Episode 195 with Dr. Morgan Cutlip
Babies Aren't the Parasites We've Been Told
SHOW NOTES:
Tune in to learn how to thrive in motherhood, embrace the beauty of self-discovery, and create a harmonious balance between parenting and personal growth. To explore more insights, visit drmorgancutlip.com and mylovethinks.com. Stay tuned for a captivating journey towards empowered motherhood and a fulfilling life.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
195 MORGAN CUTLIP
Ginny Yurich Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside, and I'm so excited to be sitting today with Dr. Morgan Cutlip Welcome.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and chatting with you.
Ginny Yurich I think your story is so cool because you have the stuff that you do with your dad, and I just think that's so special and unique. But Dr. Morgan Cutlip Is an expert on mothering and relationships. You have courses in podcasting. The co-founder of My Love Thinks, and you have a master's in human development and family science, which I didn't even know was, I think.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I.
Ginny Yurich Know, a doctorate in counseling psychology, mother of two wild kids, wife of her high school sweetheart, so sweet and lifelong lover of all things relationships. So, Morgan, welcome.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Thank you.
Ginny Yurich I'm so glad that you're here. You have a book that will be out by the time this airs called Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself. What a topic. The subtitle Five Steps to Banish Guilt and Beat Burnout when you already have too much to do. This is like for all of us, right?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip It totally is.
Ginny Yurich So can you start off by telling us your story? I love I love your story. Like you talk about how you thought you were going to be like a top 100 mom because of your background. Like, what happened? Oh, okay.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I'm like, how far back do you want me to go? I mean, my story really starts in my work with my dad. He's a doctorate in psychology as well. We started working together many, many years ago. I was traveling with him to conferences in high school, speaking with him in college.
Ginny Yurich Well, how did that start? That's an interesting thing. I think that a lot of times people follow in their family business, but a lot of times they don't. So where did that interest spark? Was it in high school and middle school?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Good question. Yeah, because my sister is a nurse, so she like, went different way different. And then I followed in my dad. I think it was a social experiment probably. So when I was really little, actually starting in elementary school, he went back to school to get his doctorate and I would go to classes with him sometimes, which is crazy because I ended up in the same doctoral program that he did. They didn't realize, I don't think that we were related. And I had there was one teacher that was remaining from when he went to school, and I actually went to that class with him, took notes, and then had her as a professor later, which is bananas. So I think part of it is, is he would play this game with me when I was little. Where would we be in a long car ride? And he would give me a case, you know, of course, he changed the details. So he didn't didn't break any rules, but he'd be like, here's a family, Here's what's going on. The little boy is my client. Like, how would you help him? This was my most favorite game to play with my dad. I think it was a real time of connection for us and just like, fostered in me this interest in relationships and dynamics and relationships. And I liked the problem solving aspect. And so, yeah, I mean, I feel like I was just brought up in it feels like I've been doing this my whole life. So fast forward, I knew that I wanted my own credentials. I wasn't going to just like piggyback on my dad's work. And so I went and got my my masters degree and it's like.
Ginny Yurich We don't.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Even know this exists type of thing. I kind of felt similarly and then my doctorate in psychology, and it was probably my sophomore year in college where I'd said to my dad, You know, someday I want to do something to help women. That's what I want to spend my time and my my career doing. And I didn't know what it looked like. We worked a lot with singles. I thought I would be around helping women choose partners, and then fast forward even further. And our daughter Effie was born and she's ten now, which is mind blowing. And I went into motherhood, like you mentioned, thinking I was going to crush it. I was like, This is my calling.
Ginny Yurich I was made for this. I have a degree for this. But then it.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Sold like I really thought I knew exactly what I was doing. I have good parents. I good mom, all of the makings of what I think in the book. I'm like all the makings of a top 100 mom and man, was I wrong? I was. I don't know if it's naive, but I think of a lot of us feel this way where we are so caught off guard. And I know I was by the loss of freedom, by the amount of responsibilities, by how my husband and I, who have known each other a very long time, were like, not that good at navigating the shift in our relationship. And we had some, you know, circumstances with his job and getting relocated. That made it a little extra challenging at that time. But I just felt like I was regularly falling short. And I think part of it was my expectations were so dang high and so I knew, I knew I wouldn't feel like this forever. And so I kind of made this internal promise to myself that when I came out of this fog that I wanted to help moms navigate motherhood in a new way. So if I feel this way, a lot of us feel this way. And so I want moms to navigate it. Feeling more empowered.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Yeah. And it's a beautiful book with incredible suggestions. And lots of times where you feel heard and seen. Like you even start off the book where you talk about common struggles. So here's an example of when you feel like. You spend your through your day at warp speed, but never feel like you're enough or that you get enough done. Yeah, because this is like, Oh, yeah, I think that we all feel like this way or you're weary and exhausted and you're sick of the typical take a walk type of advice. Actually, the one I related to the most, Morgan and I related almost all of them. When you have a moment to yourself, you have no idea how to spend it. You're like, you're frozen. You're like, do you stack like, what am I supposed to do? And then you the whole time, you're like, Well, maybe I should have done this. Maybe I should've done that.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip And then it's over. It's that I am I have made a piece of content around that particular struggle and like many different iterations, every time it does well, this idea of, like, we finally get that precious time and we're like, Do I do laundry? Do I clean the kitchen? Do I take a nap to read a book? Do I pursue a hobby finally? Like, do I like, do I exercise, do a shower? What do I do? And then they're back. You're like, Gosh.
