69. Connection, Curiosity, and Motherhood for High-Achievers with Kate Kripke
Do you feel like you're constantly juggling motherhood, career, and personal well-being—and yet you’re still overwhelmed? High-achieving mothers often carry an invisible emotional burden, feeling the weight of it even when it’s not immediately apparent. This constant state of tension can leave you questioning whether you’re doing enough and if you're truly succeeding in all areas of life.
Kate Kripke, a licensed clinical social worker and perinatal mental health counselor, has spent over two decades working with high-achieving mothers who refuse to accept that overwhelm and anxiety are part of the deal. As the founding director of the Parent and Family Wellness Center in Boulder, Colorado, she helps women challenge the idea that they need to do more to be better mothers. In this episode, Kate shares how to release the pressure of perfectionism and navigate motherhood with more presence and less emotional burden.
Kate explains why the same problem-solving skills that drive success in your career can actually hinder your connection with your children. She also shares how embracing emotional discomfort can support the secure attachment we all want with our kids. Tune in for Kate’s practical strategies on deepening relationships through emotional acceptance and curiosity, instead of trying to fix everything.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why your achievement brain sabotages connection with your kids, and which part of your brain to activate instead.
How to recognize when you're trying to control your child's emotions to avoid your own discomfort.
The three C's framework for moving through unpleasant emotions.
What secure attachment actually requires and why emotional discomfort builds stronger bonds.
How to shift from "doing more" to deep listening that creates genuine connection.
The difference between fixing feelings and accepting them—and why this distinction transforms relationships.
Two powerful questions that can instantly change your parenting approach when you're overwhelmed.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Kelle: Hey, Rockstars, welcome back to Ambitious-Ish. I'm Kelle.
Nina: And I'm Nina. And today, we have someone on the show who's about to completely shift how you think about motherhood, ambition, and the lies you've been told about having to choose between them.
Kelle: You should see Nina's arms right now. She's like so emotive, and they're flying all over the place because she's so excited to meet Kate Kripke. She's a licensed clinical social worker, certified perinatal mental health counselor, and someone who's been revolutionizing maternal mental health for over two decades.
Nina: Yeah, Kate's the founding director of the Parent and Family Wellness Center in Boulder, Colorado, and her work has literally shaped how we support mothers' mental health, not just in the US but around the world.
Kelle: But here's what we love about Kate. She's not here to tell you to be grateful for your overwhelm or to cherish every moment while you're drowning in anxiety or guilt or exhaustion.
Nina: No, no, no. Kate works specifically with high-achieving mothers who refuse to accept that feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and completely depleted is just part of the deal, part of motherhood.
Kelle: Yes, she is helping ambitious women challenge the narrative that you have to choose between being a great mother or being successful in your career, that you have to sacrifice your mental health, your confidence, and your sense of self to be a good mom.
Nina: Yeah, today Kate's going to share how to shift those old patterns that keep you stuck in cycles of, you know, guilt and overwhelm, how to actually regulate your emotions instead of just pushing through them, and how to reconnect with your intuition when it feels like everyone else has opinions about how you should be mothering.
Kelle: This conversation is for every ambitious woman who's tired of feeling like she's failing at everything, who wants to thrive as both a mother and a professional, and who's ready to stop apologizing for wanting more than just survival mode.
Nina: Yeah, whether you're a mom, thinking about becoming one, or supporting the ambitious mothers in your life, this episode is going to give you permission to rewrite the rules about what motherhood can look like.
Kelle: Okay, so grab your coffee, settle in, and get ready for a conversation that might just change everything you thought you knew about balancing ambition and motherhood.
Nina: Let's dive in with Kate Kripke.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Nina: Okay, so let's dive in. Kate, tell us everything. How are you today? How are we finding you?
Kate: That's such a great question. Let me actually see if I can give you an honest answer. Okay, so here's how I am. We just dropped my 16-year-old daughter at four weeks of sleepaway camp yesterday. And I have a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old. My 18-year-old is going to college for the first time in September. So I'm in this interesting stage of life. And we dropped my daughter, and this is her happy place. It's like here in Colorado, and it's just incredible. It's in the mountains in Estes Park.
And I came home, and I suddenly felt like I was free. And I was like, wait a second. Like, they're 16 and 18. They actually don't need that much from me. But what I realized yesterday and today is I actually carry a lot of like walking on eggshells without even realizing it with my kids. And it's not like there's that much drama. There's nothing on paper to speak to it, but there's this thing where I can just like pass her off to the woods. Just trust that she's okay because it's her happy place. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's not someone watching me 24/7. Like, I'm a little bit in this weird transition of like really giving myself permission to just like play a little bit right now and not watch my every move. And we're watched. Our kids watch us all the time.
Nina: It's so funny. I have another friend whose son is leaving for two weeks on Saturday, and she's like, I'm alone, I'm free. Like, you're not alone. And it's so true. And it's weird when we say it out loud. Yeah.
Kate: Well, it's sort of the, I'm going to use this big word, but it's sort of the burden, the emotional burden we carry as mothers, the load we carry that we don't even realize we're carrying it until we can literally like I like gave it to the camp, you know? And I gave it to her, quite frankly, because she's 16 and she now is old enough. I can really trust that she knows how to carry her own load, at least partial of it. Anyway, that's how I am today. I love it.
Nina: Yeah, let's get real quickly.
Kate: That's what we do.
Nina: I know. I love it. Well, listen, so for the busy women who've taken the time to be here and listen to us and learn from you today, what might change for this person if they take what you say, what would they learn from you and how would it change their life, just in a nutshell before we even
Kate: If we have done this well, they will learn that there's nothing wrong with them. And they will learn that they do not need to do more in motherhood to feel the way they want to feel in their life as mothers.
Nina: I'm just going to… Tell us everything.
Kate: Well, let's start, maybe by painting the picture of what motherhood looks like. I'm going to use most because I actually think most high-achieving, over-achieving doers have this experience in motherhood. There are certainly people who don't. So if you're listening and this is not your experience, there's also nothing wrong with you.
Nina: Yeah, I think you're in good company, though. Keep going. Yeah
Kate: Well, I think, and I think the three of us, I mean, I'll speak for myself today, but I also know that I'm not alone. So I think most of us have this experience in life where we are really used to being really good at things because we learned, whether or not we go back to the why, we can go there or not, depending on what you all want today. But most of us enter adulthood learning that we're really good at problem solving. We're really good at organizing. We're really good at setting goals and achieving those goals. We are actually really good at keeping our life feeling in control, organized, and functioning.
And many of us do that because we like the way it feels. And we get accolades. We get kudos. We win awards. We get promotions. We make money. We achieve the life we've wanted with the partner and the home, and the… I mean, we do this thing. And then we have children. We become mothers.
And I think that what I'm about to say starts for many of us during pregnancy, but it really hits home when our babies are on the outside, even when we bring a baby home if we're an adoptive parent, is suddenly we try to do things in motherhood the same way we've been doing things in life. And it doesn't work. We can't organize and plan and problem solve and achieve our way towards the kind of relationships we want with our kids, the way we want to feel in motherhood, the quote-unquote life we most want. And that is like pulling the rug out for many of us. We feel like we've lost ourselves, and we get dizzy, and we don't quote-unquote “know what to do.” And quite frankly, for many of us, it's the first time in a long time that we haven't known what to do.
Kelle: Mm-hmm. I'm just taking this in. And what you said in the first part that they don't need to do more, like we don't need to do more as mothers. I want to add on to that. That question is really, are we doing enough? And are we doing it right?
Kate: Are we doing enough, and are we doing it right? And again, we're just going to go right in here deep, real fast. In my experience, for myself, and also so many high-achieving women in my own personal life and professional life, underneath that is a fear or maybe a belief, I'm not enough, I'm not okay.
Nina: Yeah. I mean, it's like universal, almost.
Kate: I actually think that's true. It is universal. And I think we don't need to come from big T Trauma to end up with that. But our life, those fears or those beliefs have motivated overachievement so that we can kind of prove otherwise to the world. And then many, many of us in motherhood quickly feel like, I'm not doing enough, I'm not enough.
Nina: My kid's going to wind up living on the street, uneducated, and looking at their iPads or whatever, right?
Kelle: Yup, yup. They're going to be screwed up. Yeah, just in general.
Kate: Yeah, they're going to be screwed up. Yeah, and it comes down to the little things. They're never going to sleep. They'll never have friends. I'll screw them up. What if I make a mistake and I hurt them in that mistake? What if I fail? What if they fail? What if they're not neuro-normative? What if they don't become the kid I've always told myself I'm going to have? I mean, it shows up. It's like in the air we breathe. No wonder we're all so freaking anxious in motherhood.
Nina: And the eggshells that you started this conversation off with, right? This invisible load that we carry. The eggshells we walk on unwittingly, we do it to ourselves.
Kate: Well, so I'll tell you a really funny little snapshot of my day yesterday when I dropped my daughter off at camp. And again, she's 16 and I've been, like the two of you, really digging in and doing my own personal work for a long time since they've been little. So this happens fairly quickly for me now. But we're walking along and she's in front of me and she's also, just to paint a picture, she's my child who feels a lot and doesn't always lean in to me to support her, right? Like, she wants her space. And so it's a little bit like porcupine sometimes. Like, I have to learn not too close, not too far, right? I've got to find that sweet spot.
So we're walking through camp, and she's literally walking on air. She's so happy to be there. And she goes and checks herself in. I don't even check, she now is like, oh, I don't need my mom to be okay, which is what we want for our kids. And she checks herself in, and she comes back, and I'm like, so what covered wagon are you in? She's like, number 13.
And I feel my body tense. I'm like, literally, this goes in my, I hear myself. Number 13. Oh, crap. Is that the bad…? I mean, literally. Is that the bad luck number? What if something bad happens this morning? What if she thinks it's bad luck, and her thought is so… like, I go in the spiral. I'm like, okay, that was weird.
And then we get to the cabin, or the covered wagon. She puts her stuff on a bed. And in my mind, I'm like, that's not the right bed. The cozy bed is back there. This is all happening inside. And I feel my body tense and tight. And I know a time where I would have micromanaged. I would have made some dumb comment about the number 13.
