Just B with Bethenny FrankelDr. Matt goes deep on the effects Bethenny's mother's passing may be having on her. As well as hidden events from all our pasts that could be causing us trauma.
For more on Dr. Matt, please visit drmattpsych.com
Hi, How are you good?
Thanks? How are you doing?
I'm good? So you've been on here once before? Can you tell everybody what are you? Because I have a woman who I work with who's a psychoanalyst. I've been working with her for years. I never knew exactly what she is. She could be a b diatrist for all I know. She's very, very helpful, and she listens and she's smart. But she's a psychoanalyst. So what are you?
I'm a psychologist. I work what you would call a CBT psychologist, so cognitive behavioral therapist. So within psychology there's many different orientations how do we do things? So I work a lot with people with the way that they think their rational thoughts as opposed to their irrational thoughts, how their irrational thoughts affect their behavior. But I take it from a different approach. I take it from a family systems approach where they come from.
So I specialize in family.
You know, doing what I do, it's hard not to write because we all come from family. So if you don't understand a healthy family dynamic or what an unhealthy family dynamic creates, it's hard to do what you do. So I specialize. I like to say, I specialize in people, and I treat the person so a lot of anxiety, a lot of a lot of depression, a lot of trauma work. So it all depends on what they're bringing me. I want to I think it's very important that we look at that person and understand who they are and where they come from and treat that.
And you work with kids and adults.
Correct.
Okay, So I recently experienced a death and it's become this conversation that has been surprisingly shockingly not shockingly, but surprisingly engaging, because I think so many people are repressing these discussions and not talking about it. People don't always talk about sex, people don't always talk about money. People certainly don't talk about death in like a complex way. They'll talk about they experience the death, they're sad about their situation, but there aren't these sort of cross channels of discussion that I'm finding, particularly in women and the what's going on. And it's sort of like there's like a one size fits all death grieving model versus like the different types which I sort of came to. So I was realizing a couple things. I was realizing one that there's obviously no right or wrong, but every single type of death is different, and each death has a different dynamic. So, like I've said, someone could be ninety six years old, had a beautiful life, had a great family, everything was healthy. That's sad they've been around so long. Somebody else loses God forbid someone I can't even say it out loud, but younger than them, or someone takes their own life, or there's addiction, it's an unexpected accident, and like each thing has a different tone to it. And then as a cousin to that, there are many different brands and types of grieving. I thought about all of this during what I chose to do, just based on my own gut, but there are many different types of grieving. So I've seen really only Shiva and Catholic and wake and everyone together and laughing and food and flowers and jokes and getting drunk and stories and photos, and I did not I've done that. But in my recent loss of my mother, I feel like in both scenarios, it was kind of an unusual circumstance with the death and the grieving, So I kind of wanted to get into both of those situations because me bringing up the fact that it was a complicated relationship. You don't want to be disingenuous and like act like you're like So I was sobbing more than I was for people that I had a good relationship with, which is crazy, but I didn't want you don't want to be disingenuous where you're acting like you had this amazing relationship. You're just telling I was just telling the truth about what the deal was, right. And then also it's not like it's a very insular thing, this particular death. So I wasn't like having a bunch of people over to tell me how great it was and as she lit up the room, so it was like a different deal. So what do you have Let's we'll get into details after. But what do you have to say about both of those constructs?
No, I think that's very interesting and something that we don't really give enough credit to is that other kind of deaths be more and also so the death of a relationship, when the death of a job or a situation or an experience, right, there are many things we mourn, and there are many things that trigger our responses in the same way when things don't happen. So when you had when you say you had a complicated relationship with your mom when she passed, Yes, you could be mourning the passing of your mom, but you can also be mourning the potential of a better relationship with her. You could be mourning having that sadness of mourning the loss of a childhood that you wish you had. There's so many there's so many more complication and complicated layers to that that it's not you know, it doesn't say enough to to say, yeah, I'm sad, I'm mourning the loss, because it's it's how many losses. There's a lot of losses there.
Right, And what was shocking to me different than any other time. Sometimes the stages agree for predictable what people say. But in this particular grieving, it was like coming out of my body in ways that I wasn't expecting. Like I was not you're right, like you couldn't help, but you were just feeling. And it was like I was a going to the movie of my entire life that I haven't watched ever. I've never watched the movie. I haven't allowed myself to go in and see that movie. It's too hard a movie. So I watched the movie part of the movie was super like happy moments as a child. Part was frustration for like not being able to continue that and like why. Part was the person who passed away, like mourning them, like their poor life, like my poor life, their poor life. The loss wasn't really the thing. I was mourning because I didn't really have a great relationship. I was mourning. I was feeling sorry for myself in many of the cases. And I also could only live in that movie. And then after like a couple of weeks, it just like it passed like the movie was over and I thought I would never get out of this movie good and bad.