Ginny Yurich I really didn't get anything done. Why don't we start there? Yeah. What would you say to a mom who is in that situation?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I tend to be a bigger picture thinker. And so sometimes these black and white pieces of advice are like, Oh, I struggle a little bit to give that because I think it it's different for every single person, which is what I'm trying to help moms do in this book, which is start to become more in touch with themselves. Because part of the issue is we make our needs small and we kind of have to in the beginning. So I don't want to say that's a bad thing. I think when our kids are first born, especially, it's like we if we don't make our need small, our baby might not make it like we have to. But we get so accustomed to doing that that before we know it, they're kind of kind of disappeared. You've kind of disappeared more like we don't even know what we need anymore. And so part of the way back is learning how to regularly kind of check in on ourselves and ask ourselves, what do we need? And this will help us start to shape a new outline, I suppose that we can access in these moments when we have some time, but also to tap into like what's going to really fill us up the most in this moment, because sometimes it's going to be doing that load of laundry and sometimes it's going to be sitting down and escaping in a book and and filling your mind with something totally different. And so it's really about learning how to access yourself again and turning and tuning into you. I do have one simple hack, though.
Ginny Yurich Yeah.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I think that one of the easiest ways to get at what we need is to look at what we complain about the most. I think complaints are a window into unmet needs. If you're like, I don't know where to start, just start there. What are you complaining about? Is it time? Is it the mess around the house? Is it time with friends? What are the complaints that are coming up most often for you?
Ginny Yurich Well, and I think if you just do something and I think this is to your point about knowing yourself better, I think this is part of the journey, right? As a mom, all of a sudden things are so different. I completely related with caught off guard by how much freedom I lost. Yeah, you say one of the most difficult aspects of becoming a mother is the loss of freedom. So you're in this spot where you really are having these feelings that you've never had before. So how can you really know yourself? Yeah, unless you start to try different things. And so all of those ideas that you gave, which was like laundry or seeing a friend or sitting to read a book or taking a bath or taking a nap or whatever, I think we can't expect that we should know. Yeah, I think you just have to try it. Yeah. And I love that. That's a theme of the book. Get to know yourself better and get to know yourself again or get to know yourself really in this new way. I had heard this poem. It's so beautiful. I'm able to give credit to the person because I can't think. But there is a point. Maybe I'll put it in the journal. The point was like getting to know it. She was talking about like being in the moment, in this time with kids. She was writing a letter to her husband and she talked about getting to know each other for a third time. Here's what she said. So we first got to know each other before kids. Then we got to know each other with kids. And then we're going to have to learn to get to know each other without kids. And this is like our life, too. Like where we got we knew each other before kids. Who are we now that we have these kids? And so you I think we have to have Grace basically told us, oh.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Gosh, we need so much grace. I think in all of our relationships and including our relationship with ourselves. So what you're saying is so key. And I think that if we were to just tell moms what is something to really get to know, one of it is to really think about the prompt. The mother I thought I would be is and to get to know the mom that lives inside of you. Because when we are from the moment we're born through all of our growing up experiences, we are absorbing messages about what it means to be a good mom, what it means to be a mother, what we see with our own caregivers, what we see in the movies, in society, what we learned maybe at church or at school. All of these messages live inside of us. And this is going to point back to this poem, which I love that concept, but it lives inside of us. And then it doesn't really come out until we become a mom. And then all of a sudden these expectations that we actually didn't really know were existing within us come out to be standards that we're holding ourselves to. We do the same for our partners after kids. We don't see them as a parent until we have children. And so we're like all of a sudden, why is that bugging me about you? Well, it's been living inside of you, but it didn't get active. Waited until we were in this new role. And so I think, you know, we don't think about the type of mom we imagine ourselves to be until it's almost like too late. And we're feeling like we're falling short of that standard. And so it's really important to kind of take a minute and unpack that and it will reveal some of these standards you're holding yourself to.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I love at the end of the book, I was on my favorite path where you had a how to know yourself deeply, a deeper dive. Yeah. And it was like this several pages of really trying to understand like, and putting it all together, like, what are my anchors? And I just think this is such an important concept to learn now, because in I do think we're going to have to do it again.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Oh, yeah.
