SPEAKER_03: 0:09

Hi guys, welcome back to the Preview Lions Podcast. This is Sarah, and I've got your favorite maternal mental health therapist, Whitney. Hi, Whitney. Hey, friends. We both love to listen to Taylor Swift. We do. And I know her album's been out for a hot minute, but one hot topic that seems to keep on being talked about, perfect for us to dive in, is the eldest daughter.

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that song, even though I'm not the eldest daughter, oh man, did it hit a chord with me for so many reasons? Totally. So many reasons. Because I mean, our listeners know this by now. Like, I've got two girls. So of course, like when she's singing and she talks about, she was probably about seven or eight when she fell and broke her arm. If y'all don't remember, my oldest actually fell and broke her arm a few months ago, literally at age eight. And I was like, oh my God, this is my life. This is literally my life that's getting sung about. And then, you know, she talks about, like, you know, your first crush crushes something kind of, and all I could think was, oh no, my oldest is actually gonna be entering that stage before I know it. So it hit me in the mom feels for that one.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24

Yeah, I referenced it when she would say the trampoline, but it was like the last time she said she was like almost joyfully playing, like without care. And I was like trying and calling myself out, I was trying to remember the last time I was joyfully playing. Right without care. And then it was just like, well, and then it was ironic, but it's like life for the eldest daughter, right? Is she was like, well, I was doing this, then I broke my arm, right? She was like, there was a consequence to that. And I even I was telling someone the other day, I was like, I even remember when I was a young nurse, I was I had met my husband, I was dating, and this guy asked me to go ice skating on a date, and I was like, I can't do that because I fall and break something that can't do my job, you know? And I was like, wow, I was I had that engraved for so long in me of like that joy. So much. Yeah, I was like, oh my gosh, it's you know, but I think a lot of eldest daughters, if you were even put in that position, your only child, only daughter like myself, if there's a huge kind of age gap range. If maybe one of your older siblings had a disability, they passed, something occurred, right? That you got kind of shifted up into that position. But yeah, they also said it was like she says she's like the first lamb to slaughter, right? Like she was the like the first one.

unknown: 3:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 3:01

And I even feel this in the sense of now with my oldest child, they are the first ones that you're learning to be a parent. They're the first ones that you don't know what you're doing. Trial and error. So it is like they are up to the slaughter, in a horrible way of saying that, of you doing as a parent and them being that first child. But I think it really too just hit a strong nerve of us is that you're carrying also like you're carrying this emotional weight from this very young age of I can't have fun. You're almost like the parent, you're managing someone else's emotions, you're learning to look at the room, you're the fixer, you're the peacemaker, like and you're not resting and you're not taking care of yourself. You're truly, I don't know, people are like, I've been diagnosed. Is it I'm an elder daughter, which let's stop and pause. That's not right in the DSN.

SPEAKER_00: 4:04

It's not a diagnosis, but it's relatable. And again, I'm not the eldest daughter, I am the younger one, and in so many ways, I do fit into that stereotype of the youngest child. But now, well into adulthood, kind of that type A-iness that has emerged in me, feeling like I have to be on everything, feeling like I have to be organized, you know, Enneagram one, fear of failure, everything has to be perfect. Otherwise, I'm a terrible person. Those eldest daughter qualities have very much become more apparent in my life, and especially as a mom, wanting to get things right for my kids, wanting to be regulated, wanting to teach my kids the right way to do things. And if I feel like I haven't done that, then I feel like I have actually failed them. And it really does resonate with that eldest daughter of there's so much responsibility to get it right with our kids. And if you're like me and you are not the eldest daughter, you're a second, third, fourth, whatever it is, and you feel that same heaviness, yeah, know that because you feel that heaviness, you are getting it right. You recognize if you do fall short on something, which we all do, like no one's gonna get it right 100% of the time. No one is. As a therapist, I don't get it right all the time. But because you have that self-awareness, because you do want to get it right, and you acknowledge it, you're doing things right.