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's funny with It's an interesting analogy that you make. But I'll disagree one thing when you say that you never watched the movie, right, it's sort of we don't go to movie theaters anymore, right, But when you know, when you go to a movie theater and you're waiting for your theater to open up, but the other theaters are playing movies and you sort of hear things you don't maybe you don't understand the dialogue. You hear an explosion, you hear a car chase, you hear some left. You hear traces of what that movie, but you just don't know what that movie is going on. Those memories that are really hard to understand, the really hard to take, or memories that we had that were so harmful and painful for us that we pushed back, those are like that where they're there. It may not be fully aware of them, then we may not be fully in touch with them, but they're there and they're affecting us, and they're going to affect our decisions that we make and how we define who we are.
Right and your subconscious in a lot of way. So it's weird how this was a pinata that cracked open. I've worked with a psychoanalyst for years. She really didn't she knows about me because it's drive by explanations. Oh yeah, and that used to hap when I was a kid, and that like you're saying, but it wasn't ever going there and I and You're about to get on a rock. It first happens and you are like, wait, what's going to happen now? Like I remember getting the call and I'm thinking, because for many years, I've thought what happens the day that she dies? And I've thought it was a drawer, and I'd be fine with it because it was in a good relationship and it's not at all what you're gonna expect. And all of a sudden you're on this roller coaster and you're like, we're going on a fucking ride right now, and you don't, and it's about to start, and you're on the floor, collapsed in the hallway, just like needing to be next to the bathroom tile by yourself. And then you're in shock, and then you're in denial, and then you're in sadness, and then you only are willing to listen to one kind of music, like a fucking weirdo, and you're up. I still haven't slept a full night since it, right, but like things, so you know.
You know, I'll tell you what though, when when I've had people in therapy who will who will tell me what their life was like, and they'll and they'll say it like boom bom boom boom boom, sort of like you real quick bullet points, this is what it was like, and I I have to slow them down. So wait, waite, what do you mean, what do you mean that happened? And what did you experience? From that and what how did you how did you experience that? How do you define that? What does that mean to you? Right? And I'll be honest with you, I stay away from that real douchey psychology question. How does that make you feel? I hate that question? Everybody that question, right, But you want to want to get to that how do you define that? What did that mean to you? Because then when we slow things down there, it's like, well, I'm in therapy and you know I'm doing the work well.
Because some people want to be well, it's like going to the gym and just like saying, because you walked in the gym, yes, but I will tell you this from my perspective, and yes, my therapist has asked me that too. It's something that often you're in preparation for game day because the truth of the matter is you saying how to them make you feel? Or whether you say what was your experience or whatever you say, it doesn't matter. Like this was like I'm not saying therapy. Therapy is great and it's amazing, and it's like stretching all the time, and when the big race comes then you're kind of almost prepared but not quite. But I will say, there's nothing like someone smashing that pinata with a bat or doing ayahuasca people talk about, or doing emdr or doing like this was not something that ten years of therapy could do for me. Like people, I think, you just have to be aware when the car crash comes or when something happens, how you're going to brace yourself or how you're going to deal with it. And that's where I come up with the not going and drinking and laughing and getting the pictures out and distracting, Like I didn't like proactively choose my body, chose to just lean all the way into it, to get outside and take a walk, to listen to the music, to cry through it. And I didn't know that I was necessarily doing the right thing, but it's what I did.
M Well, maybe it was the right thing for that moment and the right thing for you at that moment.
Right, Yeah, Now I want to talk about this emotional trauma, this generational trauma concept. I'd never really heard that term before. My followers are so savvy, so smart. You everyon want to learn something, go into my comments and read their experiences. So I've gotten easily a thousand messages from people estranged from this person that person it's complicated, or they're the parent, or you know, like all of it. And this really made people stop and think. So I felt like it was great that I was taking on the responsibility of at least if I made mistakes, or if I had these experience, or if I didn't make mistakes, just having this experience. I this has definitely helped a lot of people on this conversation will but this generational trauma thing where we know it but we don't really think about it, and it doesn't mean you have to do the same negative thing. I know people who came from abusive backgrounds and they're too kodily to their kids because it's a pendulum the other way. But I did learn through this process that my you know, mother, she her sister, and her brother were beaten the absolute shit out of and the brother, the uncle who did not choose to ever have kids, who happens to live in the next town. I found out he is more like me in the sense that he went he was swat team, he was military, he was cop, he was control flies helicopters like methodical like you know, textbook control like me, organizing package like you see the difference of how we all like managed. But it also and you see whatever his father did. But this was the sec the seventies. No one was cut. I've had people come out and say now that they lived next door to me in Rockville Center, Long Island, and that they were worried for my safety because the cops were there, and there was a lot of abuse in my house. And it was the seventies. You drove drunk, you didn't wear a seatbelt, you let your kids out the back door, you smoke while you're pregnant. Like this is why this is a whole different deal today my life as a child, someone would be coming over to the house and taking me out of there, right, So what about all this generational trauma. A lot of these moms that I'm talking to, these women are children of the seventies and the sixties, and it's a different deal.