Ginny Yurich Once the kids are grown and out of the house. So I think it's just being aware that it's normal, I think to be completely frozen and not know what to do when you have 6 minutes. Yeah. And so I think you just do something. And by doing something, then you learn like, okay, yeah, that was it. Nope, that didn't do it for me. I should have tried something else and you get another chance.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I like I like the idea of being like an experiment or in your own life. And I think that's what you're saying is like, just experiment. See what fills you up. See what? If you if you don't know, Move, move. And I say that in the book, too. Sometimes you have to act before you feel ready. You have to behave different before you feel ready. And I think that comes into play in a lot of different areas and motherhood and even making mom friends, for example, or things like that. So just to embrace the idea of being an experimenter in your own life, try things out. I do this in my relationship all the time, actually, and it's been really powerful. And then also sometimes you got to behave before you feel ready. And when you have that win or you have that moment of like, Oh, something's shifted, I'm feeling a little bit better. It's motivation to continue and to keep going.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, And if you have fear, if you frame it that way, I love that. If you frame it that way, if I'm an experimenter for the sake of knowledge, then it doesn't feel so dire. I think sometimes you think, Oh, I'm going to lose this opportunity. But no, because you're experimenting and you're learning about yourself more and you have knowledge that you didn't have at the beginning. One of the things I really related to also that you don't expect is this concept of she felt instead of default. I never heard that before. It's so clever. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, I can. I sadly, I cannot take credit for this one. This comes from Eve Brodsky, and she talks about it in her book Fair Play. But it's around the concept of the mental load, which is that invisible running to do list that the majority of the time is carried by moms and women in the household. And this list of stuff takes up cognitive real estate. It is a reoccurring statistic, never really ends and it is invisible. A lot of times it becomes a real challenge. But she felt is basically that in motherhood, a lot of this and even in partnerships, but specifically motherhood, a lot of this stuff tends to just default to us. And so not only are we making our needs really small in the beginnings of motherhood because we got to care for this baby, but because we often are the default as well. Very quickly, a lot of the extra demands that come with having children and having a baby fall to us And before we know it, we can be weeks into motherhood and be like, I'm buried. Like I am so buried by all of this stuff. I'm a big believer that that we have to have plans for things. It's not like a real, like sexy way of talking about life and relationships. But we do need plans for how to navigate this stuff. That's what I try to give moms in this book.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. I love that you would just give the wording. And I think the wording is so important. Like a sometimes I'm like, well, if I said something, I'm going to come across as sounding like like I'm really complaining or I'm really like that. But you say, just to say our schedule and I'm carrying feels unsustainable. Let's set up a time to talk about it and find a better distribution. Yeah, Yeah. And that's great wording. So you could write on your hand because sometimes I think people don't really understand that. Like you're trying to also juggle like everyone's social life and you're trying to juggle like, how do we meal plan and this kid wants to change a room and where are we going to get the bed and where are we going to get the bedding and who's going where and when are we going to paint? And she wants this and that kid wants to date and what are our rules? And I think, yeah.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip So much stuff. Yeah, I think we need to normalize this idea of touching base and talking about things like the mental load because it's constantly changing and that that's one of the principles of my book that I hope really comes through, which is this idea that we're never going to really hit this cruising altitude in our relationships and stay there forever. So, you know, I think that were fed this belief. It's like in our Western society probably that we can like achieve balance in our relationships. And so it's like if we just turn the right dials some day, we'll get there. And then when we do get there, because we do for like a minute and then we fall out of balance or we become just kind of like a mess or something, we're like, What's wrong with me? I'm doing all of the things. And I think, you know, something I'm really hoping comes through in the book from Moms is that you're listen, you're going to lose yourself in motherhood probably over and over and over again, but. Do you know how to recalibrate so you can reconnect to yourself and come back? And it's the same in our partnerships. You know, you cannot reach a cruising altitude because turbulence is up ahead and, you know, the holidays and, you know, the room switches like you're talking about and all the normal and beautiful and exciting and sometimes painful parts of life are going to regularly pull at our connections in our relationships, give us more obstacles to try to deal with. And that's normal. But we have to get good at managing these relationships.
Ginny Yurich And our expectations. I did really like that in your book that basically like this is like a constant tweaking. You don't expect it to be anything different. Yes, because things are always in flux and things are always changing. So you're always trying to learn more about yourself, learn more about your kids tweak. And when you talk about the mental load, it reminds me of the part where you talked about willpower because I think like we it's like we view ourselves as having maybe a bigger capacity than we actually do. And your willpower can get used up.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Oh, yeah, Yeah. I did a I actually did a video once, used a tape measure to try to give like an example a visual for this. And so I'll try to explain it. But willpower is a concept in psychology that has like many, many names, but the simplest is just calling it energy. We can call it an energy, and every single person has a different amount of this and it gets used up throughout the day. And so, for example, if you're going to start out the day with a like your maximum capacity of willpower, energy, that means you got a full night's sleep. So right off the bat, a lot of times asthma, I was up with a fire alarm like five times last night at four in the morning. It's like mobs were always dealing with like a sleep stuff, it seems like, especially in those early years. So you're working with less capacity already. Already. And just to be clear, willpower is what we tap into to like, do. So all sorts of things, make decisions, regulate our emotions to basically like all the things that we do as moms through the day, organize things, plan things, research stuff, us tapping into our willpower, dealing with critical thoughts about ourselves. So we all have different capacities. We start the day with a certain amount of capacity depending on like, for example, the amount of sleep and stuff we get. And then all through the day you're using it up. And so it's like if you're getting ready for school and you're going through that school struggle, get in the shoes on and out the door on time, you're using up some of this willpower. So I used the tape measure, kept kind of shrinking. And this is why usually by the end of the day, moms are like, give me a bedtime, because we are so done, we are out of it. So if we do not make micro adjustments, we don't do these assessments through the day, check in on ourselves and tweak it. We're never replenishing our willpower because that's the other piece about it, is that you can strengthen it, you can add to it, you can rest and recharge and do different things that will start to strengthen your willpower and increase it. And so if you're just using it up through the day, by the end of the day, you can be zapped. So we need to learn how to pay attention to that.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, well, what's coming out a lot is that in other cultures I just read it in the Blue Zones book by Dan Buettner, and I was just talking to this woman named Sally Clarkson who does t every, like, busy, wonderful. We're just talking here. She said every single day they do Tia three and in the Blue Zones book this Dan Buettner talks about these people that are living to be 100. They all they take a 20 or 30 minute nap or they have a sister or they have a tee time. And I think it would seem that 15 or 20 minutes or 30 minutes isn't enough. But the research and the thought there is you're replenishing. Maybe you don't even need a full replenishment, but like a little bit.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, we know like some of the stuff I feel like is tricky because it's become so talked about that we sort of numb out to it because it sounds cliche, but stress is very, very, very hard on our bodies, on our health, on our emotional state, is that we have a physiological response. And so that is really damaging to our immune system. There's all these things right, or can be really damaging. So when we are paying attention to our willpower and taking care of that, when we are replenishing and resting through the day, we're allowing our body to come into a relaxed state which has like multiplicative positive effects. And so, yeah, it just makes sense that that's helpful.
