With its intense physical and emotional demands, motherhood often provokes extreme emotions, including unpleasant ones, such as rage, fear, or shame. For this reason, motherhood often introduces us to the darkness within, made up of those despised and repudiated parts of ourselves that are sometimes frightening to know, and that we can think of as our shadow.
When Connecting with Kids is Hard
Last week, I shared a fairy tale which explored a parent child relationship in which the parents are ashamed or ...
Read More
Read More
When We Are Ashamed of Our Kids
What an uncomfortable feeling to become aware that we are disappointed with or ashamed of our child, even momentarily. I ...
Read More
Read More
Humble Gifts: On Knowing We’re Enough
I had a conversation with a mother in my practice this week that brought up something important. As usual, I ...
Read More
Read More
What Happens When We Don’t Like Our Kids?
I am always a little surprised when a mother tells me with great shame and in great secrecy that she ...
Read More
Read More
Helping Our Kids Become Whole
“The right way to wholeness,” Jung wrote, “is full of fateful detours and wrong turnings.” And yet many mothers worry ...
Read More
Read More
When Parenting Reveals Our Shadow
Discussion with Lourdes Viado, Ph.D, MFT on the "Women In-Depth: Conversations about the Inner Lives of Women" podcast. We cover ...
Read More
Read More
Helping Teens Manage Big Emotions
Research indicates that emotional regulation is one of the most important skills we can teach our children. Teens who lack ...
Read More
Read More
What if I Feel Envious of My Kid?
Janice had been seeing me for a few years, but I had never seen her quite this uncomfortable before. She ...
Read More
Read More
How Motherhood Helps Us Value Our Flaws
We all have aspects of ourselves we would rather not know about. As kids, we may have been taught that ...
Read More
Read More
Can Motherhood Make You Badass?
My mother was never very good at saying “no.” When as I teenager I would ask her for something she ...
Read More
Read More
Am I Raising a Narcissist?
Recently, some research on parental overvaluation created a stir by suggesting that treating our kids as “special” can lead them to ...
Read More
Read More
Can Mothering Help Us Love Our Worst Qualities
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term “shadow” to refer to all those part of ourselves we would rather ...
Read More
Read More
Managing Adolescent Volatility
If we are parenting an adolescent, we realize that the teen years come upon us as a second storm after ...
Read More
Read More
Parenting When Depleted
Kathryn’s eyes filled with tears as she related to me how worn and spent she felt caring for her twin ...
Read More
Read More
Is There a Right Way to Parent?
My Facebook feed abounds with articles and book reviews about parenting. Apparently, we are overvaluing, overscheduling, and overprotecting our children. The underlying ...
Read More
Read More
Why Does Motherhood Make Women So Judgy?
Christine was uncharacteristically upset when she arrived for our appointment. She had just gotten off the phone with Marni, someone ...
Read More
Read More
Does Anyone Ever Regret Having Kids?
The answer is “yes,” as discussed with great honesty in this article. Most of the time, no matter how ambivalent we ...
Read More
Read More
The Dark Mother
I love Neil Gaiman’s wonderful short novel “Coraline.” It seems to me that this terrifically frightening book shows how the ...
Read More
Read More
Carrying Authority — The Legend of the Gargoyle
My mother was never very good at saying no. When as a teenager I would ask her for something she ...
Read More
Read More