Right, right, So when you go back as far as that, you can understand how people how their trum affects the way they see themselves, right, and how it skews the way that they see themselves and looking for that control. It's an interesting word to use. Someone who's believing, like your mom think about how controlling she was. I mean, outside, her life must be very chaotic, right, But what's the one thing she was able to control.
Well, she had that crutch of every meal going to the bathroom afterwards. And it's so self loathing, and I want to talk about that. I'm going to have an ed expert on here too. But I'm sure you know a decent amount about this. I have never seen. I've heard of a lot of people in college. I've heard a lot of people with eating disorders. My mother was a brick shit house. She was ninety pounds. She would come home from studio fifty four. My stepfather would lock the door. She would smash her fist through the window. I've seen her go head to head with truck drivers and kick with her cowboy boot their truck. She was a fucking bad bitch. Like she was insane and tough and smart and strong and scary. And you can imagine where I can be tough and strong and scary, but it's under control. So I think about the fact that she had she had a life long never once admitted it to anyone. Every believe I've ever heard of has admitted it to someone, or you hear the story later or something. I've never heard of a person that I have stood outside of a bathroom, heard her throwing up for an hour and a half, gone in, seen it around the toilet, smelled it, seeing it in her eyes, all of it, and her lie about it my whole life. And I've never before this experience thought about what the hell that did to me. I was embarrassed of her. I was I was shameful. I watched her lose her beauty. I didn't want her to come over anyone's house. I was always on edge, and she was always on edge, smashing everything in the house, torturing waiters for the way things were. And I think about what the hell that life was like, how she survived, how she lived as long as she even did right and every meal.
That effects of what that affects a child. So you know how that's gonna affect your young set health, right, And that if I'm better, she wouldn't be doing this. If I'm a better kid, she wouldn't be doing that. I'm not good enough, right, And hey, listen, maybe she was thinking that too when she was growing up. If I'm better, my dad won't beat on me. If I'm better, my dad won't beat on my brother. Let's keep it calm, let's keep it quiet. So we take as a child, we take responsibility for the actions of our parents because we put them up on pedestals. Not until later on we realize that if we ever do, but by that time we already have established the way we feel about ourselves, our sense of self. And that's what's really damaging, is that we take on responsibility of things that we don't have any control over and then think that it's our shortcoming that we can't fix it and change it, and then we overcompensate for that later on in life. And it can go either way. Either we feed into it that I'm a piece of shit and I'm not good enough, or we go over and we try to control and become like almost narcissistic and like little kings in our kingdom, and then become become abusive as well. So we can fluctuate within that continuum. It doesn't have to be, but many times we can see that. And then and then we replicate those relationships, right, something that is something called replication and rectification, right, So we can replicate a relationship with somebody else that kind of makes us feel the way that our parent made us feel. And because if we can fix that person, then we're actually fixing our parent and we're feeling better about ourselves.
And that's where you're saying, coming into being very aware of where you come from when you're making choices with a partner, and it could seem like it's in a good package, but it could be for a different for sure.
For sure, and then you get that generational trump because it continues onto the next one, onto the next one, onto that.
It may not be directly with you and your kid. It could be you with your husband, It could be the choice.
It could be sad, of course, but if you pick that spouse, that's unstable, right, the same level of instability with a spouse. What kind of family dynamic are you creating for your kid?
Right? Well, what's inferting.
But certainly atable one.
Yeah, I feel I can remember the resounding feeling that people may relate to if they've been in the house with I had an alcoholic and a boalimic chainsmoker, like with then my stepfather gambler. There were always bookies coming to my house and like gambling all the football games, so I had a lot of addiction and physical abuse in my house, so my resounding feeling was walking on eggshells and always like worrying about what everybody else like. I remember coming into my twenties like are those two getting along with the table? Like everybody like reading every situation in every room, which has been very good for me in business because I can be in a boardroom and understand what the hell everyone else is doing, thinking, saying, smelling. I can read and eating disorder from two blocks away. A nuance. I was on a show with someone and it really triggered me because I can smell something before anyone else can smell it. In lying and stealing and cheating, I can feel it because and I had I had never really made that connection. And Melinda, my therapist, said, because I've seen things in other people that I've caught really fast before even people in my life who are around it more caught it. My stepfather was living with my mother for all those years. I was the one who let him know about the eating disorder. I just from very young, from seeing all this physical abuse and all this stuff, I just I just knew I could clock anything anywhere. And it's kind of like being a it's not great because it's like being a cop, you're like constantly it's like that movie where Jim Carrey could hear every single thing that everyone was thinking about it, or Matthew McConaughey. It's kind of it's because you're so your instrument is so in tuned to chaos and like dysfunction.