Ginny Yurich I love that. MORGAN Take care of our willpower. That's a great thing that I've never thought about that, but it seems like it's coming out like that. This is really important and this is helping people live longer and helping them connect. So really important things to know that you don't have an unlimited supply. You got to protect it a little bit. Okay, What about this concept? I loved it throughout the book about symbiosis. You had such a cool thing about the flowers and the bees, and I had no idea. Oh, yeah, the flowers can hear the sound of buzzing. What? But you're talking about how in society there is this pervasive view that. Kids are a total drain. But you are saying something different. Tell us.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, I think that there's this belief, unfortunately, that motherhood sort of takes more than it gives that we have these children who are like parasites, just sucking the life out of us day after day. And we just got to survive till, you know, all of the things, the wine culture to survive to. We get to that glass of wine at the end of the night or survive till we finally make it to school and get rid of our kids for the day or. And there's nothing. You know, we all need a break. Like, I understand that's not judging that. But at the same time, that mentality I think, can be really damaging. And also, I think it's missing a really just important aspects of motherhood, which is that I believe motherhood is mutually beneficial and that it's expansive and in a number of ways. So I do draw the parallel to bees and flowers because bees and flowers work together to help each other thrive. And I believe that we do the same in motherhood with our kids. I think about all of the ways that my kids have sort of required that I step up and work on things that have been unhealed and me or that needed attention. They shine a real bright light on that. And I think that's sometimes the painful part of parenthood. But if we're up for the work and we're doing, you know, kind of the self-reflection piece, we will become better people because of our children. And in turn, we will be better able to show up for our kids and help them grow in important ways. And so I see it as a relationship that is that is mutually beneficial, that does give back to us, and that is really important to our development. I was listening to your interview with McLean and she was talking about helping kids find like a state of calm and how like practicing and wonder and like, I was like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Because as the parents were practicing calm, they're teaching their kids to practice calm with the parents do that. If it weren't for their kids, I don't know. I don't know. It's that it's that heightened emotional state of their kids that prompts them to really find and and tactics to find their own. It becomes it's like we're both growing together. And I think that's a beautiful thing.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, it forces it. If it does. I feel like before I became a mom, I didn't grow at all. I just stuck with the things that I was already good at for 27 years. I just did that. I was already good at this. I was already good at that. And then all of a sudden you're that good at it. And I relate it to your story, you know, thinking I was playing and I'm being really good at it. But then you grow and I love that you even talked about the fetal cells from the unborn baby.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, that's from a book called Mom Genes, which is really cool. But she talks about even, you know, there are fetal cells that are often left in our bodies that help our in our systems heal inside of us. Our physical bodies are healed by the fetal cells left behind from our kids. And I think that, again, we just don't think of motherhood and parenthood in that way very often. And I think just having these simple shifts in mindset can be really powerful for how we approach our kill our children and motherhood in general.
Ginny Yurich As was really a powerful stuff, really powerful stuff. I love that you talked about these women, like you said, from the Mom Genes book that are in their fifties and sixties, and some of them still had detectable left over fetal cells from their babies that made them less likely to die of virtually everything crazy. The symbiosis? Mm hmm. Fantastic. It's good to know. It does. It helps you to change your perspective and not be quite so grumpy. So this is great. Okay, so then you talk about the relationship attachment model, which is something that you've been working with your dad for a long time. He wrote a book called How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yes.