SPEAKER_03: 5:36

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I I do think when I think of the eldest daughter, the only child experience with me, it was like you said, you do learn to people please at an early age, right? You do learn to almost like, you know, you're around adults more, or you're put in this adult position. So, like that playfulness, again, going back to the trampoline, feeling that joy, jumping, like that, it's only live for so long, and then you go, okay, well, I I have to function to navigate, to fit in this family. I have to hold this responsibility. You know, it's hyper-independence. That's where the perfectionism, control, all those lovely things come in. And you almost say, Well, what's I'm valuable, I'm lovable by what I'm producing, I'm capable, I'm useful for, right? Like, what am I useful for? I'm useful for not being a burden. I'm useful for taking care of it, getting myself together, helping my siblings get it together. I'm the one who, oh, I'm good, I don't need anything, I can take care of this. Not about people pleasing, peacekeeping. Yeah, it's exhausting, but you're taught very early that's the way maybe for not conflict, that's the way to kind of just keep everybody happy. You try to take on other people's emotions and fix them. But you've got hypervigilance, kind of a trauma response. You do, but you, you know, you almost again, it goes back to how are how does this shape how you view and believe your own self-worth?

SPEAKER_00: 7:12

Right. And it's like, is your self-worth rooted in getting it all right all the time?

SPEAKER_03: 7:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 7:22

Are you having to maintain everything?

SPEAKER_03: 7:26

Yeah. Like you're not the problem, you know. The teachers would describe you as classes, like, you know, the responsible one, the one that could be trusted to take, you know, the little notes to the office, the ones that can be the line leader. You know, she never caused any issues. She's a good student, she's responsible, you know. And then now the eldest daughters who are mothers or you're trying to become mothers, you are showing that high anxiety, that burnout, that depression. You know, you're even then going into this new stage of life of say you have your parents right involved now who are getting older, and you're doing that middle sandwich generation of like you're parenting, plus you are being a caregiver for your parents, or you're parents. Parenting your parents, you're doing the default parenting, the mental load. It is everything that you've carried with you from childhood. Now it's amplified and kind of exploding in motherhood.

SPEAKER_00: 8:30

Oh, absolutely. And I do think motherhood gives us a magnifying glass to ourselves. And I think that's a double-edged sword. Insight, introspection, self-awareness, all are good things. However, if you are already kind of harsh or self-critical, that's where it can be a negative on us. Where again, we hold ourselves to unrealistic high standards and we don't meet that because again, it's unrealistic. And then we're over here just like, well, I screw everything up, and then it it's away at our self-esteem and all of those type of things, you know. And in motherhood, we look at ourselves and we say, What do I not want to pass down to my kids?

SPEAKER_03: 9:12

Yeah. And I do see times and I've done it and I will do it more because I'm working through this, but you almost see it with like your oldest or your first, and you're saying, Okay, watch after your brother, or like, come on, I need you, come on, you know better, or like you're, you know, you, and I'm just like, oh man, you know, why he is seven and the youngest is four, he does have, you know, greater capabilities of social awareness and control, but still, I am I putting too much responsibility on him just for the mere fact that he is the oldest. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 9:50

And I I don't know if you catch yourself doing that sometimes and you're like, oh, I need a baby.

SPEAKER_03: 9:55

I do, I do. You know, I definitely saw it myself, and we we went to Disney, and I could see them both engaging in the same behavior, but my response to the older one was more direct and more like, come on now, less tolerant than the younger one.

SPEAKER_00: 10:14

Right. Well, and again, I think it's one of those, you know, we try to have age-appropriate expectations, and you always want to kind of, you know, as they get older, bump up those expectations. You know, you wouldn't expect your seven-year-old to behave like a three-year-old.

SPEAKER_01: 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:32

That would not be developmentally appropriate, but we also don't want the seven-year-old to act like a 13-year-old. Because that's not developmentally, and so it's such a fine line of weighing out what is appropriate responsibility for them versus what is a normal kid behavior.

SPEAKER_03: 10:47

Yeah. And it is saying, you know, and it's it is something I think with the eldest daughter, which I'll ask you this is to can you see clients coming in and you kind of can assume their birth order pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 11:03

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:04

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I can because I'll even say I'm like, okay, so are you the middle children? They're like, How do you know? And I'm like, Well, you want to be invisible. It's because you got overlooked and dismissed, and they're like, Oh my god, I'm like, mm-hmm. Birth order doesn't necessarily give us like our personalities. However, there is something to be said for how our parents have stereotypically treated birth order, and that does come down generationally. It just does. And so, like, yeah, a lot of times, you know, I have the person who they're that middle child and they just got overlooked or dismissed so much. And so they're that peacekeeper, they're very mild, they're not gonna speak up. Well, and then you know, you have someone that's the younger child, me, okay, where they come in and they feel like they kind of command the room and they're allowed to be boisterous and they're gonna be allowed and all this. I'm like, so you got a lot of the attention by acting out as a child, so you're the younger kid, and they're like, How'd you know? And I'm like, hmm, hi, we're in the same boat here. Here's your paddle.