And it's the role that you had. Because if you're so tuned into the dysfunction and the chaos, then your role, like you called yourself a cop, well, what's the cops role? To serve and protect, right, to make sure maintain order. So your role there is to make sure everyone's okay? How can you possibly be able to make everything okay?
How old were you started the fighting in the house, right I have to call the cops was like five? But the throwing up of seven that I first.
Caught it sure, So that a seven year old is going to make sure everyone's okay or everyone is going to be well and healthy, it's impossible. So you were destined to fail. So how do we feel when we fail? We don't feel good. Doesn't make us feel good. To fail doesn't matter that what we're failing at is something we can never do right. That doesn't matter. What matters is that we fail and we feel like a failure. And so that comes part of our building block of who we think, oh, we are as a person, which is why that drives people sometimes maybe such as yourself, to be successful, but tries to prove that you are you do have that worth.
It's all the time, yes, And I see that even with my father, who treated me so poorly and he was so successful, and he dangled it over his head and he bragged, like to this day he's dead, and I still want to shove my success up his ass. Not my mother, because I have more compassion. My mother was jealousy. She wanted to be famous, she wanted to be relevant, she wanted to be fashionable. She liked the trappings and the nice things. But like Melinda would say, like I'm living out their goals. She feels that there's like a definite connection. Forget the skinny girl and alcohol, like, oh my god, Freud is knocking on my door. But the because people always want to know where the drive comes from. And sometimes I just simplify it to my father as a hall of fame horse trainer, and he was a He was a worker, and my mother to the day she died, I was a worker like I come from. No complain, no explain, no shortcut workers, you know, put the exception of dysfunction from her, but they just are there's a work ethic. But I think it's more than that, like you're saying, like you were saying, drive, that's like and it's and it's it's been insatiable. But really recently, in the last couple of years, I keep getting towards a point where I really won't do anything that I don't want to do. And I don't go just for money ever. But the more that I am truthful about what I don't want to do and the more that I say no, the more that walks in the door, Like the more the tables get hot, the more that I don't like desperately cling on to it right.
Right, Because you're starting to learn how to define success and define yourself in different ways. And I think that that's super important, right because as a child, when we especially you don't think that you know, I'm just picturing you as a five seven eight year old, nine year old and having people over and they're all gambling there if they're focused on what they're gambling on. Right, Then I focused on you, right, So then it's not it's not you're you're you're a window dressing at that point. Right, So, not only could a child feel like they're not good enough because they're failing at their role, they're also not good enough because one's paying attention. Right. I think you mentioned that you're raised by wolves, right, like, no one, no one paid attention. You raised yourself, right, Well, if you were good, you were worthy, if you were worthy of it, then they would have raised you. So that's that's the pathological thought process that we can easily engage in that were not conscious of it. Just it just starts that way. Continue.
You also have a lack of sometimes empathy because so when I was no one ever made doctor's appointments for me. I remember having chicken pox and my friend no one believed me, and I got one hundred and five fever. My friend's parents had to take me to the hospital. I broke, I fell down a scheme mount and ended up in a helicopter. My my ex my exes fam like. I was always clamoring for that, But I find that people who grow up like that it's hard for them to empathize with people who are whining about basic things, you know, like other people that are like that have things handed to them. You're almost are jealous or like you just don't have a lot of tolerance for people that are like complaining and explaining.
Sure, of course, of course, and it brings up a you know, you have to put up a little wall there too, that you don't want to get close to those people because they have it so easy obviously not like me, because they were good enough to get that easy. And I find interesting too. And when you get older and get to those teen years and you start picking your partners and you get to your twenties, I find a lot of times people will push healthy people away from them because there's something about me that isn't right right. I'm growing up always thinking that there's something about me with something that that's not right. I may not be able to put my finger on it per se, but I know there's something there. So what's wrong with this person that they like me? They seem so good, don't they see what I see? That there's something that right about me? So there's something wrong with them? Or I'm not worthy of that, so I'm gonna push them away. I'm gonna go towards someone who may not treat me well, who may not treat me that great, who may be somewhat of a liar here, or you know, cuts the corner there and turns into something bigger later on, because well, that's what I'm used to, right, and that's what I'm worth. And of course they're not healthy. They like me so, and that's that's sort of how we perpetuate what we'd learned.