Ginny Yurich It's a great title. That's fantastic. But part of this has to do with these different bonds. And I thought your stories that you told about the different bonds to kind of explain them made it so clear to understand. So let's just talk about a few of those. You started with the. No, we're talking about knowing ourselves and knowing our kids. And you told the story about your son. And when she said he's like an entirely new kid, Oh, you're like, No, no. But so what happened there?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Oh, that was such a painful time. So the story is, sorry, I'm getting distracted because I actually went to a live event recently and I ran into a woman who worked at my son's preschool. At the time. I was like.
Ginny Yurich Oh.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I talk about this in my book. So it was really, really interesting to have that experience. But so her son was in preschool and he's a highly sensitive kid, and that comes with a lot of wonderful things and also a lot of extra challenges. And he was having some issues at school in terms of like coming home. Oh, he's also an amazing storyteller. So I feel like I'm constantly trying to determine what's fact or fiction with this kid because he just has these really wild details. So always telling me stories at school of being chased, of kids, trying to get him sort of stories with a theme. So what happens is I get called into school one day to talk to the administrator. And of course, you know, that sends any mom in a panic or I'm like, oh my gosh, what's happening? So I raise up to the school and met with his teacher and with the administrator and said, Oh, you know, Roy hit a kid today with the block.
Ginny Yurich Which, oh.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip That's not good. Not my proudest, proudest experience as a parent.
Ginny Yurich And but also, don't so many kids do that? So many kids do that. So is that like a phase? Yeah.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah. It's a thing and actually was really like a hitter. So I was kind of like that seems very out of character. And also at school, he is one of those kids who is just like, I am the best listener at school. Like he's very well behaved at school, very, very proud of this at school. So I sit through a lecture, I sit through a lecture of, you know, you need to teach him to identify his feelings and express his feelings and, you know, all these different things. And I talk about my struggle in that moment.
Ginny Yurich When I have a family science degree.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Doctorate. Do I. Do I do I share my you know, do I wave that credential flag in the moment or does that make me look like I really stink at what I do? So and then my then the administrators like, oh, you know, I know Roy used to wear costumes to school. He dressed up as the greatest showman for like three months, and then it was into capes. And so then the administrator was like, I know he wears superhero capes. I don't know what kind of violent shows you're watching at home, but I was like.
Ginny Yurich Oh, he's.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Lit. Or like, We're not watching any of these shows. He just likes to dress up. And so I sat through it for a while and there were things to like, he's not doing. He's doing only parallel play the scenes. He's not developmentally in the right place. He barely speaks at school. So I sit there for a while and eventually I say, Hey, do you notice that Roy ever curls up in the fetal position at school? His teachers like, Oh yeah, he actually does that quite a bit. Like, okay, I go the morning, you know, they hit the kid with the block. I'm just curious, did that boy knock down something Roy had built? Because the story of our beginnings at schools that I would stick around with Roy in the morning until he felt comfortable. And usually we built something in that day. We built a tower about as tall as he was, and there was a little boy who kept kind of taunting us. He was just like, I have. It's such a good visual. He was just kind of like hovering. And and I said, How do you knock down this town? And I'm like, Well, actually, yeah, you know, he did knock down his tower. And so that's when Roy hit him with the block. And so I said, okay, the fetal position piece is his way of regulating. He's done it since he was a baby. This is not like I didn't teach him to curl up into a ball, but it's also when he feels unsafe. I want to share with you some of the stories about how Roy talks about school. I talked about how he talks, you know, how he's being chased and how he's feeling kind of in danger. I go to I don't know what the reality is, but the theme is that he feels unsafe and has a lot of anxiety. At school. This response was an anxious, angry, unsafe response, and anxiety comes out as anger a lot of times, especially of boys. And so I don't think he feels safe here. And I think you see him as a bad kid and that's probably how you're treating him. And of course, we're going to talk about what happened. I mean, of course, I'm going to talk to him about this. But talking about big feelings and things like that is a regular conversation in our home. Yeah. And so finally the administrator said, that's I get it. I got an idea. I'm so sorry. They switched him to a smaller class and I followed up with her a week and a half later or something along those lines, and she's like, Oh my gosh, Roy hasn't stopped talking. He's telling me all sorts of stories. His vocabulary is really impressive. He's a totally new kid. And my point in the book is that, no, he wasn't a new kid. He was the same kid. The difference is that I know my son deeply and so I am able to help meet his needs in the ways that are most valuable and important to him. This school wasn't getting to know him deeply. They weren't curious. They were casting him in a particular light and that's how he was being treated and his needs weren't being met. And so the concept in that in that story, in that chapter is when we know ourselves deeply, we're better able to meet our needs in the ways that matter most.
Ginny Yurich What a story really illustrated. And then you had the one about Effie for Trust, and I really related to this one. I think from being a teacher and all around just growing up, and I remember I would have students, Oh, I taught math, right? So yeah, this is one of those subjects that for an entire lifetime, people either think they're good at it or they're bad at it and they don't tend to change. And so you get all sorts of kids that are 14 years old that say, I'm not good at this right off the bat. And they've had these experiences throughout their life. And I mean, I remember I had students who would say the teachers would say right to them that you are not any good at this.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip It's absolutely crazy.
Ginny Yurich What's happening here.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I think.
Ginny Yurich But you had this story with your daughter. Well, you were in the classroom and this is the one about trust. So can you talk us through that one and how we change maybe the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Do you want me to share the whole story or just give the notes.