What I remind myself and everybody all the time, everything is neutral till we give it meaning, right? And then the meaning we give it is based on our ideas, our beliefs, our experiences, all these things. And there would have been a time where I would have jumped in and micromanaged and taken all of my angst in here and like plopped it onto my daughter.
To me, that's the work that both contributes to this feeling of eggshelliness in motherhood, but also the work that frees us from that. But we have to pay attention. We have to know that's happening when it's happening, or we'll just keep moving without realizing the unfortunate negative impact that we're having on our kids' state of mental well-being.
Kelle: Nina, it's like you were always saying, drop the rope.
Kate: I listened to this incredible conversation on another podcast that Michelle Obama. I don't know if you two have ever heard her talk about her parenting. I mean, I cannot listen to her enough, talk about mothering. But she said this thing, which I'm sure we have all said at one time or another, too, which is, “why is it that we believe the goal is to make sure that our kids are happy? And that if they're not happy, we assume there's a problem or that we've done something wrong.” Not only do we believe that we need to make sure our kids are happy, but then we take personal responsibility if they're not. That's the burden.
Nina: I think we do the same things with ourselves and our marriages. The goal is to be happy, and Kelle and I are always challenging clients with a different perspective. Like, is the goal to be happy all the time? Do you really, when something really difficult and hard happens, do you really want to be happy? Right. So it's just questioning all of that for sure. And then that kind of responsibility you're putting on yourself, it's just impossible. It's like an impossible responsibility to make sure your kids are happy all the time. It's impossible.
Kate: Those words, always, never, all the time, no time, happy, sad, that binary, rigid thinking is something that I find very typical in those of us who are high-achieving, over-achieving, perfectionist women. That rigid thinking always comes from fear. And one of the things that many of us overachievers are afraid of… I don't know, I'm curious. What comes to mind when I say that for you two? What's one thing that you see for yourselves or other people you work with that many overachievers are afraid of?
Failure. Judgment, which can kind of be the same thing, right? If people don't accept me and love me, then somehow I've failed. Rejection. They don't like me. What is inherent in mothering our children? Failure. Judgment. Our kids don't always like us. Fear. Fear.
So there's a lot of really interesting brain stuff happening, right? That the part of our brain that we've gotten so used to using in our life to be successful out of motherhood, when I say brain science stuff happening, we think that we can use that same part of our brain to tend to these things we're talking about now in motherhood, but it doesn't work. We need a different part of our brain.
Yeah, and this is where I would really like your listeners to open up to the possibility that there's nothing wrong with them, right? So, I'm going to pull back and use a little metaphor because my brain works well in images.
So let's say that you have been spending your entire life going to the gym to get strong arms, right? You're doing pushups, you're lifting weights, your arm muscles are super strong, and you're really good at lifting things and opening jars and all the things that we would use our arms for. Like, we're so good at.
And a friend comes up to you or someone comes up to you and says, "Hey, I've got a great idea. Let's go climb that mountain next week." And you're like, "Awesome. I can do that. I'm strong." And the day comes to climb the mountain, and you flip over on your hands, and you try to walk up the mountain walking on your hands, right? Because you know your arms are strong.
How far are you going to get? Not very far. And you might think to yourself, but my arms are so strong, I should be able to do this. I've been working on my arm muscles my whole life. And of course, the answer is that the arm muscles won't get you up the mountain. The leg muscles will. You already have them. You're not broken. You're not flawed. You are whole. You just haven't strengthened the muscles yet.
And that's what I would love all of us to think about when we talk about entering motherhood. If you are a mother who has done amazing things in your life, so much you feel good about and you feel like you are floundering in motherhood, and you're worried about whether or not your kids are okay, and you're scared of screwing them up, and you're focusing on all the mistakes that you're making and beating yourself up, it's not because there's something wrong with you, it's because you haven't strengthened the part of your brain that's required for this part of life.
That's not executive functioning. It's not the part of your brain that's required for, it's not frontal cortex. It's not problem-solving. If you think that part of the brain's going to work, you're going to look for the problems to solve, right? You're going to look for the things that you have to control and to organize. You're going to look for things that are out of organization and not in your control, and you're going to obsess over those.
But what's required for deep connection in motherhood, which I think is what most of us want, right? We enter motherhood with this idea of how we want to feel, and we want to be the kind of moms that our kids can trust and come to, and we have these ideas of what those relationships are going to look like. It literally requires a different part of our brain.
It requires the part of our brain that can be steady in uncertainty and unpredictability, that can be present in emotional discomfort, that can be open to curiosity and wondering, which by the way is open-ended. It's not “I'm curious so that I can find the answer and know the answer.” It's going to “I'm willing to be in a state of not knowing.” Those are different brain functions. Those are activating different parts of our brains. And many of us have gone through life not really using those parts of our brains because we haven't been quote-unquote “required” to yet. But relationship building requires that.
Nina: Yeah. I mean, Kelle and I talk a lot about being in survival mode, right? And we help our clients shift into their prefrontal cortex to use that executive functioning, to problem solve, right? To actually enjoy the life they work so hard to create, right? Instead of being in survival. You are singing to us. Absolutely. This rounds everything out.
Kate: It's interesting, though, right? Like you're right that if we are in our amygdala, right? If we are in our fight, flight, freeze, fawn, whatever terminology you want to use, brain, right? If we have if there is a real or perceived threat, we're all emotion, right? We're all reactivity.
We're actually also important to remember that from sort of a psychological brain science perspective, we're not actually in the moment when that happens, right? We're living in the past or the future. We're not in the moment. So we need to be able to turn down that part of our brain in order to turn back on our frontal cortex executive functioning.
But once we've done that and we're able to say, okay, in this moment, there's actually no crisis here. In this moment, I'm actually okay. We then need to be able to shift back into the part of our brain that's going to stay here in this moment, that's going to listen, so that we can listen with curiosity and neutrality rather than jumping into problem-solving, fixing mode.
Nina: I think curiosity is a skill, and it's something you can develop, listeners. If you feel like this is something you don't have, I think it's something a great coach can help you develop, or it's something you can develop yourself, right? We're not necessarily, actually, we are born curious, and this is what can be so frustrating to parents, right? Because their kids are so effing inquisitive. And like, you don't have bandwidth for it. And so at the end of a long day, we just got off the phone with the client talking about this, right? Like he and his wife work, they're total animals, they're super high-achieving. They come home at the end of the day, they're spent, their kids are just being kids.
They're in their curiosity, they're in their play. They're, what did you say? Yeah, someone like back kicked the other one in the mouth. I mean, they're just, they're just being kids, but you are in fight or flight. We are often not able to meet them where they are, which makes complete sense. We're kind of arguing with reality, right? That things should be different. We all do this. And that's where the curiosity comes in, or there's an opportunity to be like, okay, hang on. These are kids being kids. How can I meet them? What might be fun here? What might be pleasurable? What might be pleasant? That's where we want to go.
Kate: Well, you're speaking to something really important here. What the science tells us is that curiosity is an open-mindedness; those are actually character traits that we're born with. Some people have more inherent curiosity and open-mindedness than others. But the skill we need to learn and build is actually listening.
You know, there are some people who either epidemiologically, did I just make up that word? You know what I'm saying, right? Based on epidemiology and background, like we are simply less curious individuals. We're inherently less curious. We're inherently less open-minded. We actually know that folks who are more curious and more open-minded struggle with less anxiety and depression. So that's a really interesting thing to pay attention to, partially because to what I said earlier, that rigid thinking, all-or-nothing thinking is going to come from a place of fear. So the more open-minded we can be, with the more curiosity, the less we're going to live in that narrow focus of needing everything to be a certain way.
What we know though is that when we can bring our inherent sense of curiosity and open-mindedness to the table, and we can learn to listen, which again, requires a different part of the brain than problem-solving and organizing and fixing, when we can learn to listen and when we listen deeply, we connect more. And that's a skill we can all learn.
Kelle: It's so true. And what Nina was talking about earlier, when you're actually listening to someone, there are three levels. And it looks like you know what I'm talking about.
Kate: I want you to keep going.
Kelle: No, well, you are a guest. So tell us how the three levels… Do you implement that at all?
Kate: Well, I may not talk about it the same way you talk about it, but I will share what I think is important for us as mothers to engage in. And then I'm actually really curious to know what the three levels are that you talk about because we can combine forces here, I'm sure.
So again, us high achievers, we've been taught what active listening is, right? We know the difference between passive listening and active listening. And we've been told, oh, when we're active listening, we're nodding, we're reflecting back what we've heard other people say. But in my experience, if we are listening with our children from that place, we're still in performance mode. We're still trying to do the right thing.
What I'm talking about, the deep listening that comes with this concept and understanding that everything is neutral until we give it meaning. So we're listening not just for the words our kids are using, or for the cry, or for the whatever, but we're listening for the feeling underneath the words. We're paying attention to all these things so that we can really seek to hear and understand our kids where they're at in that moment. And by the way, we could replace kids for partners or friends or parents, right?
So deep listening and the skill that we're learning, and that I think we all teach, and we're also I'm still learning this myself. I mean, I had an episode yesterday where I was like, "Oh, crap. Like, I have not been listening. I've been waiting to defend my perspective for the last 20 minutes." In order to deeply listen, we have to understand that deep feeling comes with that.
So to me, learning to listen is learning to listen not just with our brain, but also with our heart. And we can talk more about the role of emotion in secure attachment and relationship with our kids, if we want to. But I'm really interested to know what you were going to say about your three levels, because I also cut you off, because there I was. Let me tell you what I know about listening.
Kelle: Tell me more. I want to hear. Yeah. Yes, so the three levels of listening that we have been taught, first is internal listening. So focused on yourself, right? How does this pertain to me? What can I get out of this? What do I want to say? What should I say? All those is level one. So they're really focused on themselves, right?
Level two is focused on listening, like really listening. So that active listening, like you were talking about. So focused on the other, like really being interested in what they have to say. Really listening and taking it in, and being open-minded and curious.
And then the level three is global listening. So thinking of it more in like a bigger context, like what's not being said? What's happening environmentally, and going from there. In a way, we always talk about zooming out. And that is level three listening, when you can really, like, kind of just get the whole picture of everything, what's being said, what's not being said, what's happening with a body, what's happening in the environment, all of it.