Yes, but it also could be like I remember younger, this is all change. I'm older now. You really don't realize anything until you get older. But like I used to be, you know, I used to get a bad haircut and my stepfather would take us down to Florida, or we go to Vegas and go to the craps table, like action junkie. You know, that explains a lot of how I am. Like, let's go, let's do it, let's figure it out, let's solve it, let's go do three hundred million dollars in relief, no problem. You know I had had somebody once say to me, and now you're gonna see what I was like on the basketball court. And I was talking to my stepfather the other day after a while, and he was like the basketball court. I was like the racetrack, Like it becomes like I literally grew up at a place where it's the fastest sport period. Like it's just action and gambling and drinking and money and highs and lows. So it's hard to you know, I do crave stability, and I'm so much of a homebody. Thank God, I want that direction. But it's hard to get to that place.
And it took it. Did it take you time to get to that place.
Totally? And you don't even know you're on the the role code, you don't even know you're on the racetrack, You're just on the race. Well yeah, I mean all those years before I had a kid, it was great that I had kid, lad because I was running on that racetrack like a.
Maniac, right right, and there was probably you know, there's that part of you that was healthy. I mean no one's all you know, holy unhealthy where you have healthy parties, right, so that healthy part of you and you I have to wait, right, I'm not I'm not ready for that. I have to through this until I'm ready for that next part of my life. And I think that that's that's very telling. I mean, that's very good.
So what about well two qu what about memories and flashes of sexual abuse that your mind plays tricks on you? You know it happened, you kind of pretend it didn't happen. There's nothing you can really do about. How does that manifest itself? What what comes out in people with situations like that? What does that create for them? Is it lack because for me it would be lack of trust of males?
I mean it can be for sure, right, it depends on how what the age was? What was the age.
Seven seven to seventeen or eighteen? And I say seventeen or eighteen because in that case it was you're an adult. But it's people that were in a parental figure, like a very close family friend that you thought was family, trying to sleep with you, but in a different way because you're an adult now, like propositioning you and being sleazy with you, where when you were younger, it was people taking advantage of you. And in my case, my whole entire childhood was being around a bunch of racetrack degenerates at all times when if you know, you know, there's horse trainer and my stepfather's a horse trainer, and he had all these guys around with different nicknames, and they were just always around the house. It was like a degenerate posse and me and my mother was never there. So my stepfather was there, which was admirable that he was the only one staying with me when my mother was away having affairs in Wales with this guy and then went away to an institution. But I was always with a bunch of different men, always just dropping me off, picking me up like I was always of men. So I can imagine what that was like with these race track degenerates.
Sure, sure, so there's definitely you definitely can create some trust issues for sure. Right, it's very confusing. It's very confusing for a child. You know that their their bodies could betray them. Right as you get older, they betray your body could react in certain ways, so your whole idea of of sex and your sexuality gets in puts a question you feel, No, there's a there's potential for feeling abandoned and abandoned in different ways, right, so abandoned by your mom who didn't protect you from them men hyper sexualized of thinking that this is what you need to do in order to get what you want.
You know, feeling it can go either way, or being super repressed, being.
Super repressed that you know, the difficult thing about this field that I'm in is that there it can go either way, right, there's no hard truths to it, which this is why it's very important to treat the person, not the problem.
That's exactly right, So exactly because I have heard of situations that you're talking about where a woman becomes extremely promiscuous, and I experienced at an normally latent time to even consider using any kind of a toy or masturbation or anything. It was not even like it was never I don't remember it ever being discussed with me, but it was something that obviously you've heard about. It was like a block until I mean into thirties, okay, and I remember the first time I ever felt that I could trust someone in a sexual situation.
Did you see it as a tool? Did you? How? Did you? How do you ever do it?
No? It's a it's it's it's not it's not something to do for just like only pleasure. It's something to do to really connect with someone and you're then in a relationship where there's an expectation from someone like someone must someone would have to be legally bound to call you if you've had sex with them, like that would be the ultimate violation if they weren't. And even insex, you don't trust people sometimes, right, right, even if you even if you're in a relationship with them, you may not trust their intentions.
Yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious as a child what you how you understand to what mom was doing after she came back from the hospital and beatn and then having sex with her.
She I knew she despised it. I could tell obviously she was doing it as an obligatory thing, right or some like tumultuous highs and lows addiction thing. But there's no way because that's where money came into and she stayed with us. She used to tell me she stay with all these men because of the fact that they supported her, and like there was all this information that I was privy to. Yeah, there's a lot of noise there for me with sex and money and all this type of stuff because of all that stuff.
Right, and that you see, well, all those things that swirl around you. They don't have anything to do with you as a person. And that's when you say noise. It distracts about who you are as a person. And I mean you you, I mean us in general, but it distracts who we do and how we define ourselves as a person.
Right, yeah, But we also can't a la carte menu this thing. I wouldn't be so successful and be who I am and be able to communicate in this way and do this if I didn't have this background.
I mean, there's a great I'm gonna reference a song home Slash song Class of ninety nine always use your sunscreen. I don't know if you ever heard it. It's great, and it's basically giving advice. And one of the lines is live in California, but lead before you get too soft, and leave and live in New York, but lead before you get too hard. Right, So yeah, I mean it's important.