SPEAKER_03: 12:12

Yeah. What about the eldest daughter? Describe kind of your clients and put like a maternal mental health lens even on it, you know, because I think we are anxiety driven. I think we do have more prone to again, depression and burnout and unhealthy expectations, resentment, perfectionism, control issues.

SPEAKER_00: 12:34

Right. A lot of times the eldest daughter or eldest child, you know, because sometimes it does happen to men too. They're they come in and they feel like they're responsible for everything. Literally everything. And some of this is an Enneagram one trait as well, where we feel like we're supposed to save the world. And if we don't, that we have failed. So you may have someone come in and they feel like they're failing because one of their coworkers just quit. Why is that your failure? Why is that yes, you you have to take on some of their load because that person is gone. So until that spot's filled, yes, you do have more responsibilities, but how is it your fault that that person left? So we see a lot of they take on unnecessary blame or accountability for other people's actions. And just the therapist tag in here on all of this is that you are not responsible or accountable for another person's actions, reactions, emotions, and thoughts. That is not your job. Eldest or youngest, doesn't matter where you fall in the mix of birth order, that is not your job. But the eldest typically takes on that responsibility. They feel the need to fix everything to save the world. When it comes from the maternal perspective of things, you feel like you have to get everything just right. And we talk about this in a lot of our episodes where you're tracking exactly how many ounces that baby gets, which yes, you do need to know how much your baby's getting. But I mean, if it's just a smidgen under that four-ounce line, your baby's not starving.

unknown: 14:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:13

You know what I mean? Like we don't have to get an every single drop for it to be an appropriate feed. You know, if their baby doesn't go down for their nap at exactly 2 p.m., but they fall asleep at 2 07, and you think, well, I've ruined them. I'm messing up their development. They're not going to be able to sleep and their brain won't grow the way it's supposed to. Or, you know, even if they hit a developmental milestone, a smidgen late, but still within normal ranges, you think you have failed your child? Well, no, babies do develop at different rates.

SPEAKER_01: 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:45

You know, and so as far as the maternal perspective on that, we feel often that we have to control every single detail and it has to be on the nose for everything. Otherwise, it's a wash. And we really need to be careful with that all or nothing thinking. That can swing you into depression and anxiety very, very quickly. Because if something is a smidge off, then you think it's a failure, and then you think I am a failure. And then we can start having the thoughts of, well, my baby deserves better than me. I'm not a good enough mom for my baby. My baby deserves somebody different. That can be a very slippery slope.

SPEAKER_03: 15:26

Yeah. No. And you know, some other kind of things I've seen, I've said, I've witnessed. It seems like, again, social media is blowing up with this. It's just the patterns. If I don't do it, it won't get done. Um, feeling guilty for resting. Rest is rest is not a word that's known.

SPEAKER_01: 15:46

Ooh, calling me out.

SPEAKER_03: 15:48

Overfunctioning at home and at work, you know, resentment. And resentment is can be, you know, quickly a nasty thing that comes up. It can build not because others won't necessarily help, because we've learned never how to let them help or accept the way they will help.

SPEAKER_00: 16:10

Yeah, we like to delegate. We can't delegate very well.

SPEAKER_03: 16:14

No, because guess what? They won't do it the way we want it done with me. And that's an issue. From dishwasher to putting a baby down, it can be, you know, it could be an issue. You find yourself mothering your partner. You, when you walk in a room, do you automatically start fixing things? Like you notice maybe the pillows are out of order. You're like going, like, okay, well, let's get this done. Uh-huh. Do you just simply can't say, I need help without guilt. And again, your nervous system, which I will say that is probably the sneakiest thing that hit me through all of this in motherhood, is honestly like kind of like on alert because chaos wants me in danger, or if because you feel like I can't do like I need control, and almost feeling safer being in charge and fixing and taking control than being like letting it go. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03: 17:14

Hard stuff here. Yep. So, how do we how do we go about this, Whitney? Because let's we've called probably ourselves and every single person out in some some way on this episode so far. So, how'd you go from here? Obviously, step one is awareness, which hopefully we've created a little.