Kate: You know what's so interesting as you're talking, I'm sort of reminded of one of the things that I think makes true listening where we can really know someone so hard for many of us that are high achiever, overachievers is that it requires us to be willing to not know the answer. And one of the things that can be so hard is uncertainty. So many of us believe that we lose our value or our worth or our credibility if we don't know.
Nina: So this is kind of where I was going a minute ago with curiosity. I think, like you say, we're born with it, it's inherent, but it's chipped away in life through school, because we're told there is a right answer and we don't want to be wrong. We study for standardized tests, our thinking becomes standardized, and we become less curious. I love what you're saying here, and I think again, curiosity and these listening skills and these levels just take practice and intention, and attention to learn, to take on, right? It's sort of a skill that we can bring back. Does that land?
Kate: Can I bring us one level deeper with this?
Nina: Yes.
Kate: Not only is all of that true, I believe, but we also have to be willing to feel uncomfortable. And many of us, again, there might be people that this doesn't resonate for, but many of us, or most of us, who are doers have learned to stay busy and do more so that we don't have to feel what's underneath all of that. And being willing to slow down and tune into that part of our brain that we've been talking about, that is required. I mean, required to have the kind of motherhood that most of us say we want. We have to be willing to feel deep emotional discomfort, sadness, disappointment, fear…
Nina: Frustration. Anxiety.
Kate. Anger.
Nina: Impatience.
Kate: Impatience. Many of us come into motherhood with this fear-based belief about feelings, that emotional discomfort means that there's something wrong or something bad happening.
Nina: Which is ironic because we want to feel love. We want to feel connected.
Kate: Well, right. I mean, what I say so often is that we get all of it or none of it. So if we spend our lives trying to run away from, or stuff or distract ourselves from the emotions that we don't want to feel, probably because some time in our life when we were young, we were taught that big feelings weren't safe and that may have been true back then. So if we spend our life trying to get ahead of those feelings, right? To busy our way out of them or to fix our way out of them so that we don't feel them, we're also probably someone who doesn't have a lot of experience feeling joy or deep connection, right? We get all of it or none of it.
Kelle: Yeah, and that is where we really want to teach our clients, and I'm sure you teach this, is emotional granularity, emotional literacy, so that they can understand what exactly they're feeling, right? Because most people have three words for what they're feeling: happy, sad, mad. And bringing that emotional literacy into this conversation is so key, and with your kids, too, especially with your kids, right? Instead of being like, "You're fine. You're fine," right?
Kate: Well, let's talk about what secure attachment is for a moment and talk about the science of that because when we, the global we, think about being mothers and we picture what we want that to look and feel like, we're almost always picturing a secure attachment, right? We are wanting to be the mothers whose children will come to us when something is wrong and whose children believe that we can be a safe space for them and where we have a relationship with our kids that is, you know, again, I don't know that everyone has this language, but that is has healthy boundaries in it, right? Where we're not, we sort of imagine this experience that is healthy. And a secure attachment, like, you know, there's so much science and research on attachment theory.
And just to be clear, let's simplify this for a moment. A secure attachment is a relationship that we've formed with our children that begins at birth, right? Where we have the capacity inside of ourselves to regulate our emotions, navigate the difference between real and perceived threat, so that we can be a grounded, safe space for our children to find comfort and care. That's what a secure attachment is.
What that requires is a willingness to feel big emotions and trust that we're still okay at the same time. Because if I, Kate Kripke, don't know how to feel impatient, frustrated, disappointed, sad, angry, scared, and trust that I'm okay at the same time, I'm going to run away from those feelings or try to fix them. I'm not going to be able to stay present in that moment.
If I don't know how to do that within myself, there's no way I'm going to be present with my child when he or she, in my case, she, feels those big feelings. So my fear of feeling in general is the thing that's going to get in the way of that secure attachment.
Nina: Oh, can I bring in a story really quick? Okay, so I just dropped my son off at football camp. We usually have buddies. We usually have a couple buddies, and today he didn't have a friend. And not only were we running late and I had a client and I'm sweating, you know, all the things, but we don't have a buddy and my son is not cool. He's super bummed. He's a confident kid. Friends come really easily to him, and he was alone at this really, really big football camp.
So we're in there, and when I was young, I was just coached on this by my coach, who's IFS trained, Internal Family Systems. So when I was young, I remember being in a similar situation on the soccer field. I always had to play up. Long story short, I get to the field and my dad is like, "Get out there, warm up." And he kind of pushes me out. And I remember the smell of the grass to this day, putting my heels in the ground, like, no, you know, and he was just in a hurry. My dad, I love my dad. No shame at all, but he was just kind of in a hurry, like, get out there, get warmed up, I got to go. And I was like, not having it.
So I'm at the football camp this morning. I felt that part of myself, like, Toby, you got to get out there because I've got clients, I'm sweating. I've got to get to the car. My phone's going to overheat, you know, all the things. And I just kind of stood there, and I was like, hang on, this is all my experience. He's crying. He's standing here crying. He's really uncomfortable. This kid does not cry a lot. He does not get nervous. Butterflies kind of get him excited. I don't see him like this often.
So I just, I literally zoomed out like Kelle says, and I'm in the Utes on this football field. It's gorgeous. It's badass, you know? And I'm just like, "Totes, how cool is this?" And he's like, "This is pretty cool." You know, we didn't go into, "Hey, put those tears away. Suck it up. Get out there. Like, come on, buddy. Let's go. Let's go. You're fine. You're fine."
He was kind of hyperventilating. He was very nervous. But because I could take care of myself in that moment, he was safe to cry and yes, he was wiping away tears, but we could kind of be in it together and bring in some awe and wonder just by getting curious, zooming out, getting out of our emotional brain and just again, I was just thinking about attachment. I was thinking about what I would have wanted from my dad in that moment when I was young. And I was just kind of guessing, of course, what he might need from me, and I asked him. I was like, “What do you need from me right now?” And he's just kind of shutting down. Like, I don't know, I don't know.
So I just stood there with him and held it in the middle of this big crowded football field. I was late for the client. All the things, but what's most important? What's most important in that moment? And we have to kind of zoom out and really, I think about attachment a lot. I think about what you're talking about a lot. And so, am I a rock star? No, I'm not a perfect parent, but that was a win today. That was kind of cool. I can't wait to go pick him up and just give him a huge hug, and who knows if we'll go back tomorrow. But that was kind of a cool win today.
Kate: There's so much in this story that's worth breaking down for a moment. Would that be okay? There are so many things here. So first of all, from the maternal child mental health perspective, right? And let me just back up and say there is so much, I mean, decades of data that have shown us the interconnection between maternal and child mental health. We cannot deny that.
So I will say to all of your listeners, I will remind myself, I'll say to my clients over and over and over, when our children are struggling, or when we see a quote-unquote “problem” that one of our children is having, whether they're a baby or a teenager, a really important question to ask, and we have to be willing to ask this with curiosity and a buttload of self-compassion, is what part might I be playing in this? Not how is this my fault, or am I to blame? That is not the question we're asking. But what part might I be playing in the struggles I see my kids having? Because as especially as high achievers, our goal is to go fix the thing for our kid and not to recognize that like we're playing a part.
So, Nina, this thing that you did, which is to say, okay, before anything comes out of my mouth, I have to attend to myself. And by the way, most of us are moving so fast that we skip that part. We don't even take time to know, “wait, what am I feel? What is happening for me right now? Oh, I'm feeling stressed and agitated. I'm worried about my meeting. I'm hyped up.” So if I want to help my son ground, I can't do that from a hyped up place.
And you did your thing, which is a brilliant practice, which is to zoom out. You guys have used that term, right? Like, what is actually happening? Okay, we're standing in this beautiful place. I feel my feet on the ground, right? That has to be our first step. What do I need in this moment to ground myself? So beautiful.
There is something really interesting here. I don't know if you noticed it, so I want to see if we can get in there together for a moment. In these situations, I have no doubt that you were doing this, given where you are on your own work. I think many moms won't necessarily realize this. In these moments, we might have an agenda to fix the way our child feels. I don't want my child to feel anxious and nervous anymore because as long as he's feeling anxious and nervous, I'm feeling anxious and nervous, and I don't want to feel anxious and nervous, so I need to say or do something so he feels different, so I can feel better. Can you relate to that?
Nina: We're only as happy as our least happy kid. Isn't that the saying? It's BS, but..,
Kate: Yeah, and I think again, if we're doers and movers and shakers and achievers, we can think that the way to get to where we want to get is to fix our child's feeling, as if the feeling's the problem. To help our child move from anxiety to confidence, from sadness to joy. And really, what we most need to do in that moment is to give our kids permission to feel what they're feeling.
And we miss that point sometimes, right? That we go very quickly to, look at how beautiful this is right here. Not that that's not a valid place to go, but it's almost like, I actually think you did this, Nina, because the term I had in my mind as you were talking is, oh, right, she chose connection over control. That's that term I will use so often in my own life as a mom is, “Can I pause in this moment and choose connection over control?” If I was choosing control, I'd be like, "Come on, you're going to be fine. Look at what's around you. You're fine. You love camp. Let's go because I need to get to my meeting."
Nina: Totally. I love that prompt.
Kate: I'm trying to control how my child feels so I don't have to feel emotional discomfort. If I go into this and say, "Oh, the feeling is never the problem. The fact that my child feels anxious, disappointed, sad, scared, no problem. There's nothing to fix here. The fact that I feel antsy, impatient, no problem. There's nothing to fix here.” And I'm going to connect with myself first, which you did, and then I'm going to lean into connecting with my child. Ah, of course, you feel anxious right now. You don't know anyone here. Of course, you feel that way. And let's pause and look around us for a moment. Look at how beautiful this is." Just so we're not skipping over that. Does that…?
Nina: Yeah. Good call.
Kate: … Make sense?
Nina: Huge. It's just acceptance. It's like acceptance versus…
Kate: And from a neuroscience perspective, when we feel accepted, when we have an experience of connection, what part of our nervous system turns on?
Nina: I feel like the loving part. What am I talking about?