I did both. I literally did both. I was in California and left before I got too soft after ten.
Years, exactly right. So you know, when we have these types of experiences, they don't necessarily have to entirely do us, right. You don't have to end up on a dirty match or somewhere with a hyperdertic meanal in your arm. Right, you can use those to propel you to do things that are healthier. But it's when you're not fully in touch with things where it can go off the rails, right. And I think that that's what's really important. And sometimes things happen in our lives that will bring us back, wake us up, ring that bell and realize, holy shit, I got to make that change. I can't do it too much. I have to make a shift, right, And I think that that's important to listen to those to listen to those bells. Right.
It's so true because this guy Breck that I know, who's a life coach, he always he says he doesn't believe an obligation and doing things just because you have to. And it's funny, like I often see people with other people that are abusive to them or mean to them or family members, they tolerate it. It's the dynamic and it's I believe negativity like it's contagious, it like gets on you. I don't want it anywhere near me. And when I was talking to a friend from high school, because I've opened up and started to reconnect, I've talked to my uncle. I talked to friends. I opened up a door I haven't opened up in years, and one of them just said it the best. She said, it feels like because I've felt guilt, And what about these letters that she wrote me saying she loved me and should I have gone there six months ago? And all this stuff, and like it was remembering things like only I was remembering no bad. I was like delusional. She said, it sounds like you had to let go or you both would have drowned. Because I always needed a justification. I would talk to different therapists about the fact that I just stucked this in a drawer and was not opening it because every time I opened it it was utterly nasty, utterly abusive, just felt like a place I didn't want to be. And I didn't want that on my daughter at all. Even when it started to get on my daughter a little in certain language and talking about my mother, you know, oh I gained fifteen pounds even though she was eighty pounds, or you know, saying just some nasty things like I was like, I shut it down. I didn't want any of that on my kid.
Do you have any idea why you may have kept those letters. Come come.
I didn't know I had I didn't even know I had them. I didn't even know I had them, and they were only from one period, and I was looking for a photo, and I was like, what the it was on my most raw day. She died Friday Sunday. I was literally I'd been obsessing over these pictures of when she looked beautiful, because her vanity was such a thing, and her beauty was extraordinary, And the pictures that I had was really when she started to rot, which was when she was forty, which I thought was old when I was a kid, and now being fifty three, like I realized, even when she was like fifty three, she looked like she always looked like she just all of a sudden, it escalated real fast. You can hang on to a disorder like that in your thirties, but I don't know, it's just like infinite dogyears. When you hit forty, she just deteriorated. And I always wanted people to see her in the way she was when she was young and beautiful. She wasn't even an interior designer. She was an interior architect, like doing her own drawing. She was a bad, badass. But the letters. I was on a Sunday and I was looking for photos because I was looking for these specific photos of when I remember being happy. This nature photo and I remember being happy, and then ones when I remember her being beautiful, like having the light before it went out. And I opened up these letters and it was I have the chills. I was like scream I was not like I was screaming. And they were all the same year, and it was a time that she had been to the institution and she had stopped drinking for a period and they were like barely account accountable, but just like you didn't have it easy, but you're my light. You're the love of my life because she did love me. And I feel like a fraudulence. And I had fun in my life and I traveled and I went to places and I had nice things, and my father's partner got me a Rolex at thirteen. Like I wasn't living like Panhands. I'm not trying to explain this, Like I never had fun. I went to Disneyland. I'm sure I was drinking alcohol and going to night clubs at thirteen, but I was having fun. I mean, it sounds crazy, it was not all.
Bad, right, but those women, those letters seem like a window, right. I mean, at some point in your life you consciously chose to keep them.
I guess, yeah, we made that choice.
And those letters are saying that you had it hard and I love you. I think that's what you wanted to hear all those years. And that's like a window of health that she had, almost like almost like a dementropatient kind of comes out one day and says, oh, Hi, you know they have a window of resemblance. But that's a window that you recognized of what you've always wanted. Very weird, but you didn't have the entire life. I think that's why you kept it, and that's why you had such a hard response to it, right, It's an emotional response to it.
It was I've never gone in a cabinet. It was so strange. Why I do believe in all these other energy you moved?
How many times you've always took those with you.
Yes, I haven't seen it for I haven't seen it for thirty years. No, exactly, I've never seen I've never seen them since they were written. As what I'm saying, I don't know where they came from. It was very strange and they were on Ziggi and Hello Kitty stationary that was my childhood stationary that she had kept and written them on. It was like, very strange, it was traumatic, but it did break something open. Yeah, yeah, it did break something open. And what about specific eating disorders? What makes someone choose a specific or it chooses them? Or what is bolimia in this she was blaming you with with with lax it is, which I think is a version of blaemia. Also, what is that? What is what is that versus being at arexic or some other thing exercise or ecxic or whatever.