SPEAKER_00: 17:32

Well, and part of it is readjust your expectations of not only yourself, but everybody else.

SPEAKER_01: 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:40

You know, and especially as any of Gram ones, we do tend to struggle with holding everybody else to the same expectations we hold ourselves to. Yeah. And that's actually not realistic of other people and ourselves. Like you mentioned, resentment and bitterness can really get a foundation there when it comes to the eldest daughter type of thing and feeling like we have to be everybody's everything, where we have to manage everybody. We always have to read the room. We have to live in hyper-vigilance because if we don't, then something falls through the cracks. So much of that is recognizing it is not your job to be responsible for everything. Because guess what? Nobody can do that. Nobody can do all of that. That's you know, we think of even the president. Okay, so the president has a lot of power, right? And the president has a lot of responsibilities, right? But who else does the president have? Well, they've got a vice president, they've got a whole cabinet. You break it down even more per state. Well, you've got congress people, you've got senators, you've got governors, you've got mayors, you've got city council people. So yeah, this one person has quite a bit of responsibility. Yes, they do, and they do also have quite a bit of power. But, you know, the president of the United States is not responsible for what the mayor of Helena does in Alabama.

SPEAKER_01: 19:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:08

They can't be because that's not their place. So remind yourself of this is you could be technically the president of the situation, you are still not responsible for other people and their actions. And you cannot put that on yourself. That's a very quick way of burning out. Yeah, very quick way of burning out. And so remind yourself you are responsible for you. Yes, you are responsible for taking care of your children. I get it. I get it. Yes, you are, but you're also not responsible for if you know they act out at school because guess what? They're a kid. Yeah, it's gonna happen. It will happen. You address it with them, you teach them. But then you say, but that was still their choice.

SPEAKER_03: 19:54

Yeah, yeah. That is that radical acceptance. Yeah, it's truly, you know, and I think what's a good thing, and I think it, you know, we're always huge fans of therapy, clearly. But I think if you are, maybe for the first time, or maybe you've thought about this, but maybe it's really just that that prompt to say, talk with a therapist, work through, talk about your childhood, talk about where did these core beliefs start with you that you feel like you are solely responsible. You immediately ignore your own needs. Well, why? You look as rest as unproductive. Well, why? Why is there an always a need to perform or control or to fix? And talk through that. And because the things that are our brains are are like Plato, right? And they are able to create as much as those pathways were created, we can create new ones with the right professional to help us think through, learn why we think this, why do we react this way? What are we thinking? All those things are great ways that you don't have to fix yourself. Like that's why Whitney has a job is so many people we can't fix ourselves.

SPEAKER_00: 21:07

Right. We well, and sometimes we don't know how we don't have the tools. So even my job as a therapist, and even when I was a social worker, kind of boots on the ground, so to speak, my job wasn't it isn't to fix other people. My job, however, is to help provide you with insight, to give you my observations of things, to give you things that I think could be contributing to this, but also to give you some tools. Yeah. To be able to say, well, what is my responsibility? What is not my responsibility? How do I handle guilt or shame when I do try to take on someone's responsibility? Or, you know, if I feel like I failed, how do I process that feeling of failure? That is my job is to equip people with those things. The client's job is outside of the four walls of my office. That's where the real work takes place.

SPEAKER_03: 21:58

Yeah. But I think again, like with with anything, with anxiety, with depression, with rage, with shame and guilt, being able to name what you're feeling and experiencing is the first step to then educating yourself, finding someone to help you work through it. Um, if it is hopefully, you know, hopefully this song, despite if people like, not like Taylor Swift, will at least create a conversation that we can have healthier ways as moms, just as individuals of processing things. Maybe we were learned how to be in childhood.

unknown: 22:36

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03: 22:44

So we hope that you reach out to someone if this is resonating with you. Me and Whitney obviously have our own that we work through. So we encourage you guys to. Absolutely. All right, guys, but we will be back. New episode next week. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you got anything you want us to talk about, send us a DM on Instagram.

SPEAKER_02: 23:04

That's all right. See you next time. Maternal mental health is as important as physical health. The Preview Alliance podcast was created for and by moms dealing with postpartum depression and all its variables, like anxiety, anger, and even apathy. Hosted by CEO, founder Sarah Parkhurst, and licensed clinical social worker Whitney Gay, each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.