

And he's desperately, he's lost his keys.

He needs to get out of our way because we're in an alley.

We can't get by him.

Okay.

It is clear that this man is losing his mind because he has lost his keys.

And so it takes 10 minutes of him running around his house, running around the car, running around the trunk.

What's amazing is that there's two huge trash cans next to his.

All he has to do

is move the trash cans.

And we could drive right by him.

And that is what trauma is.

You are in such a heightened space that you will spend six hours trying to find your keys and you will never see that all you have to do is walk around the car and move the trash cans.

It is

the gift of it is seeing everything

differently.

It's this hard, hard, hard, impossible journey that makes life.

50 times easier on the other side of it.

Yeah.

So anyway, that's, I don't know.

I love you, sissy.

I love you, sissy.

I love you, Abby.

She loves you, too.

You're such a cute little mouse.

All right, loves.

We can do hard things.

We'll see you back next time.

Bye.

Bye.

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We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.