Kate: Yeah. Rest and digest. From that place, our perspective opens, right? Your son, you know, his technical term is parasympathetic nervous system. His sympathetic turns down, his parasympathetic turns up, and now his vision from “I'm only okay if I know someone here and it's a friend and I know what to expect,” suddenly his nervous system shifts to parasympathetic, and his perspective opens, and he sees all the other opportunities here.
We as parents don't need to fix anything. There's no problem. We don't have to do more. There we are. There's nothing to do. We don't have to go talk to the director of the camp and make sure our kids are in the right cabin or the right thing, and check, like all the doing we tell ourselves we need to do. We don't have to do any of that.
Nina: I think what's gold there is, yeah, choosing connection over control and just making sense of their emotions, right? It totally makes sense that you're anxious right now. I remember telling him that, and it wasn't necessarily hitting, but I think the energy of just allowing it to be there gave him some permission. Yeah.
Kate: Probably because you did that for yourself first. That's why in your, you know, stages of listening, we have to listen inwards first, right? I mean, I teach something called the three Cs, which is very similar to what we're talking about. The three Cs are, how do I move from an emotional experience I'm having that I would categorize as unpleasant back to an emotional experience that I would categorize as more pleasant, because we also we want to make room for all the icky feelings, but we don't want to get stuck in them. That's not helpful.
And in many ways, the first C is curiosity. Like, wait, what am I feeling? Oh, my chest is tight, my heart is beating, I'm sweating, I'm hot. I'm feeling anxious, irritated. Okay. Second C, compassion. Of course, I feel that way. I have a meeting in five minutes. I want my kid to be happy, and he's showing distress. Of course, I feel this way. The feeling right now makes perfect sense. And then the third C is choice. How do I want to feel? I want to feel helpful to my kid. I want to feel grounded. I want to feel connected.
So first, I'm going to look around. Oh, okay, now I have this big perspective. Like, now I'm checking into the beauty instead of the clock, and I feel something shift in my body. I'm going to lean into my son and say, "Yeah, buddy, of course your anxiety makes sense. No problem." And then through those like new thoughts and new choices, I'm going to get to where I want to go, which is to help my kid’s nervous system settle. I'm probably going to actually get to that meeting more on time now than if I told myself I had to go do 25 things to make sure my kid was okay.
Nina: Yeah, go find a coach, go find someone to pass with him like, all the right….
Kate: We don't have to do any of that.
Nina: No.
Kelle: And I love that we're talking about relationships with our kids. It's so important. I just want people to know that you can do this with anyone. And yesterday we had a client, she's in LA, and she is Latina. And she had a call with us, and she came on the call, and we were like, "How are you doing? You know, how's it going?" And she just started crying.
She let all the emotion come, and we just held space for her for four minutes. And she just cried. She got all the tears out. And she just was able to feel what she was feeling. And we were just like, bring it. Do not stuff it down. Do not put it away for later. This is where you come, right? To take care of yourself. And this is a big part of it. Letting yourself cry if you need to cry and not stopping until you're ready to stop.
Kate: And in order to do that, we need to trust that the feelings aren't the problem. “Hold space for.” That's a really, you just use that term and it's such an important term. Our achievement brains don't hold space for much of anything. We're on to the next thing.
Nina: This is when, like, there's so much pride in being a parent or a friend, right? This is when, like, I think people might call it our intuition, almost. When we practice this way of being, we kind of develop our intuition, and we can relate to people in so much more of an authentic way. And there's just trust and safety.
Kate: It feels good. And you know what's interesting? One of the reasons that us high achievers get so preoccupied and, quite frankly, addicted to the external achievement is because of the dopamine hit. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. We are addicted to it. And when we slow down and when we do this thing that we're all talking about right now, in the moment, we're going to be feeling something different.
It's not going to be a dopamine hit. It's not a quick reward. It's something different, but it does feel good. Our nervous systems actually like that feeling of deep connection, of acceptance, of curiosity, of curiosity without an agenda. That like open-minded, open-ended, I don't need to know the answer. I'm just in a state of wonder. Like that actually feels really good.
Nina: Yeah. Yeah, wonder and awe feel really cool.
Kate: Yeah. So we don't quote-unquote “need” the hit of the achievement and the doing to get a pleasant feeling. But again, it's a different part of the brain. It's a different practice.
Yeah, it's interesting. If we look at the dilemma I think many working moms have, right? Because they might be pursuing something, we might be pursuing careers that we feel feed our achievement brain, right? That we feel really good. Maybe it's not even work. Maybe it's a passion. Maybe it's training for something or some project we have. And we suddenly get anxious when our child shares emotions of disappointment that we weren't home for bedtime tuck-in, or that we said we would be at that soccer game, and then something came up and we were running late. And again, in those moments, or if with younger kids, right? Or we pass our baby onto a babysitter or a care provider and they cry and grab for reach for us, right?
We can see that emotional discomfort in our kids again as evidence that we're doing something wrong. But from the science of secure attachment, it's that moment that builds the attachment. It's the moment of leaning in to our kids' disappointment, to their discomfort, to their frustration, to their anger, and essentially being healthy enough on the inside to be able to feel those hard things and still be okay to be able to say, "Yeah, I get it. Of course, you're disappointed that I didn't get here on time." It's that moment that's like the cement in the attachment. We don't have to be there to form the secure attachment.
Nina: Gold. Gold, gold. Kate, this has been so helpful. We love everything you're saying. How about a few practices or tools or strategies to help someone with the how here? Can you share something there with us?
Kate: Yeah, great. So, I want to invite your listeners, if this is resonating, to maybe on a piece of paper, write down these couple of questions. If I believed that I was enough, that I was okay, what would I do next? And it almost leads into a second question. If I believed that the feeling and the emotion was never the problem, what would I do next? And again, we can ask this in a global, like literally like literally, I wake up today, if I had like, what would I do next in my day?
Or for those folks who are mothers that are really feeling a lot of emotional overwhelm, maybe anxiety, maybe guilt, reactivity in motherhood, maybe burnout because they're trying to like do their way through busy mom life, that really these are questions that we can ask like that you could ask when you were standing there with your son at drop off from camp, that someone might ask when their baby is crying and they don't know why, that someone could ask when they need to leave for work and their young child is begging them to not go.
To really just start there, because we do also know from the, you know, so much amazing social science and behavioral science that what we believe to be true about ourselves is going to just set a cascade of what our thoughts are, what our feelings are, what our actions are, and ultimately what our results of our life look like.
So I really want to invite those high achievers out there who have been functioning from a place of not enoughness, whatever that means. Not enough time, I'm not doing enough, I'm not giving my kid enough. My kid isn't feeling happy enough, right, all of that stuff to just begin to pause and to just ask that question. So that's one thing.
The other thing I might just invite is if we're going into the thing we talked about like we can be curious and open-minded individuals and not yet have been practicing the brain, the strengthening sort of the muscles of the brain, so to speak, that help us stay truly connected when life gets really hard, is to just ask ourselves, I really love the practice of listening, like literally listening. Like, open my ears up.
You know, if I pause right now, actually, your listeners could do this right now. If we stop talking for five seconds, the three of us, if I stop talking and invite your listeners to just pay attention to everything that you hear in this moment, that when we get curious in a new way, we will notice things we weren't paying attention to. That's strengthening that part of the brain. And we can do that is sort of like what's one thing that you can listen for and watch for and learn about that you didn't know yet about your child, about yourself, about the environment, the house you're sitting in. That is strengthening that part of the brain that we're talking about.
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nina: Love that. We have a lot of clients who, like you say, aren't present or still enough to actually listen.
Kate: Well, and that's what I hear. I hear that over and over that clients will come to me and they'll say, I need to be more present. I just want to be more present with my child. I'm always distracted. And yeah, of course. It's hard to be present if you're not using the part of your brain that allows you to be present.
Kelle: I would say not just clients, I would say people in my life, right? People.
Kate: That's right. Yeah. How often do you hear, "How are you?" "Oh, I'm so busy. Oh my gosh, there's so much going on." It's like we tend to answer that way. And if we're moving at that pace, which again, requires a certain part of our brain to be meeting our goals and checking off our to-do list and reaching the next thing, we're not noticing what's right here. We're just not opening up to that.
Nina: Oh, I love this. This is so helpful. I can't wait to start listening differently. Just even in my car. Yeah. I got to like, you know, move kids around for the rest of the day. It's going to be fun.
Kate: It's a cool pause. We actually did that last night. We were sitting out in our backyard having dinner, my husband, myself, and our older daughter. And like the birds were just bonkers. They were like going nuts. And I looked around, and none of us were talking. We were all just listening. And I just sort of named it. I was like, God, there are so many sounds. And that's such a different silence at the dinner table than when we're sitting around like, okay, because I do this sometimes like, what can I ask my daughter that will help her talk to me? Or what can I say? I'm in my brain. I'm in that part of my achievement brain, not the part of my brain that's like, wow, magic. It was a cool moment.
Nina: Totally the magic, the magic that's available. Oh, Kate, this was such a cool conversation. We can't wait for part two. I feel like we say this all the time.
Kate: I love talking about this stuff. And I think both of you, I mean, I don't know, I've never met you in person. I think we would be friends if we were all in the same place.
Nina: I think we would, too. You're awesome.
Kelle: 100%. Yes.
Kate: But I think there's a way in which for, I'm guessing, all three of us can relate to the toggle between these things, right? The like achievement brain, get shit done, keep moving, like, and then sort of the reminder to just pause. And then how good it feels when we let ourselves do that, and it's important to know that both those things are available and both are important. That's the other thing. There's that achievement brain, it's very important. We're not asking folks to not have that or not use that. Use it. And there's another part of our brain that we can strengthen to have more of this other thing that we're looking for.
Nina: Yes. Oh. Okay. Speaking of more, where…
Kelle: Well, I'm going to go be with my family and like hang out and use all these tools. I'm so excited. Thank you, Kate.
Kate: Totally.
Nina: Yeah, where can people find you, Kate, just really quick?
Kate: Yeah, great. So Instagram, at Kate Kripke. I love chatting with people on the back end. I end up having a lot of DM messages back there. So please, if people have questions about this and want to come ask me, please find me over there. Website, Katekripke.com, and I think those are probably the two places right now that people can find me. I do have a little kind of masterclass that I can send your way if you want to pop that into your show notes, that talks more about kind of understanding what the root cause of a lot of anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and motherhood is for a lot of high-achieving women. So I'm happy to pop that over there too.
