I Hate You. What's For Dinner?

There are many points in the course of our relationships with our kids when the dynamics will shift. That’s how it’s supposed to happen. But as parents, we don’t always realize or own up to the fact that we have relational needs that we’re trying to meet in our relationships with our kids. 

So when shifts happen –– smaller ones like a younger kid wanting to spend more time with peers or big ones like a kid going off to college –– we’re not always great at separating how our behavior is serving ourselves and maybe not so much our children.

Not that we know anything about those experiences personally. Today, we’re having an off-the-cuff friend hang, talking about our big feelings about our changing relationships with our kids as Gillian’s kiddo gets more interested in friends and Rob’s eldest goes off to college, along with unpacking some of our personal neuroses, perspectives on what’s weird about being an only child, and what can happen when you’re an only child and a highly-sensitive kid.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How becoming therapists entrenched some of our only child weirdness, and also forced us to figure out how engage with others and not take everything personally
• The overlaps of being sensitive, only children, feeling like outsiders, and overthinking social interactions
• Unpacking the hidden motives behind hyperfocusing on being a “good” parent and getting honest about our relational needs 
• How Gillian is navigating her feelings about wanting one-on-one time with her kiddo as he’s spending more time with friends
• Why attuning to your kids and when they’re ready and able to talk is more important than any influencer’s list of essential conversations

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• Ep 05 - Connection Is Survival: Parenting for the Loneliness Epidemic with James Ellis
• Sexuality Beyond Consent: Risk, Race, Traumatophilia, Avgi Saketopoulou
• Ep 18 - Dad's Performance Review: Teddy Galligan On What Worked And What Didn't

A lot of us end up spending a significant part of our adult lives unpacking our childhoods. 

We obviously do a lot of that in therapy, for ourselves and the parents we work with. Some, like our guest, use their creative work as part of processing their past.

Today, we’re talking with Rob’s lifelong friend, author Jamie Beth Cohen. In our conversation, we revisit Jamie and Rob’s coming of age on the East Coast in the 80s and 90s, and do some speculating on what it’s like to be a kid these days. We also talk about the complicated work of conceptualizing parents who had both good and really harmful parts and how Jamie has infused her fiction and her essays with the difficult characters of her childhood.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How both Jamie and Rob experienced not realizing that elements of their childhoods were not normal
• How Jamie’s father’s spending and gambling shaped her relationship with money, work, and being an artist
• Why Jamie couldn’t cut ties with her father and how it impacted the behaviors she tolerated in other relationships
• How writing about her father has brought more understanding, but maybe not more peace
• The stark differences in Jamie’s experience of being a teenaged girl and her daughter’s

Learn more about Jamie Beth Cohen:

• Website
• Instagram: @wastedpretty

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• Wasted Pretty
• When the Identity Theft Is Coming from Inside the House - The Billfold
• When I Realized My Dad Didn't Want To Get Better – Kveller
• Perspectives: Mourning Without a Road Map - Pittsburgh Magazine

Every parent has moments when they look at their kid and wonder, “Are they gonna be okay when they head out into the world?”

In the day to day struggles that come up with school, homework, activities, chores, siblings, we can lose sight of the big picture. Which makes it all the more delightful when you get to have conversations with your kid that make you realize that yeah, they’re going to be fine. 

Today’s episode is the result of one of those conversations. We’re joined by Rob’s son, Teddy, who very graciously agreed to record a conversation with his dad and his dad’s friend from grad school who he hasn’t seen since he was seven. We talk about shifting family dynamics as Teddy moves on to college, reflect back on some of the hard times between Rob and Teddy and what was fueling their conflicts, and even get Teddy’s take on new school versus old school parenting. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Teddy and Rob reflect on school years, the interruptions of COVID, and how the cycle of novice to established keeps repeating
• The mindset challenges that drove a lot of Teddy’s conflicts with his dad early in high school, and how he came to recognize the stakes at play
• Why Teddy thinks that new school collaborative parenting isn’t always the right answer
• Unpacking how Teddy’s behavior could bring up jealousy, shame, and helplessness for Rob and how that colored their relationship
• What Rob and Teddy hope for the future of their relationship

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

At its most distilled, disappointment is just noticing a negative difference between what we expected and what actually happened. It’s a moment for recalibrating our expectations and learning from an experience.

Of course, we throw a lot of other feelings and experiences into the mix along with that gap, and that’s especially true when expectation and reality involves our kids. 

In this episode, we theorize about the purpose of disappointment, how it gets twisted up with how we were parented, and how that in turn affects how we raise our kids. We talk about shame versus disappointment, the paradox of controlling what you can while knowing you have very little control, and how to acknowledge our disappointment while maintaining an open attitude with our kids.  