Ginny Yurich Whatever you feel?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip So I'll show you the gist of the story. You're highlighting something that I really like this part of my book, but all of the main core points I first illustrate in relationship to two chil to our kids. So I tell stories about my own kids because I think that it's easier for us to think about how we care for our kids than it is to think about how we care for ourselves. And so first I apply it to kids, then I apply to us. So in the second step, which is trust accurately, I tell a story about Effie in first grade, and it's like leads into the decision that we made to eventually homeschool and things like that. But Effie developed a lot of anxiety. Being in first grade with her particular teacher, the environment was a really, really big class and I happened to be in class one day. I volunteered once a week doing the math facts, which I hated doing math because it's so stressful for these little guys. And you know, I.
Ginny Yurich Went, Oh, it's like, why are they doing that? They have a calculator. I don't it's interesting to me. It's interesting to me just because we didn't do any schooling for our kids until they were seven. So that second grade, nothing like not I mean, we learn they certainly learn because we're living and we're playing and we're talking and we're reading. And I'm sure they knew their numbers. They knew how to add things up, but it wasn't anything formal like that. And they're like, Fine.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, it's fine.
Ginny Yurich You know, like our oldest is 15 and like, he's fine. He's fine. So it's so hard. They in stressful situations and they're so little.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip They were so I mean, there were I mean, the amount of tears it was it was very hard for me to witness, but the class was huge that they would do citations. I think a lot of teachers do stations to manage. It makes sense. But Effie, just her anxiety had increased so much. We were like this obsessive thinking started to develop. And I know that sometimes it's just a bit normal developmentally to develop this kind of self-awareness at this age that can increase anxiety. But it was just like next level and very different than her normal temperament. So I just happened to be in class one day where they switched stations and Effie Fro was like a deer in headlights, and I watched the teacher snap her fingers right in front of her face and say like, What are you doing? Are you anybody home in there? Basically. And I was like, Oh, my word, she's doing this while I'm here. What happens when I'm not here? And what the point of the story, though, is, is that Effie had a sort of adopted this caricature of herself in her mind as being she called it a slowly I'm just slow mom like it shut her down in many areas of life and at home. And so what I do in the book is I walk through how we restructured the way she thinks about herself to be more accurate. Sometimes she moves slow. That's a beautiful thing I love she flat smells the flowers like, Don't we all need to move a little bit more slowly? But she's not a slow it's not the defining person that she is. This really applies to moms, too, because we create these internal pictures of ourselves that a lot of times are really focusing in on the ways that we fall short, on the ways that we're not the mom we thought we'd be on, the ways that we didn't, you know, level up to our children's needs that day or how we didn't create a fully stimulating environment for our kids in this moment or whatever. All of these things that we regularly zero in on create feelings of guilt, shame and feeling really yucky and motherhood. And ultimately this negative opinion of ourselves trains our willpower. So all these pieces start to really work together.
Ginny Yurich And so you helped her. You helped her to transform her story. It's really just a small twist to, like you said, being slow can be a great thing that you're stopping and you're really getting things out of life. But they were focusing on the negative parts of it or not snapping too, basically.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah. And part of, you know, creating a new relationship with our picture in our mind is changing where we focus. I like to liken it to like a caricature. We've all seen caricatures of presidents where like certain qualities are really accentuated. We tend to do this in our own self-image and we accentuate a lot of the negative. So it's about sketching it, but it's also about changing where we focus. How can we sometimes broaden our focus to incorporate all the big picture perspectives? And then also how can we zero in on the ways that we're really showing up for our kids and important ways and then the ways that we're doing a really good job?
Ginny Yurich I really like this. MORGAN Thank you. It makes a lot of sense to take these concepts and to frame it in a way that probably most of us have experienced. We maybe experienced a teacher snapping at us in a situation or we've experienced a situation where we've not been known, and then to make sure that we're applying it to ourselves, we're like was an interesting one too, because. That was a story about the aunt. But I just. I liked this concept of which I'm really sad about. Like, I don't think we really express our needs much. But you say it's our job. Yeah. Like, express your needs. And I think what's scary about it is you don't know how the other person is going to react. But that doesn't really matter. You're still supposed to do it.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip You're still supposed to do it because of How can they love you? Well, if they don't know what you need. There's a lot of messages that we've been fed about what it means to express our needs and fears that we have creep up around, you know, coming off the wrong way or things like that. But really, in our relationships, if we are not clear about our needs, then we are almost guaranteeing that we're going to have them unmet or that we're going to build resentment in our relationships. And we're also like not giving the person a chance. And that's really what I wanted to talk with Effy about, is like, I know, you know, your aunt has really good intentions and has a love and a heart for you, but we're not really letting her into the full story if you don't share this with her. And I think that's part of it too, is giving your relationships the best chance possible. And then right at that. That's the scary part, though. You don't know how they're going to respond. That's when we have different choices. You know, when they don't respond in ways that we want is we can we can push a little harder depending on the relationship and advocate a little bit harder for our needs. We can go somewhere else for these needs. I'm not talking about in your partnership, by the way, just for a bold disclaimer. But you know, but sometimes we have needs where we maybe will go to a friend for a need that we can't get met in certain ways. And sometimes it's might be a need that we have to meet ourselves or we might have to shift our expectations of the relationship. So then we're, you know, then we have options. It's not as if they need it or they don't need it, and then we just crumble. You know, we have things that we can do in those moments. But I do think we have a responsibility to share what we need with those that we especially love the most.