Nina: Okay, killer. That sounds like gold. We'll put that in the show notes, everyone. Okay.
Kate: Amazing, sounds great.
Nina: Kate, so awesome to talk to you today. Thank you so much for your time. And…
Kate: Likewise.
Nina: …yeah, we'll do it again soon. All right.
ate: We’ll do it again soon.
Kelle: All right, take care, Kate.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
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Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
Nina: If you’re ready to align your ambitions with your heart and feel more calm, balanced, and connected, visit KelleAndNina.com for more information about how to work with us and make sure you get on our list.
Kelle: See you in the next episode!
Nina: And I'm Nina. And today, we have someone on the show who's about to completely shift how you think about motherhood, ambition, and the lies you've been told about having to choose between them.
Kelle: You should see Nina's arms right now. She's like so emotive, and they're flying all over the place because she's so excited to meet Kate Kripke. She's a licensed clinical social worker, certified perinatal mental health counselor, and someone who's been revolutionizing maternal mental health for over two decades.
Nina: Yeah, Kate's the founding director of the Parent and Family Wellness Center in Boulder, Colorado, and her work has literally shaped how we support mothers' mental health, not just in the US but around the world.
Kelle: But here's what we love about Kate. She's not here to tell you to be grateful for your overwhelm or to cherish every moment while you're drowning in anxiety or guilt or exhaustion.
Nina: No, no, no. Kate works specifically with high-achieving mothers who refuse to accept that feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and completely depleted is just part of the deal, part of motherhood.
Kelle: Yes, she is helping ambitious women challenge the narrative that you have to choose between being a great mother or being successful in your career, that you have to sacrifice your mental health, your confidence, and your sense of self to be a good mom.
Nina: Yeah, today Kate's going to share how to shift those old patterns that keep you stuck in cycles of, you know, guilt and overwhelm, how to actually regulate your emotions instead of just pushing through them, and how to reconnect with your intuition when it feels like everyone else has opinions about how you should be mothering.
Kelle: This conversation is for every ambitious woman who's tired of feeling like she's failing at everything, who wants to thrive as both a mother and a professional, and who's ready to stop apologizing for wanting more than just survival mode.
Nina: Yeah, whether you're a mom, thinking about becoming one, or supporting the ambitious mothers in your life, this episode is going to give you permission to rewrite the rules about what motherhood can look like.
Kelle: Okay, so grab your coffee, settle in, and get ready for a conversation that might just change everything you thought you knew about balancing ambition and motherhood.
Nina: Let's dive in with Kate Kripke.
Burnout? Check. Daily overwhelm? Check. Resentment rash, stress, and a complete lack of well-being? Check, check, check! You’re not alone. We’re your hosts, Kelle & Nina, and we are here to help you feel calm, balanced, and empowered so you can redefine success, make choices that feel authentic, and ACTUALLY enjoy the life you work so hard to create. You ready? Let’s go.
Nina: Okay, so let's dive in. Kate, tell us everything. How are you today? How are we finding you?
Kate: That's such a great question. Let me actually see if I can give you an honest answer. Okay, so here's how I am. We just dropped my 16-year-old daughter at four weeks of sleepaway camp yesterday. And I have a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old. My 18-year-old is going to college for the first time in September. So I'm in this interesting stage of life. And we dropped my daughter, and this is her happy place. It's like here in Colorado, and it's just incredible. It's in the mountains in Estes Park.
And I came home, and I suddenly felt like I was free. And I was like, wait a second. Like, they're 16 and 18. They actually don't need that much from me. But what I realized yesterday and today is I actually carry a lot of like walking on eggshells without even realizing it with my kids. And it's not like there's that much drama. There's nothing on paper to speak to it, but there's this thing where I can just like pass her off to the woods. Just trust that she's okay because it's her happy place. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's not someone watching me 24/7. Like, I'm a little bit in this weird transition of like really giving myself permission to just like play a little bit right now and not watch my every move. And we're watched. Our kids watch us all the time.
Nina: It's so funny. I have another friend whose son is leaving for two weeks on Saturday, and she's like, I'm alone, I'm free. Like, you're not alone. And it's so true. And it's weird when we say it out loud. Yeah.
Kate: Well, it's sort of the, I'm going to use this big word, but it's sort of the burden, the emotional burden we carry as mothers, the load we carry that we don't even realize we're carrying it until we can literally like I like gave it to the camp, you know? And I gave it to her, quite frankly, because she's 16 and she now is old enough. I can really trust that she knows how to carry her own load, at least partial of it. Anyway, that's how I am today. I love it.
Nina: Yeah, let's get real quickly.
Kate: That's what we do.
Nina: I know. I love it. Well, listen, so for the busy women who've taken the time to be here and listen to us and learn from you today, what might change for this person if they take what you say, what would they learn from you and how would it change their life, just in a nutshell before we even
Kate: If we have done this well, they will learn that there's nothing wrong with them. And they will learn that they do not need to do more in motherhood to feel the way they want to feel in their life as mothers.
Nina: I'm just going to… Tell us everything.
Kate: Well, let's start, maybe by painting the picture of what motherhood looks like. I'm going to use most because I actually think most high-achieving, over-achieving doers have this experience in motherhood. There are certainly people who don't. So if you're listening and this is not your experience, there's also nothing wrong with you.
Nina: Yeah, I think you're in good company, though. Keep going. Yeah
Kate: Well, I think, and I think the three of us, I mean, I'll speak for myself today, but I also know that I'm not alone. So I think most of us have this experience in life where we are really used to being really good at things because we learned, whether or not we go back to the why, we can go there or not, depending on what you all want today. But most of us enter adulthood learning that we're really good at problem solving. We're really good at organizing. We're really good at setting goals and achieving those goals. We are actually really good at keeping our life feeling in control, organized, and functioning.
And many of us do that because we like the way it feels. And we get accolades. We get kudos. We win awards. We get promotions. We make money. We achieve the life we've wanted with the partner and the home, and the… I mean, we do this thing. And then we have children. We become mothers.
And I think that what I'm about to say starts for many of us during pregnancy, but it really hits home when our babies are on the outside, even when we bring a baby home if we're an adoptive parent, is suddenly we try to do things in motherhood the same way we've been doing things in life. And it doesn't work. We can't organize and plan and problem solve and achieve our way towards the kind of relationships we want with our kids, the way we want to feel in motherhood, the quote-unquote life we most want. And that is like pulling the rug out for many of us. We feel like we've lost ourselves, and we get dizzy, and we don't quote-unquote “know what to do.” And quite frankly, for many of us, it's the first time in a long time that we haven't known what to do.
Kelle: Mm-hmm. I'm just taking this in. And what you said in the first part that they don't need to do more, like we don't need to do more as mothers. I want to add on to that. That question is really, are we doing enough? And are we doing it right?
Kate: Are we doing enough, and are we doing it right? And again, we're just going to go right in here deep, real fast. In my experience, for myself, and also so many high-achieving women in my own personal life and professional life, underneath that is a fear or maybe a belief, I'm not enough, I'm not okay.
Nina: Yeah. I mean, it's like universal, almost.
Kate: I actually think that's true. It is universal. And I think we don't need to come from big T Trauma to end up with that. But our life, those fears or those beliefs have motivated overachievement so that we can kind of prove otherwise to the world. And then many, many of us in motherhood quickly feel like, I'm not doing enough, I'm not enough.
Nina: My kid's going to wind up living on the street, uneducated, and looking at their iPads or whatever, right?
Kelle: Yup, yup. They're going to be screwed up. Yeah, just in general.
Kate: Yeah, they're going to be screwed up. Yeah, and it comes down to the little things. They're never going to sleep. They'll never have friends. I'll screw them up. What if I make a mistake and I hurt them in that mistake? What if I fail? What if they fail? What if they're not neuro-normative? What if they don't become the kid I've always told myself I'm going to have? I mean, it shows up. It's like in the air we breathe. No wonder we're all so freaking anxious in motherhood.
Nina: And the eggshells that you started this conversation off with, right? This invisible load that we carry. The eggshells we walk on unwittingly, we do it to ourselves.
Kate: Well, so I'll tell you a really funny little snapshot of my day yesterday when I dropped my daughter off at camp. And again, she's 16 and I've been, like the two of you, really digging in and doing my own personal work for a long time since they've been little. So this happens fairly quickly for me now. But we're walking along and she's in front of me and she's also, just to paint a picture, she's my child who feels a lot and doesn't always lean in to me to support her, right? Like, she wants her space. And so it's a little bit like porcupine sometimes. Like, I have to learn not too close, not too far, right? I've got to find that sweet spot.
So we're walking through camp, and she's literally walking on air. She's so happy to be there. And she goes and checks herself in. I don't even check, she now is like, oh, I don't need my mom to be okay, which is what we want for our kids. And she checks herself in, and she comes back, and I'm like, so what covered wagon are you in? She's like, number 13.
And I feel my body tense. I'm like, literally, this goes in my, I hear myself. Number 13. Oh, crap. Is that the bad…? I mean, literally. Is that the bad luck number? What if something bad happens this morning? What if she thinks it's bad luck, and her thought is so… like, I go in the spiral. I'm like, okay, that was weird.
And then we get to the cabin, or the covered wagon. She puts her stuff on a bed. And in my mind, I'm like, that's not the right bed. The cozy bed is back there. This is all happening inside. And I feel my body tense and tight. And I know a time where I would have micromanaged. I would have made some dumb comment about the number 13.
What I remind myself and everybody all the time, everything is neutral till we give it meaning, right? And then the meaning we give it is based on our ideas, our beliefs, our experiences, all these things. And there would have been a time where I would have jumped in and micromanaged and taken all of my angst in here and like plopped it onto my daughter.
To me, that's the work that both contributes to this feeling of eggshelliness in motherhood, but also the work that frees us from that. But we have to pay attention. We have to know that's happening when it's happening, or we'll just keep moving without realizing the unfortunate negative impact that we're having on our kids' state of mental well-being.
Kelle: Nina, it's like you were always saying, drop the rope.