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How disappointment often brings up shame, helplessness, anger, and anxiety directed at yourself and your kid
• The often tricky relationship between performance and the right to be loved
• How healthy disappointment recognizes the varied factors at play and releases excessive illusions of control over a situation
• Psychoanalytic and evolutionary perspectives on why we feel disappointment
• How parents can approach disappointment with more curiosity and less projection

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Alice Miller
• Ep 06 - Trickle Up!: Ron Williams On Purpose, Legacy, And Spreading Abundance

There are deep biases embedded in the literature and therapist training for how therapy is supposed to be done. Some of those norms have evolved and some of the rules still feel very rigid. 

Old school rules say that an adult who is working on issues from their childhood might talk about their mother every week for five years, but a therapist would never suggest the client bring their mom to a session.

But if both the adult child and parent are willing, why couldn’t we do things differently?

Today we’re talking with clinical psychologist Lucy Bichsel, who has been doing some unorthodox and very interesting work in her practice to help people make sense of some of their longest-held wounds. We dive into how Lucy expands the frame of individual adult therapy to allow parents and other important people into the room, potential pitfalls and opportunities for profound healing, and –– for anybody struggling with their relationship with a parent –– some of the patterns and dynamics we see pop up again and again for our clients. 

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How bringing an adult child and parent together shifts the enactment that happens between therapist and client to the original relationship
• What Lucy learned the hard way about her role as a secure base for both her individual patient and their family member 
• Why becoming a parent is often a catalyst for people to rethink their relationships with their parents 
• Why reinterpreting the past isn’t necessarily the goal and how responsiveness in the here and now creates healing
• How Lucy approaches working with families when intentions are good but defenses are high
• How generational differences and caretaking for aging parents can create friction in child-parent relationships

Learn more about Lucy Bichsel PhD:

• Website

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• Calling Dad - SNL
• Carl Rogers

June is a time of transition for a lot of families. The end of the school year, graduations from one phase of schooling to the next –– endings and beginnings have a way of surfacing the feels.

And no one likes to process endings more than psychoanalysts. So as we’re at the end of the school year, and Rob has a child who just graduated high school — how?! –– we decided to spend some time today talking about endings. Rob shares some wisdom from his son’s head of school, Gillian talks about navigating change for kids and adults in a household, and we break down how the John Denver/Peter, Paul, & Mary classic “Leaving on a Jet Plane” encapsulates the vulnerabilities and fantasies of saying goodbye.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The way so much of parenting becomes maintenance and banality, interspersed with moments of magic
• How the wider community begins to play a bigger developmental role in the transition from little kid to big kid
• Navigating adult transitional phases and relationships alongside your kiddos growing
• How “Leaving on a Jet Plane” taps into the grief, love, and vulnerability of goodbyes of all kinds
• How a child leaving the nest changes the center of gravity for the rest of the family
• The relatively unsung genius of 38 Special

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• Ep 03 - “I’m Doing The Song!” Ash Diggs On Cat’s In The Cradle, Comedy, And Family
• Ep 08 - Keeping It Authentic (And Surprising): Dr. Matt Morrison On Raising Kids And Therapists
• Harry Stack Sullivan
• Leaving on a Jet Plane - Peter, Paul, & Mary
• Ep 09 - Fear, Resistance, And Flow: Paula Tursi On Letting Parenting Happen
• Hold On Loosely - 38 Special
• Ep 11 - Toward What Matters: Sarah Markowitz On CBT, Values, And Choice

In our society, we’re not good at openly talking about death. We’re even worse at speaking openly about death by suicide. 

The silence that so often accompanies suicide–what our guest calls “the shroud of suicide”–creates additional burdens for surviving family members, especially women who survive their spouses. The expectation to shield others from the full weight of the death, to even erase the facts of the experience, is an enormous pressure that has long-term consequences across generations.

Today, we’re in conversation with our former classmate, Dr. Alexis Tomarken, talk about two of her papers that discuss intergenerational trauma and the heavy burden of our collective discomfort with suicide. Alexis movingly weaves together psychoanalytic theory, her work as a therapist, and personal experience to show that putting words to life’s most difficult experiences is not only vital to personal integration, but impacts future generations as well.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How our society treats suicide as crime, blames surviving women, and actually increases risk
• Why open discussion and processing is more effective at the prevention of “suicide contagion” than hiding from it
• Why the goal, especially for a surviving parent, is to keep the door open to communication with children, not to seek resolution
• How therapists’ and clients’ lived experiences inevitably interact, even without therapist disclosure
• How the blame and shame placed on women survivors is emblematic of gendered expectations of healing and caretaking

Learn more about Dr. Alexis Tomarken:

• Website
• Connect on LinkedIn

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• Can You Hear Me? Errands and Repair in the Analytic Identity
• The Shroud of Suicide:  Misogyny, Abjection, and Transgenerational Trauma
• A Last-Minute Breakthrough, Muriel Dimen | The New York Times
• The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
• Dr. Dan Siegel
• Jane Tillman, PhD, ABPP
• How It Feels When a Parent Dies, Jill Krementz
• Thomas Ogden

Everyone struggles sometimes when their kids have strong opinions or feelings and they need them to just do the thing already. And when frustrations are high, it can be easy to slip into the kind of old-school parenting a lot of us were raised with and that we might be trying not to replicate.