Ginny Yurich Hmm. And once again, you're getting information like maybe that person is not the person that's going to be able to help you. So then you got to go somewhere else. And that takes us to touch. We talked about commit, which is a lot of the parts about prioritization and willpower and touch. This is when you're talking about you had such cool ideas in here about stress and stress juice and stress cycles. You say we aren't closing loops. Yeah. And this is where you kind of start to talk about some of these other ideas, like art or movement. So what do you mean when you say we aren't closing loops?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, So it's funny, this comes it's talked a lot about in another book called Burnout. And also, like, I'm actually reading this, I'm having some inflammation issues. I'm reading about bad information. She's talking about it in this book too, which is much older. So it's really interesting to hear it presented in different ways. But, you know, we've learned a lot about stress. Our bodies mount a stress response to lots of things, not just lions and tigers, but imagined and hypothetical situations. And our body has a physiological response where different chemicals are released, our digestion slows down. All these things happen. Now we're built so that we have a heightened stress response, which is protective and good for us, supposed to be good for us. But then we eventually have a relaxation response. We come down from our stress. I think I use the example of if when you're ever walked a dog and another dog like jumps out at it and it kind of, you know, it goes crazy. And then as you continue walking, all of a sudden the dog will stop and it will shake really hard. That is a release that is completing the stress cycle. That is a release of that stress juice. It's moving its through its body and it helps us to come down. But in our Western society we don't do that very well. We like ride the wave, we never complete the loop. We go from stressful response, you know, back to school staff to right to the morning of back to school. We're running late rustling in to get on an interview to I didn't get to my emails like we're just going over these waves of stress, never completing the stress response cycle. And so this leaves us really down the path of burnout in this chronically exhausted, heightened state, which is really not good for our bodies and for our minds.
Ginny Yurich I love that visual of the dog.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah, it's helpful, right?
Ginny Yurich So you give a bunch of different ideas. One obviously a sleep this because it's engineer. This is such a huge sense. It is 40 to 42% of your day should be spent resting. Yeah. That's also the lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's. But it definitely opened your eyes like, look, maybe we should be chilling out more.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah. I mean, it includes your sleep time, so.
Ginny Yurich In.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Case people are like, what the heck? But yeah, we, we're not good at chilling out in our culture at all. And I think we pay a big price for that. And you do such a good job. I mean, I think getting in nature is part of a way of completing our stress response, of being outside and grounding and all of these wonderful things that are accessible to us if we just walk through that dang door. So, I mean, there's lots of ways of incorporating this stuff. One of my favorite is humor. Humor is an excellent way to complete the stress response cycle. It's one of my most used tactics with our children. They are hilarious children. I'm like, that is my husband is really funny. And so they've passed. He's passed that down to them, which I'm blessed to get their jokes on the daily. But a lot of times when they're activated and I'm not making light of things, but we'll start cracking a joke about something and it's like immediately you see their bodies kind of, you know, release and then reach this relaxed state. When I was pregnant and with Effy going through a lot of stressful stuff, I'd I'd go on walks and I listen to at the time it was Pandora's comedy station was like, do not be stressed out when you're laughing. I'm sorry, unless you're doing a crazy laugh. And that's not the same thing. But you cannot be laughing and be all cranked up and anxious and stressed out. And so it's a it's a really helpful tool actually, that we can easily access.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And you won't hear it. Let your body know that you're safe.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yeah.
Ginny Yurich I love all the different ideas here. Also, people can come on your website and see you dancing and find your Spotify playlist. Yeah.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip So this is fun because a long time ago I started movement and dancing is sometimes how I decompress or even with the kids. If we're having like a moment, I'll be like, We need a dance party. It was Crank it up. And so I share that with moms in my community and they I created a playlist. Imams just started adding songs to it. So it's been curated by other moms, songs that they use to decompress.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. Lots of awesome ideas in here. Even this was interesting grooming and self-care that that can be a way to relieve stress, which I thought was interesting. I never heard of that. And then obviously just being creative. Art therapy helps reduce cortisol levels, activate a state of flow, distract or ruminate, ruminative or.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Manipulative. I know that's a hard one to find.
Ginny Yurich But then you related it, like when you talk about with all these you related to kids, you talk about how like when our babies have gas and, you know, you bicycle their legs like you do something. Yeah, you chamber bam and you bounce around and it's like this thought of, well, we don't do any of that for our own selves.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip No. And I think, you know, I talk about I think in there about how the majority of people diagnosed with autoimmune are women. And there's lots of reasons why this is the case. But one one hyper that, you know, one hypothesized reason is for the high amounts of stress. And I even think back to my own early pains in dealing with some of my issues, health issues. And gosh, I think I had back pain for like two and a half years before I did something about it. And turns out it wasn't my back, it's my intestines. And so my gut and it's like, So how often are we not listening to our bodies when they are speaking very loudly to us and we're shoving these messages away? But if our child came to us and said, My stomach hurts, would we say, give it two years, We'll get to you later, You know, like we would do that, but we regularly do that with ourselves. And so learning how to mother ourselves like we mother our kids becomes really the theme throughout the book and just a really kind of simple way to think about how to do these things.
