Julia: Hiding away the hard parts

Julia, a mother to a young child, is working hard to give her son the tools to regulate his emotions, something she's worked hard to learn as an adult. As someone who has struggled with addiction and a diagnosis of bipolar, Julia carefully hides away parts of herself. Dr. Hillary helps her embrace the complexity of her story. 

Listen for:

• How Julia has compartmentalized herself, tucking away her tougher experiences as she builds community with other parents. "I have my mom friends but I'm not going to talk to them about addiction stuff. They certainly don't know about my mental health stuff."
• How we create defensive splits, dissociations from parts of ourselves or our story we are ashamed of.  
• How much Hillary cares for and values the part of Julia that is in pain and feels sick. "It's not burdensome for me to think about holding this part of you, even as I tend to who you are today."

Quotes from the episode: 

• "If I want [my child] to have a different experience, I have to learn to do something that doesn't come to me innately." - Julia
• "I'm sure that splitting myself in half like this is not helpful for me, but something about having a child and the idea of him ever having to know anything about [my past] makes me very upset." - Julia
• "Although the addiction was present in her life, it wasn't really the problem … it was the thing that she was engaging in to manage this internal distress, to manage the emotions that were otherwise too big to feel. Really, for her, it was to cope with unresolved trauma." - Hillary
• "Your identity was never in addiction, was never in illness, your identity has always been something much deeper." - Hillary
• "I've found so much richness and value in the places where there has been grief and loss and pain and trauma. Almost like these little pearls. When we open up the oyster shell, which is kind of gnarly and scratchy on the outside, that there is something in there of worth and of great value." - Hillary