Kate: I listened to this incredible conversation on another podcast that Michelle Obama. I don't know if you two have ever heard her talk about her parenting. I mean, I cannot listen to her enough, talk about mothering. But she said this thing, which I'm sure we have all said at one time or another, too, which is, “why is it that we believe the goal is to make sure that our kids are happy? And that if they're not happy, we assume there's a problem or that we've done something wrong.” Not only do we believe that we need to make sure our kids are happy, but then we take personal responsibility if they're not. That's the burden.
Nina: I think we do the same things with ourselves and our marriages. The goal is to be happy, and Kelle and I are always challenging clients with a different perspective. Like, is the goal to be happy all the time? Do you really, when something really difficult and hard happens, do you really want to be happy? Right. So it's just questioning all of that for sure. And then that kind of responsibility you're putting on yourself, it's just impossible. It's like an impossible responsibility to make sure your kids are happy all the time. It's impossible.
Kate: Those words, always, never, all the time, no time, happy, sad, that binary, rigid thinking is something that I find very typical in those of us who are high-achieving, over-achieving, perfectionist women. That rigid thinking always comes from fear. And one of the things that many of us overachievers are afraid of… I don't know, I'm curious. What comes to mind when I say that for you two? What's one thing that you see for yourselves or other people you work with that many overachievers are afraid of?
Failure. Judgment, which can kind of be the same thing, right? If people don't accept me and love me, then somehow I've failed. Rejection. They don't like me. What is inherent in mothering our children? Failure. Judgment. Our kids don't always like us. Fear. Fear.
So there's a lot of really interesting brain stuff happening, right? That the part of our brain that we've gotten so used to using in our life to be successful out of motherhood, when I say brain science stuff happening, we think that we can use that same part of our brain to tend to these things we're talking about now in motherhood, but it doesn't work. We need a different part of our brain.
Yeah, and this is where I would really like your listeners to open up to the possibility that there's nothing wrong with them, right? So, I'm going to pull back and use a little metaphor because my brain works well in images.
So let's say that you have been spending your entire life going to the gym to get strong arms, right? You're doing pushups, you're lifting weights, your arm muscles are super strong, and you're really good at lifting things and opening jars and all the things that we would use our arms for. Like, we're so good at.
And a friend comes up to you or someone comes up to you and says, "Hey, I've got a great idea. Let's go climb that mountain next week." And you're like, "Awesome. I can do that. I'm strong." And the day comes to climb the mountain, and you flip over on your hands, and you try to walk up the mountain walking on your hands, right? Because you know your arms are strong.
How far are you going to get? Not very far. And you might think to yourself, but my arms are so strong, I should be able to do this. I've been working on my arm muscles my whole life. And of course, the answer is that the arm muscles won't get you up the mountain. The leg muscles will. You already have them. You're not broken. You're not flawed. You are whole. You just haven't strengthened the muscles yet.
And that's what I would love all of us to think about when we talk about entering motherhood. If you are a mother who has done amazing things in your life, so much you feel good about and you feel like you are floundering in motherhood, and you're worried about whether or not your kids are okay, and you're scared of screwing them up, and you're focusing on all the mistakes that you're making and beating yourself up, it's not because there's something wrong with you, it's because you haven't strengthened the part of your brain that's required for this part of life.
That's not executive functioning. It's not the part of your brain that's required for, it's not frontal cortex. It's not problem-solving. If you think that part of the brain's going to work, you're going to look for the problems to solve, right? You're going to look for the things that you have to control and to organize. You're going to look for things that are out of organization and not in your control, and you're going to obsess over those.
But what's required for deep connection in motherhood, which I think is what most of us want, right? We enter motherhood with this idea of how we want to feel, and we want to be the kind of moms that our kids can trust and come to, and we have these ideas of what those relationships are going to look like. It literally requires a different part of our brain.
It requires the part of our brain that can be steady in uncertainty and unpredictability, that can be present in emotional discomfort, that can be open to curiosity and wondering, which by the way is open-ended. It's not “I'm curious so that I can find the answer and know the answer.” It's going to “I'm willing to be in a state of not knowing.” Those are different brain functions. Those are activating different parts of our brains. And many of us have gone through life not really using those parts of our brains because we haven't been quote-unquote “required” to yet. But relationship building requires that.
Nina: Yeah. I mean, Kelle and I talk a lot about being in survival mode, right? And we help our clients shift into their prefrontal cortex to use that executive functioning, to problem solve, right? To actually enjoy the life they work so hard to create, right? Instead of being in survival. You are singing to us. Absolutely. This rounds everything out.
Kate: It's interesting, though, right? Like you're right that if we are in our amygdala, right? If we are in our fight, flight, freeze, fawn, whatever terminology you want to use, brain, right? If we have if there is a real or perceived threat, we're all emotion, right? We're all reactivity.
We're actually also important to remember that from sort of a psychological brain science perspective, we're not actually in the moment when that happens, right? We're living in the past or the future. We're not in the moment. So we need to be able to turn down that part of our brain in order to turn back on our frontal cortex executive functioning.
But once we've done that and we're able to say, okay, in this moment, there's actually no crisis here. In this moment, I'm actually okay. We then need to be able to shift back into the part of our brain that's going to stay here in this moment, that's going to listen, so that we can listen with curiosity and neutrality rather than jumping into problem-solving, fixing mode.
Nina: I think curiosity is a skill, and it's something you can develop, listeners. If you feel like this is something you don't have, I think it's something a great coach can help you develop, or it's something you can develop yourself, right? We're not necessarily, actually, we are born curious, and this is what can be so frustrating to parents, right? Because their kids are so effing inquisitive. And like, you don't have bandwidth for it. And so at the end of a long day, we just got off the phone with the client talking about this, right? Like he and his wife work, they're total animals, they're super high-achieving. They come home at the end of the day, they're spent, their kids are just being kids.
They're in their curiosity, they're in their play. They're, what did you say? Yeah, someone like back kicked the other one in the mouth. I mean, they're just, they're just being kids, but you are in fight or flight. We are often not able to meet them where they are, which makes complete sense. We're kind of arguing with reality, right? That things should be different. We all do this. And that's where the curiosity comes in, or there's an opportunity to be like, okay, hang on. These are kids being kids. How can I meet them? What might be fun here? What might be pleasurable? What might be pleasant? That's where we want to go.
Kate: Well, you're speaking to something really important here. What the science tells us is that curiosity is an open-mindedness; those are actually character traits that we're born with. Some people have more inherent curiosity and open-mindedness than others. But the skill we need to learn and build is actually listening.
You know, there are some people who either epidemiologically, did I just make up that word? You know what I'm saying, right? Based on epidemiology and background, like we are simply less curious individuals. We're inherently less curious. We're inherently less open-minded. We actually know that folks who are more curious and more open-minded struggle with less anxiety and depression. So that's a really interesting thing to pay attention to, partially because to what I said earlier, that rigid thinking, all-or-nothing thinking is going to come from a place of fear. So the more open-minded we can be, with the more curiosity, the less we're going to live in that narrow focus of needing everything to be a certain way.
What we know though is that when we can bring our inherent sense of curiosity and open-mindedness to the table, and we can learn to listen, which again, requires a different part of the brain than problem-solving and organizing and fixing, when we can learn to listen and when we listen deeply, we connect more. And that's a skill we can all learn.
Kelle: It's so true. And what Nina was talking about earlier, when you're actually listening to someone, there are three levels. And it looks like you know what I'm talking about.
Kate: I want you to keep going.
Kelle: No, well, you are a guest. So tell us how the three levels… Do you implement that at all?
Kate: Well, I may not talk about it the same way you talk about it, but I will share what I think is important for us as mothers to engage in. And then I'm actually really curious to know what the three levels are that you talk about because we can combine forces here, I'm sure.
So again, us high achievers, we've been taught what active listening is, right? We know the difference between passive listening and active listening. And we've been told, oh, when we're active listening, we're nodding, we're reflecting back what we've heard other people say. But in my experience, if we are listening with our children from that place, we're still in performance mode. We're still trying to do the right thing.
What I'm talking about, the deep listening that comes with this concept and understanding that everything is neutral until we give it meaning. So we're listening not just for the words our kids are using, or for the cry, or for the whatever, but we're listening for the feeling underneath the words. We're paying attention to all these things so that we can really seek to hear and understand our kids where they're at in that moment. And by the way, we could replace kids for partners or friends or parents, right?
So deep listening and the skill that we're learning, and that I think we all teach, and we're also I'm still learning this myself. I mean, I had an episode yesterday where I was like, "Oh, crap. Like, I have not been listening. I've been waiting to defend my perspective for the last 20 minutes." In order to deeply listen, we have to understand that deep feeling comes with that.
So to me, learning to listen is learning to listen not just with our brain, but also with our heart. And we can talk more about the role of emotion in secure attachment and relationship with our kids, if we want to. But I'm really interested to know what you were going to say about your three levels, because I also cut you off, because there I was. Let me tell you what I know about listening.
Kelle: Tell me more. I want to hear. Yeah. Yes, so the three levels of listening that we have been taught, first is internal listening. So focused on yourself, right? How does this pertain to me? What can I get out of this? What do I want to say? What should I say? All those is level one. So they're really focused on themselves, right?
Level two is focused on listening, like really listening. So that active listening, like you were talking about. So focused on the other, like really being interested in what they have to say. Really listening and taking it in, and being open-minded and curious.
And then the level three is global listening. So thinking of it more in like a bigger context, like what's not being said? What's happening environmentally, and going from there. In a way, we always talk about zooming out. And that is level three listening, when you can really, like, kind of just get the whole picture of everything, what's being said, what's not being said, what's happening with a body, what's happening in the environment, all of it.
Kate: You know what's so interesting as you're talking, I'm sort of reminded of one of the things that I think makes true listening where we can really know someone so hard for many of us that are high achiever, overachievers is that it requires us to be willing to not know the answer. And one of the things that can be so hard is uncertainty. So many of us believe that we lose our value or our worth or our credibility if we don't know.
Nina: So this is kind of where I was going a minute ago with curiosity. I think, like you say, we're born with it, it's inherent, but it's chipped away in life through school, because we're told there is a right answer and we don't want to be wrong. We study for standardized tests, our thinking becomes standardized, and we become less curious. I love what you're saying here, and I think again, curiosity and these listening skills and these levels just take practice and intention, and attention to learn, to take on, right? It's sort of a skill that we can bring back. Does that land?