Ginny Yurich It is a simple way and it's it's almost like you give the words for basically saying like, we're chasing after the wrong thing, and then we're chasing after like a feeling of having it all together. Yes. But like, we're not ever really going to have it all together. So instead, Chase after the start of caring for ourselves and think about how we care for our kids and how can we take some of that and care for ourselves as well. And then beyond that, then that's going to help you with your other relationships like your marriage. And that's a big thing that you talk about outside of this book.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Yes. Yeah, I talk about that outside. And then I have another book that will be next, which is on the mental load. So I'll talk about marriage and couple stuff more in that book. But yeah, you're exactly right. I'm glad that that comes through. It's always nice to hear people reflect back to what they got from the books. I'm like, That's what I meant, but do people get it? And so, yeah, I mean, it's it really is normalizing a lot of I think I'm hoping moms feel that a lot of their experiences are normalized when we normalize it. It takes the sting out of it and it takes the intensity out of it's like, oh, this isn't just a me thing, this is a thing. And also really embracing this idea of you don't need to have it perfectly put together, but can you become empowered enough to regularly kind of tune those dials and recalibrate when you need to, when you feel empowered? This stuff doesn't feel like such a big deal. It's like when you when you've got access to tools and you know what to do, it's not a big deal. If you get lost in your kids, you know how to find your way back.
Ginny Yurich I love that you wrote There is no Final Destination because I do think that for a very long time of motherhood, I was trying to kind of get back to the pre motherhood stage where like I had a really good rhythm and I knew what to expect every day. For the most part, you kind of just think like, Oh, when they get older, I'm going to get back there. But you don't and it doesn't hurt. Sorry to break the bubble for anyone who's thinking, I just don't think it does. Yeah, but I like that you say that. That's not the point. The point is not to reach some final destination. The point is. To stay in touch with yourself and help you evaluate where you need attention the most. And in doing that, you really are modeling incredible habits for your kids so that they can take some of those things and take them on into their adult life. MORGAN This is a fantastic book. Love Your Kids Without Losing Yourself Five Steps to Banish Guilt and Be Burn Out when you already have too much to Do. It's available now wherever you buy your books. People can find you in two different places. Dr. Morgan Lidcombe and My Love Thinks, which I think is really special, that you do that with your dad. And both of the websites are really fun. Thank you. They are just beautiful websites, easy to navigate and have really cool other things beyond like relationship advice. I saw one thing that said why do relationships feel so hard? And they do.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Can they really can.
Ginny Yurich Feel so hard? So these are practical things that people can come and find the help that they need now for the problems that they are experiencing. So thank you. MORGAN This has been just such a treat to get to know you. And I'm excited that you're coming out with another one. Do you have a title for that one yet or is it just in the preliminary prelim?
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Well, I kind of did, but I think somebody else snagged it up before. So we're working on a new one. That's okay, though. That's okay. Just kind of got a flex. But yeah, I do want to say on my website, have lots of free tools for people too, so encourage them to check that out. Yeah, that conversation around the mental load. I have a free guide on how to navigate that.
Ginny Yurich And so people and the playlist, the Spotify I know get out and people can watch you dance like.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Please don't watch me, Dad, That's great.
Ginny Yurich There's a video on there, okay. Morgan We all know the awesome. We always end our podcast with the same question. And so this is like talking about the stress response and closing the loop and getting outside. It can help for certain situations. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside. Oh.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip Oh my gosh. So I grew up on a property of a company. It's kind of wild there. A tractor company called Media Group in Ohio. So we lived in this tiny little farmhouse, but then in our backyard was like tons of land as well as parking lots and roads. But they were all gated. And so I feel like I grew up with, like my own city. It was free run and the owner of the company had this garden and he was kind of like a real life Mr. McGregor where he was like really grumpy about his garden, but he gave us permission to use it. And so I would ride my bike through all the little roads after everything was closed and I would climb up if they felt like mountains to me. They weren't Moon, Ohio. They're not mountains, but it felt like it, these big old hills and go to the garden and pick blackberries. And I just felt like so independent and grown up and had so much fun exploring. So those are some my best embrace.
Ginny Yurich What cool freedom. I love that. Like, that was really fun. Well, this has been such a delight. I loved your book. Huge congrats. So neat that there's already a second one in the works and this is just such helpful information for mothers who are struggling. Like with all of these common struggles, you just you you get them all. You don't feel like a whole person in your family. You don't recognize yourself anymore. You feel generally uninspired. I mean, I was like, check, check. I mean, this is how we feel. And you give such a beautiful way through. It's not really necessarily a way out, but a way through. So thank you for your time. Thanks for being in so much.
Dr. Morgan Cutlip I appreciate this.