You know, what I can tell you is that eating disorder is believing specifically. You know, they're they're anxiety disorders, right, So it's it's when we have an anxiety disorder, it's it's basically a need for control that we just don't have and trying to gain control in some way. So you know, look, if your mom, if your mom recognized that her beauty was the way she was getting through life, maybe she had that thought right you saw her as a badass, that she was so talented and all these other things. She may not have seen herself as that.
Yeah, but what about the fact that you aren't. She was so smart. Aren't you intellectually realizing that you're ruining your looks by vomiting the most disgusting shit all over yourself?
That But at that point, that point, it's you don't. You're not seeing the reality. Right, there's a body dysmorphia going on where you're looking yourself in the mirror and you see something vastly different than what's really there. Right, that's by this morphic disorder is something that's very real and affects people in all different areas. But what she could be experiencing that is being so afraid of losing her youth, so afraid. I think I heard you say something that she got really mean to you verbally mean later on, like when you were in your twenties, she was.
She was always verbally mean.
She's always verbally yeah.
Yeah, she's saving.
But again saying that.
She had got more, it got more, Yeah, it got heightened. Well that way.
When it got worse or heightened is exactly when you said that it got it got escalated for her, right her forties, you're.
Twenty oh oh, her eating just a well, no being caught escalated. I think. I mean, of course it's not going to be the same when you're younger and dabbling in it. But I was seven, she was twenty seven, so I don't know when it started. I think it started when she was sixteen.
No I'm saying. I'm saying it got worse. And how when she was loose, when she realized she was losing her beauty and losing that avenue, that that vehicle for that, I could see how she right, she would become more vicious. She become more vicious for herself or vicious for you. You know, I wish I was you, as I wish I would your life. I wish I was yous. A. Yes, that's a that's worse than a left handed compliment, right, you know it's it's that's a really harmful, hurtful thing to say.
She's that's so funny because I've never saw it that way as a kid, but she said it to me so many times. She wanted my life right, And I didn't see it as harmful. I just saw it. But she said it from when I was a really young kid. I remember that being a thing, and I remember other people reacting to it the way you are thinking that, but I didn't. I'd all think it.
I like we could tease. I tease my kids all the time. Yeah, I wish I had.
Your life, right, you know, no, different, different.
Way different. It's way different. And I think that that's what that's what she was doing. You know that it was looking It wasn't about you, It was about what she didn't have, what she lost.
Well, she also said she gave her life for me many times and stayed with these men for me. I stayed with these men for you, Like it's a very.
So that's not a lot and a lot of guilt, right, So you experienced a ton of guilt, I would imagine, right, and not from her resent her resentment.
I don't know. I just know that I remember that statement my whole life, like it's I don't remember a lot of things. And even before this past week of like two weeks of going through it, those always stuck with me, like I gave up my life for you, like that was That's like a stain that's been on me my whole.
Life, right, all right, all right, So so say so what kind of stain, like how did that affect how does that affect your your behavior. It's an interesting statement to make. It's a stain of my life. That's powerful.
So what why I mean, I think I intellectually did not believe it. But also I don't think I under it related to money a lot. I think it has everything to do with going to make your own money. I mean, money is such a massive you know, it's ironic because I could be a billionaire if I wanted to by killing, you know, killing myself. And I love my free time and I have a good balance, and there's a million things I've turned down, way more than I've taken. So I can't say that money like It's not like I see people like the Kardashians. They take, they go for all of it, like I've had so many opportunities I've turned down. So it's not that I'm been obsessed with it, because that's not the case. But my whole life I've been acutely aware of never wanting to have to depend on a man for money. I mean since I was extremely young, and it was exasperating even when I was broke in my late thirties and had I had a man who I loved say give up this business, and why are you doing all this and why are you killing yourself? I'll take care of you, and I still it sounded so easy, and in some one part of me I wanted to be I was fighting myself because I've always wanted a man to financially take care of me, but then I would never do it. I could never gold dig or It's like it's been this complete rub where I would love. I love a man to take care of me and shower me because I have that from my childhood, but could never really really allow them to. I could never really want to, like, you know, share property or like anything like that.
It's time to hear her side of the story.
I love the show so much. I was like, please throw my name in the mix. I need to be in on this.
We were sure she was going to be the next bachelorette and then something changed.
I'm keeping things very very hush hush.
Fans of The Bachelor know exactly what we're talking about. Joe and Serena sit down for an intimate conversation with Maria Georgis on Bachelor Happy Hour.
I have to ask, I heard a rumor that you were dating at one point one of Drake's best friends.
Oh, we have more Sayami.
Listen to Bachelor Happy Hour on America's number one podcast network, iHeart, open your free iHeart app and search Bachelor Happy Hour. Listen now everywhere, listen to podcasts, and don't miss part two Monday Night.