Kate: Can I bring us one level deeper with this?
Nina: Yes.
Kate: Not only is all of that true, I believe, but we also have to be willing to feel uncomfortable. And many of us, again, there might be people that this doesn't resonate for, but many of us, or most of us, who are doers have learned to stay busy and do more so that we don't have to feel what's underneath all of that. And being willing to slow down and tune into that part of our brain that we've been talking about, that is required. I mean, required to have the kind of motherhood that most of us say we want. We have to be willing to feel deep emotional discomfort, sadness, disappointment, fear…
Nina: Frustration. Anxiety.
Kate. Anger.
Nina: Impatience.
Kate: Impatience. Many of us come into motherhood with this fear-based belief about feelings, that emotional discomfort means that there's something wrong or something bad happening.
Nina: Which is ironic because we want to feel love. We want to feel connected.
Kate: Well, right. I mean, what I say so often is that we get all of it or none of it. So if we spend our lives trying to run away from, or stuff or distract ourselves from the emotions that we don't want to feel, probably because some time in our life when we were young, we were taught that big feelings weren't safe and that may have been true back then. So if we spend our life trying to get ahead of those feelings, right? To busy our way out of them or to fix our way out of them so that we don't feel them, we're also probably someone who doesn't have a lot of experience feeling joy or deep connection, right? We get all of it or none of it.
Kelle: Yeah, and that is where we really want to teach our clients, and I'm sure you teach this, is emotional granularity, emotional literacy, so that they can understand what exactly they're feeling, right? Because most people have three words for what they're feeling: happy, sad, mad. And bringing that emotional literacy into this conversation is so key, and with your kids, too, especially with your kids, right? Instead of being like, "You're fine. You're fine," right?
Kate: Well, let's talk about what secure attachment is for a moment and talk about the science of that because when we, the global we, think about being mothers and we picture what we want that to look and feel like, we're almost always picturing a secure attachment, right? We are wanting to be the mothers whose children will come to us when something is wrong and whose children believe that we can be a safe space for them and where we have a relationship with our kids that is, you know, again, I don't know that everyone has this language, but that is has healthy boundaries in it, right? Where we're not, we sort of imagine this experience that is healthy. And a secure attachment, like, you know, there's so much science and research on attachment theory.
And just to be clear, let's simplify this for a moment. A secure attachment is a relationship that we've formed with our children that begins at birth, right? Where we have the capacity inside of ourselves to regulate our emotions, navigate the difference between real and perceived threat, so that we can be a grounded, safe space for our children to find comfort and care. That's what a secure attachment is.
What that requires is a willingness to feel big emotions and trust that we're still okay at the same time. Because if I, Kate Kripke, don't know how to feel impatient, frustrated, disappointed, sad, angry, scared, and trust that I'm okay at the same time, I'm going to run away from those feelings or try to fix them. I'm not going to be able to stay present in that moment.
If I don't know how to do that within myself, there's no way I'm going to be present with my child when he or she, in my case, she, feels those big feelings. So my fear of feeling in general is the thing that's going to get in the way of that secure attachment.
Nina: Oh, can I bring in a story really quick? Okay, so I just dropped my son off at football camp. We usually have buddies. We usually have a couple buddies, and today he didn't have a friend. And not only were we running late and I had a client and I'm sweating, you know, all the things, but we don't have a buddy and my son is not cool. He's super bummed. He's a confident kid. Friends come really easily to him, and he was alone at this really, really big football camp.
So we're in there, and when I was young, I was just coached on this by my coach, who's IFS trained, Internal Family Systems. So when I was young, I remember being in a similar situation on the soccer field. I always had to play up. Long story short, I get to the field and my dad is like, "Get out there, warm up." And he kind of pushes me out. And I remember the smell of the grass to this day, putting my heels in the ground, like, no, you know, and he was just in a hurry. My dad, I love my dad. No shame at all, but he was just kind of in a hurry, like, get out there, get warmed up, I got to go. And I was like, not having it.
So I'm at the football camp this morning. I felt that part of myself, like, Toby, you got to get out there because I've got clients, I'm sweating. I've got to get to the car. My phone's going to overheat, you know, all the things. And I just kind of stood there, and I was like, hang on, this is all my experience. He's crying. He's standing here crying. He's really uncomfortable. This kid does not cry a lot. He does not get nervous. Butterflies kind of get him excited. I don't see him like this often.
So I just, I literally zoomed out like Kelle says, and I'm in the Utes on this football field. It's gorgeous. It's badass, you know? And I'm just like, "Totes, how cool is this?" And he's like, "This is pretty cool." You know, we didn't go into, "Hey, put those tears away. Suck it up. Get out there. Like, come on, buddy. Let's go. Let's go. You're fine. You're fine."
He was kind of hyperventilating. He was very nervous. But because I could take care of myself in that moment, he was safe to cry and yes, he was wiping away tears, but we could kind of be in it together and bring in some awe and wonder just by getting curious, zooming out, getting out of our emotional brain and just again, I was just thinking about attachment. I was thinking about what I would have wanted from my dad in that moment when I was young. And I was just kind of guessing, of course, what he might need from me, and I asked him. I was like, “What do you need from me right now?” And he's just kind of shutting down. Like, I don't know, I don't know.
So I just stood there with him and held it in the middle of this big crowded football field. I was late for the client. All the things, but what's most important? What's most important in that moment? And we have to kind of zoom out and really, I think about attachment a lot. I think about what you're talking about a lot. And so, am I a rock star? No, I'm not a perfect parent, but that was a win today. That was kind of cool. I can't wait to go pick him up and just give him a huge hug, and who knows if we'll go back tomorrow. But that was kind of a cool win today.
Kate: There's so much in this story that's worth breaking down for a moment. Would that be okay? There are so many things here. So first of all, from the maternal child mental health perspective, right? And let me just back up and say there is so much, I mean, decades of data that have shown us the interconnection between maternal and child mental health. We cannot deny that.
So I will say to all of your listeners, I will remind myself, I'll say to my clients over and over and over, when our children are struggling, or when we see a quote-unquote “problem” that one of our children is having, whether they're a baby or a teenager, a really important question to ask, and we have to be willing to ask this with curiosity and a buttload of self-compassion, is what part might I be playing in this? Not how is this my fault, or am I to blame? That is not the question we're asking. But what part might I be playing in the struggles I see my kids having? Because as especially as high achievers, our goal is to go fix the thing for our kid and not to recognize that like we're playing a part.
So, Nina, this thing that you did, which is to say, okay, before anything comes out of my mouth, I have to attend to myself. And by the way, most of us are moving so fast that we skip that part. We don't even take time to know, “wait, what am I feel? What is happening for me right now? Oh, I'm feeling stressed and agitated. I'm worried about my meeting. I'm hyped up.” So if I want to help my son ground, I can't do that from a hyped up place.
And you did your thing, which is a brilliant practice, which is to zoom out. You guys have used that term, right? Like, what is actually happening? Okay, we're standing in this beautiful place. I feel my feet on the ground, right? That has to be our first step. What do I need in this moment to ground myself? So beautiful.
There is something really interesting here. I don't know if you noticed it, so I want to see if we can get in there together for a moment. In these situations, I have no doubt that you were doing this, given where you are on your own work. I think many moms won't necessarily realize this. In these moments, we might have an agenda to fix the way our child feels. I don't want my child to feel anxious and nervous anymore because as long as he's feeling anxious and nervous, I'm feeling anxious and nervous, and I don't want to feel anxious and nervous, so I need to say or do something so he feels different, so I can feel better. Can you relate to that?
Nina: We're only as happy as our least happy kid. Isn't that the saying? It's BS, but..,
Kate: Yeah, and I think again, if we're doers and movers and shakers and achievers, we can think that the way to get to where we want to get is to fix our child's feeling, as if the feeling's the problem. To help our child move from anxiety to confidence, from sadness to joy. And really, what we most need to do in that moment is to give our kids permission to feel what they're feeling.
And we miss that point sometimes, right? That we go very quickly to, look at how beautiful this is right here. Not that that's not a valid place to go, but it's almost like, I actually think you did this, Nina, because the term I had in my mind as you were talking is, oh, right, she chose connection over control. That's that term I will use so often in my own life as a mom is, “Can I pause in this moment and choose connection over control?” If I was choosing control, I'd be like, "Come on, you're going to be fine. Look at what's around you. You're fine. You love camp. Let's go because I need to get to my meeting."
Nina: Totally. I love that prompt.
Kate: I'm trying to control how my child feels so I don't have to feel emotional discomfort. If I go into this and say, "Oh, the feeling is never the problem. The fact that my child feels anxious, disappointed, sad, scared, no problem. There's nothing to fix here. The fact that I feel antsy, impatient, no problem. There's nothing to fix here.” And I'm going to connect with myself first, which you did, and then I'm going to lean into connecting with my child. Ah, of course, you feel anxious right now. You don't know anyone here. Of course, you feel that way. And let's pause and look around us for a moment. Look at how beautiful this is." Just so we're not skipping over that. Does that…?
Nina: Yeah. Good call.
Kate: … Make sense?
Nina: Huge. It's just acceptance. It's like acceptance versus…
Kate: And from a neuroscience perspective, when we feel accepted, when we have an experience of connection, what part of our nervous system turns on?
Nina: I feel like the loving part. What am I talking about?
Kate: Yeah. Rest and digest. From that place, our perspective opens, right? Your son, you know, his technical term is parasympathetic nervous system. His sympathetic turns down, his parasympathetic turns up, and now his vision from “I'm only okay if I know someone here and it's a friend and I know what to expect,” suddenly his nervous system shifts to parasympathetic, and his perspective opens, and he sees all the other opportunities here.
We as parents don't need to fix anything. There's no problem. We don't have to do more. There we are. There's nothing to do. We don't have to go talk to the director of the camp and make sure our kids are in the right cabin or the right thing, and check, like all the doing we tell ourselves we need to do. We don't have to do any of that.
Nina: I think what's gold there is, yeah, choosing connection over control and just making sense of their emotions, right? It totally makes sense that you're anxious right now. I remember telling him that, and it wasn't necessarily hitting, but I think the energy of just allowing it to be there gave him some permission. Yeah.