Our guest today, Kirk Martin, host of the Calm Parenting Podcast, knows those struggles intimately. In our conversation, he shares his journey with his son, Casey, and how he came to realize that he needed to throw out the old-school parenting playbook and change his whole way of thinking about autonomy, respect, and collaboration with his child.

We talk about why clinging to parental autonomy isn’t actually useful when you’re in a power struggle with your kid and what parents who might be at their wits’ end can do to shift those dynamics in a positive direction.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Kirk’s own oppositional tendencies gave him insight into the feelings and fears underneath the power struggles
• Strategies for giving kids autonomy while maintaining boundaries and guardrails
• Why parents have to manage their feelings of embarrassment or shame when their kids don’t do things the “right” way
• Reframing disrespect and attitude as information that something’s up and an opportunity to connect
• Normalizing that things will go wrong and allowing yourself compassion 
• Why Kirk encourages parents, and especially dads, to problem-solve with their kids like they would with their coworkers 

Learn more about Kirk Martin:

• Celebrate Calm
• Calm Parenting Podcast
• Instagram: @calmparentingpodcast

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

All of us have some level of innate desire for autonomy and equality. But for some, the need for autonomy and equality tangles with Survival Brain in ways that have major impacts on their well-being, even overriding basic survival needs like food, sleep, hygiene, or physical safety.

Though it can sometimes look that way from the outside, PDA (Persistent Drive for Autonomy or Pathological Demand Avoidance) is not just a knee-jerk, “You can’t tell me what to do!” PDA causes outsized reactions to perceived threats–threats which can be invisible or confusing to parents, educators, and therapists.    

Today’s guest, PDA expert Casey Ehrlich, defines PDA as a nervous system disability that requires a holistic approach that goes beyond in-the-moment behavioral intervention. In our conversation, she movingly recounts how her personal experience raising children with PDA caused her to turn her research background to understanding what PDA is and developing and validating an approach to managing this challenging disorder. And we talk about PDA’s impacts on kids and families, what makes it so mind-bending for outsiders, and how sometimes disrupting and confronting systems can be a benefit of having a PDA brain.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Why Casey defines PDA as a neurotype separate from other kinds of demand avoidance seen with autism, executive dysfunction, or anxiety
• Five common elements of PDA that can help parents identify and differentiate it from other concerns
• How PDA-ers’ orientation toward autonomy, equality, and justice can become a source of personal and community strength
• How a drive for autonomy can show up with other neurotypes, and when it crosses into PDA
• Casey’s experience navigating two very different presentations of PDA and burnout with her two kids
• Tools for parents to observe patterns and collect data, (mostly) keep their cool, leave space for their own feelings, and protect their boundaries and sense of self

Learn more about Casey Ehrlich, PhD:

• At Peace Parents
• Instagram: @atpeaceparents
• Facebook: @atpeaceparents
• YouTube: @atpeaceparents 
• At Peace Parents Podcast

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• PDA North America
• PDA Society
• Rabbi Shoshana
• Amanda Diekman | Low Demand Parenting
• What is DIRFloortime?

There are many ways to do therapy, and many reasons why people gravitate to certain modalities, both as patients and practitioners. 

And while there are some who will insist that their way is the way, we’re happy to acknowledge where our preferred methods overlap and diverge with others, and how different therapies can help people arrive at the same place of better self-understanding and moving through the world with more ease. 

Today, we’re chatting with Gillian’s longtime friend and Cognitive Behavioral Therapist extraordinaire, Sarah Markowitz. We get into what’s similar in CBT and a psychodynamic approach, what’s different, and why these schools of therapy tend to appeal to certain people. We also talk about the tricky balancing act between direction and curiosity for therapists, educators, and parents when engaging kids on behavioral change.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Sarah investigates resistance to change from a stance that is both directive and client-centered
• How building experience as therapists leads to more overlap in our approaches than not
• The layers of thoughts, rules, and core beliefs that CBT uncovers over time
• How both therapists and parenting advice have shifted to be more descriptive than directive
• How Sarah’s logical, but not rigid, household, along with swimming, summer camp, and horses, shaped her ability to self-regulate and her default state under stress 

Learn more about Sarah Markowitz:

• MindWell Psychology

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Learn more about Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Learn more about Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan

Resources:

• EP 06 - Trickle Up!: Ron Williams On Purpose, Legacy, And Spreading Abundance
• Acceptance and commitment therapy
• Dialectical behavior therapy
• Marsha M. Linehan
• Aaron Beck
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson PsyD 
• Dr. Ross Greene
• EP 09 - Fear, Resistance, And Flow: Paula Tursi On Letting Parenting Happen
• EP 08 - Keeping It Authentic (And Surprising): Dr. Matt Morrison On Raising Kids And Therapists
• Dr. Russ Harris