So what do you have to say to people who are witnessing generational trauma in their own life? They know they're in a relationship with someone, they've just experienced death. They don't know what to do with it, you know that sort of thing. What do you what do you blanket statements say about that?
So? I guess you know. The most important thing is is too is to treat yourself with grace. Right, we have to treat ourselves with grace. I don't think we do that enough, especially when you're bad about yourself, right we we we are really good at being angry at us. Our internal voices are are are scary, right, and mean and difficult, and they're just they're playing assholes, right, I mean, they just though So I think that when we realize that those thoughts that we're having are simply thoughts, right, they're just thoughts. They're not truths, their thoughts, and that they those thoughts can be easily swayed and changed based upon our past experiences. Then we could take some of that sting out of them and allow ourselves to be treated, to treat ourselves with grace, to know that, and to redefine who we are, what we're about. And maybe not everything that happened had to do with us per se. Right, We're just wrong place, wrong time. Right. Who's to say you know that the reason why I was treated a certain way is because.
I deserve has anything to do with me any Yeah, you know.
People we take the way we're treated as kids extremely personally, which sounds ridiculous. Right of course we do, but many times it's not personal, has more to do with the other person will have to do with us, right, right.
And it's funny when I you said, they want to get it off them. They're miserable, they're unhappy, it's toxin. They want to throw it up, they want to get it out.
I want to get it out like a drowning victim. It doesn't matter who's rescuing, and they just want to get up. So I got to push down whoever is in front of them to get up.
Yes, what about yeah, exactly? What about people who can't afford therapy for me. I think there are a lot of online therapy options. But also I think with the internet, like I've I there was something that I looked up. Oh, I didn't really know about formative years. I've heard it. I studied psychology and college. I forgot, but I didn't really realize if by ate like you're formed as a human in many ways, Like that's insane. That makes a lot of sense now I thought of that that last week of all the shit that was happening to me between childhood, how many homes i'd been in and eight years old, Now I realize a lot Like so I think that people just using the internet with these terms, these generational trauma terms or anxiety disorder or alcoholism or I feel like people can find a decent amount on the internet to help themselves.
They can, But you know, it scares me. It worries me, right because there's so much misinformation on the internet as well fair so much it's misuffair.
But then support groups something that's economical.
There's definitely a lot. There's definitely a lot of support groups. There's definitely a lot of more economical ways. I think mental health we're in We're in a mental health renaissance right now, I think right where it's more accepted, people are talking about it more. It's more in our common ridacular. Right. I have so many of my teenage patients telling their friends, yeah, I can't get together because I have there after that day, right, I mean right, fifteen twenty years ago that was not the case, right. Never. I think that you do have to be careful where you get information from, where you get advice from. There's a lot of bad characters, right, bad actors in any field, including mine. Unfortunately, it worries me. I think, you know, health insurance is a totally different topic. We can talk a whole thing about where you know, the health insurance companies aren't really here to help us, right, They're not the profits. So it's hard. It's it's definitely hard to find. And I think there's a scarcity around. And I'll be honest with you in that in that vacuum, there have been other other agencies and different people who have offered help that may not be as qualified. I think the most important thing that I'm gonna should suggest to people is to not give up finding that right person. It's not necessarily the you know. I know, I know some social workers who were great. I know some psychologists who are great. I know some social workers were awful and psychologist.
No, it's a it's a chemistry thing. It's like the same thing. You could go into vinyasa yoga. You could go into hot yoga. You think you hate yoga because you didn't go into the right class. You could think about like lettuce because you had a rogola, not on dive. Whatever it is.
I agree. I agree with that, keep going and tell your story over and over and over again until you find that one person that you feel comfortable with. And sometimes and.
Different people are good for different things, like this guy that I know for years, a life coach. It's more like not worrying about happened to you when you were a child, but like intervening in your behavior now. Some people want to get all the way back, and it's like a toolkit. You can use different people for different things. I think, yeah, wow, all right, well this was amazing and very grateful and I think will help a lot of people. And I want to keep this conversation going here about these different things because I haven't been I didn't realize I hadn't been willing to talk about any of this myself in my own life, and it's easier to for it to be tangible because people know me and they know that they really don't know so much about me. So so many people have so many things that most people don't really know what's going on with them.
And you know, I think what's it's a beautiful thing is that you're also learning, you know, learning who you are along with it.
Yeah, right, of course, which is which is.
Great, you know, And I think that are our own personal evolution should never end, never end, right, We continue to grow and learn about ourselves and how we got here and where we want to continue to go. And I think that's super important. So I'm thankful for and grateful that you gave me this opportunity to thank you. Thank you, and uh no, like, keep the conversation going.
It's great, all right, good, we'll talk soon. Thanks.
Take care