Kate: Probably because you did that for yourself first. That's why in your, you know, stages of listening, we have to listen inwards first, right? I mean, I teach something called the three Cs, which is very similar to what we're talking about. The three Cs are, how do I move from an emotional experience I'm having that I would categorize as unpleasant back to an emotional experience that I would categorize as more pleasant, because we also we want to make room for all the icky feelings, but we don't want to get stuck in them. That's not helpful.
And in many ways, the first C is curiosity. Like, wait, what am I feeling? Oh, my chest is tight, my heart is beating, I'm sweating, I'm hot. I'm feeling anxious, irritated. Okay. Second C, compassion. Of course, I feel that way. I have a meeting in five minutes. I want my kid to be happy, and he's showing distress. Of course, I feel this way. The feeling right now makes perfect sense. And then the third C is choice. How do I want to feel? I want to feel helpful to my kid. I want to feel grounded. I want to feel connected.
So first, I'm going to look around. Oh, okay, now I have this big perspective. Like, now I'm checking into the beauty instead of the clock, and I feel something shift in my body. I'm going to lean into my son and say, "Yeah, buddy, of course your anxiety makes sense. No problem." And then through those like new thoughts and new choices, I'm going to get to where I want to go, which is to help my kid’s nervous system settle. I'm probably going to actually get to that meeting more on time now than if I told myself I had to go do 25 things to make sure my kid was okay.
Nina: Yeah, go find a coach, go find someone to pass with him like, all the right….
Kate: We don't have to do any of that.
Nina: No.
Kelle: And I love that we're talking about relationships with our kids. It's so important. I just want people to know that you can do this with anyone. And yesterday we had a client, she's in LA, and she is Latina. And she had a call with us, and she came on the call, and we were like, "How are you doing? You know, how's it going?" And she just started crying.
She let all the emotion come, and we just held space for her for four minutes. And she just cried. She got all the tears out. And she just was able to feel what she was feeling. And we were just like, bring it. Do not stuff it down. Do not put it away for later. This is where you come, right? To take care of yourself. And this is a big part of it. Letting yourself cry if you need to cry and not stopping until you're ready to stop.
Kate: And in order to do that, we need to trust that the feelings aren't the problem. “Hold space for.” That's a really, you just use that term and it's such an important term. Our achievement brains don't hold space for much of anything. We're on to the next thing.
Nina: This is when, like, there's so much pride in being a parent or a friend, right? This is when, like, I think people might call it our intuition, almost. When we practice this way of being, we kind of develop our intuition, and we can relate to people in so much more of an authentic way. And there's just trust and safety.
Kate: It feels good. And you know what's interesting? One of the reasons that us high achievers get so preoccupied and, quite frankly, addicted to the external achievement is because of the dopamine hit. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. We are addicted to it. And when we slow down and when we do this thing that we're all talking about right now, in the moment, we're going to be feeling something different.
It's not going to be a dopamine hit. It's not a quick reward. It's something different, but it does feel good. Our nervous systems actually like that feeling of deep connection, of acceptance, of curiosity, of curiosity without an agenda. That like open-minded, open-ended, I don't need to know the answer. I'm just in a state of wonder. Like that actually feels really good.
Nina: Yeah. Yeah, wonder and awe feel really cool.
Kate: Yeah. So we don't quote-unquote “need” the hit of the achievement and the doing to get a pleasant feeling. But again, it's a different part of the brain. It's a different practice.
Yeah, it's interesting. If we look at the dilemma I think many working moms have, right? Because they might be pursuing something, we might be pursuing careers that we feel feed our achievement brain, right? That we feel really good. Maybe it's not even work. Maybe it's a passion. Maybe it's training for something or some project we have. And we suddenly get anxious when our child shares emotions of disappointment that we weren't home for bedtime tuck-in, or that we said we would be at that soccer game, and then something came up and we were running late. And again, in those moments, or if with younger kids, right? Or we pass our baby onto a babysitter or a care provider and they cry and grab for reach for us, right?
We can see that emotional discomfort in our kids again as evidence that we're doing something wrong. But from the science of secure attachment, it's that moment that builds the attachment. It's the moment of leaning in to our kids' disappointment, to their discomfort, to their frustration, to their anger, and essentially being healthy enough on the inside to be able to feel those hard things and still be okay to be able to say, "Yeah, I get it. Of course, you're disappointed that I didn't get here on time." It's that moment that's like the cement in the attachment. We don't have to be there to form the secure attachment.
Nina: Gold. Gold, gold. Kate, this has been so helpful. We love everything you're saying. How about a few practices or tools or strategies to help someone with the how here? Can you share something there with us?
Kate: Yeah, great. So, I want to invite your listeners, if this is resonating, to maybe on a piece of paper, write down these couple of questions. If I believed that I was enough, that I was okay, what would I do next? And it almost leads into a second question. If I believed that the feeling and the emotion was never the problem, what would I do next? And again, we can ask this in a global, like literally like literally, I wake up today, if I had like, what would I do next in my day?
Or for those folks who are mothers that are really feeling a lot of emotional overwhelm, maybe anxiety, maybe guilt, reactivity in motherhood, maybe burnout because they're trying to like do their way through busy mom life, that really these are questions that we can ask like that you could ask when you were standing there with your son at drop off from camp, that someone might ask when their baby is crying and they don't know why, that someone could ask when they need to leave for work and their young child is begging them to not go.
To really just start there, because we do also know from the, you know, so much amazing social science and behavioral science that what we believe to be true about ourselves is going to just set a cascade of what our thoughts are, what our feelings are, what our actions are, and ultimately what our results of our life look like.
So I really want to invite those high achievers out there who have been functioning from a place of not enoughness, whatever that means. Not enough time, I'm not doing enough, I'm not giving my kid enough. My kid isn't feeling happy enough, right, all of that stuff to just begin to pause and to just ask that question. So that's one thing.
The other thing I might just invite is if we're going into the thing we talked about like we can be curious and open-minded individuals and not yet have been practicing the brain, the strengthening sort of the muscles of the brain, so to speak, that help us stay truly connected when life gets really hard, is to just ask ourselves, I really love the practice of listening, like literally listening. Like, open my ears up.
You know, if I pause right now, actually, your listeners could do this right now. If we stop talking for five seconds, the three of us, if I stop talking and invite your listeners to just pay attention to everything that you hear in this moment, that when we get curious in a new way, we will notice things we weren't paying attention to. That's strengthening that part of the brain. And we can do that is sort of like what's one thing that you can listen for and watch for and learn about that you didn't know yet about your child, about yourself, about the environment, the house you're sitting in. That is strengthening that part of the brain that we're talking about.
Kelle: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Nina: Love that. We have a lot of clients who, like you say, aren't present or still enough to actually listen.
Kate: Well, and that's what I hear. I hear that over and over that clients will come to me and they'll say, I need to be more present. I just want to be more present with my child. I'm always distracted. And yeah, of course. It's hard to be present if you're not using the part of your brain that allows you to be present.
Kelle: I would say not just clients, I would say people in my life, right? People.
Kate: That's right. Yeah. How often do you hear, "How are you?" "Oh, I'm so busy. Oh my gosh, there's so much going on." It's like we tend to answer that way. And if we're moving at that pace, which again, requires a certain part of our brain to be meeting our goals and checking off our to-do list and reaching the next thing, we're not noticing what's right here. We're just not opening up to that.
Nina: Oh, I love this. This is so helpful. I can't wait to start listening differently. Just even in my car. Yeah. I got to like, you know, move kids around for the rest of the day. It's going to be fun.
Kate: It's a cool pause. We actually did that last night. We were sitting out in our backyard having dinner, my husband, myself, and our older daughter. And like the birds were just bonkers. They were like going nuts. And I looked around, and none of us were talking. We were all just listening. And I just sort of named it. I was like, God, there are so many sounds. And that's such a different silence at the dinner table than when we're sitting around like, okay, because I do this sometimes like, what can I ask my daughter that will help her talk to me? Or what can I say? I'm in my brain. I'm in that part of my achievement brain, not the part of my brain that's like, wow, magic. It was a cool moment.
Nina: Totally the magic, the magic that's available. Oh, Kate, this was such a cool conversation. We can't wait for part two. I feel like we say this all the time.
Kate: I love talking about this stuff. And I think both of you, I mean, I don't know, I've never met you in person. I think we would be friends if we were all in the same place.
Nina: I think we would, too. You're awesome.
Kelle: 100%. Yes.
Kate: But I think there's a way in which for, I'm guessing, all three of us can relate to the toggle between these things, right? The like achievement brain, get shit done, keep moving, like, and then sort of the reminder to just pause. And then how good it feels when we let ourselves do that, and it's important to know that both those things are available and both are important. That's the other thing. There's that achievement brain, it's very important. We're not asking folks to not have that or not use that. Use it. And there's another part of our brain that we can strengthen to have more of this other thing that we're looking for.
Nina: Yes. Oh. Okay. Speaking of more, where…
Kelle: Well, I'm going to go be with my family and like hang out and use all these tools. I'm so excited. Thank you, Kate.
Kate: Totally.
Nina: Yeah, where can people find you, Kate, just really quick?
Kate: Yeah, great. So Instagram, at Kate Kripke. I love chatting with people on the back end. I end up having a lot of DM messages back there. So please, if people have questions about this and want to come ask me, please find me over there. Website, Katekripke.com, and I think those are probably the two places right now that people can find me. I do have a little kind of masterclass that I can send your way if you want to pop that into your show notes, that talks more about kind of understanding what the root cause of a lot of anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and motherhood is for a lot of high-achieving women. So I'm happy to pop that over there too.
Nina: Okay, killer. That sounds like gold. We'll put that in the show notes, everyone. Okay.
Kate: Amazing, sounds great.
Nina: Kate, so awesome to talk to you today. Thank you so much for your time. And…
Kate: Likewise.
Nina: …yeah, we'll do it again soon. All right.
ate: We’ll do it again soon.
Kelle: All right, take care, Kate.
Nina: Hey everyone, if you want more live access to me and Kelle, you have to join our email list.
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Kelle: Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Ambitious-Ish.
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Kelle: See you in the next episode!
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