by Peg Streep
WRITING ON MATERNAL PATTERNS
Go back to the notes you jotted down in your journal on the eight toxic patterns of maternal behavior (exercise on pages 237 ). Please review those thoughts and words and then use those words and thoughts to write about a situation in which those behaviors were in evidence. Use as much detail as possible in your description, focusing on why you felt as you did in the moment. Make sure you are using cool processing; if the act of writing is making you relive the moment, stop!
WRITING ON REACTIVITY
Describe an argument or disagreement you had in the recent past with someone in your life—it could be an intimate, an acquaintance, or even a colleague. Describe it as fully as you can, including the dialogue. Read what you wrote, and now focus on the moments that, in hindsight, were clearly triggers for you. Write a list of those triggers—what the person said or did—and what you felt in the moment.
WRITING ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
This activity has two parts and is an exploration of whether your emotional reactions are consistent in stressful situations, no matter what the specifics of the interactions are. Do you experience the same emotions again and again or in a familiar combination? Are you reacting to content or are you being driven by triggers?
Part 1: Write about three kinds of situations that will predictably stress you out; they could be moments when you feel threatened by someone, are in an argument with someone, are being dressed down in public or criticized, feel excluded, or any other situation you can identify as being highly stressful and predictive of reactivity on your part. Describe each of these situations as completely as you can.
Part 2: Reread what you have written, and then focus on how your reactivity connects to either your experiences in childhood or your mother’s treatment of you. Identify the triggers as much as you can, and write about the specific emotions you feel in those moments and how they reflect the past more than the present.
DISTINGUISH STAGE: CHAPTER FIVE
WRITING ON SEEING PATTERNS
This activity is in two parts.
Part 1: Pick three important relationships you’ve had in your adult life, the ones that either mattered most to you or influenced you most; you can include relationships that taught you both positive and negative things since the goal here is to ferret out your patterns of behavior. Think about the personalities and qualities of each person, and write down words and phrases that describe him or her best, and focus on one or two specific memories of each relationship that seem to sum up what was both good and bad about the connection.
Part 2: Wait at least two days, and preferably as long as a week, and go back to your descriptions and study them. Then write down the patterns and similarities you see among them and answer the following questions:
♦ What insight do you have into your choices of partners and friends?
♦ Is there a common thread that links these relationships?
♦ Were your behaviors in each relationship consistent?
WRITING ON CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Describe the dynamic between you and another person in your own words, focusing on how the two of you deal with disagreements or differences. The person could be a friend or romantic partner, past or present. Focus on your own behaviors and reactions.
WRITING ON PERSPECTIVE
Adopt the point of view of a stranger who doesn’t know you and write a description of how you and your partner’s interactions might be seen from the stranger’s perspective. Write about one positive interaction and one that involved some tension or disagreement, using dialogue and as much detail as possible. Answer this question: What do you see in your description of your own behaviors that you hadn’t realized before?
WRITING ON REACTIVITY
The goal here is to see how your reactivity affects your relationship with someone close to you. This exercise has two parts, done days apart.
Part 1: Choose an interaction involving minor stress (you feel frustrated or misunderstood, your partner isn’t listening to you) and one that pushes all your buttons (you think your partner is lying or waffling, you’ve had a knock-down, drag-out fight) and describe each objectively, using cool processing. Then look at your own responses as you’ve described them and tackle whether these are your typical responses, specifically focusing on your motivations. For example, are you primarily focused on dodging the conflict, or are you looking to find a way to resolve it? Do you immediately apologize to try to dissipate the tension, or do you get defensive and angry?
Part 2: After several days, review your descriptions and see if you see a pattern in your responses that connects to your mother’s treatment of you in childhood or that of other family members. Write about how your responses in the present are connected to older patterns of behavior.
DISARM STAGE: CHAPTER SIX
WRITING ON THE DANCE OF DENIAL
Using cool processing, spend some time thinking about how you have excused, denied, rationalized, or normalized your mother’s behaviors. Think about it objectively, and don’t indulge in judgment or self-blame. See it from a third-party perspective, and write in your journal about the ways in which you participated. Then answer the following questions:
♦ In hindsight, what motivated you to act as you did? What were your goals?
♦ To what degree do you still feel the tug of the core conflict?
♦ Are there specific moments or instances when you feel more conflicted? Make a list of them, and explore why they are triggers and what you feel.
WRITING ON CUES AND PRIMES
Pick a recent situation you found yourself in that made you very reactive and triggered intense emotions. Using a third-person perspective, describe your reactions and their source(s) as completely as you can. End the entry by reflecting on how you wish you had acted if your best self had shown up.
WRITING ON SENSITIVITY
How much influence do cues and primes have on how you think and feel? Does the weather affect you, for example, in a demonstrable way? Do you largely respond to sound and words in an environment and interchange, or are you more visual and attuned to how a place looks and someone’s physical appearance, facial expressions, and body language? Explore your thoughts in writing, giving examples, and then answer the following questions as fully as you can:
♦ When you meet someone new, what types of cues do you tend to rely on?
♦ Are you more sensitive to negative or positive cues? Explain.
♦ In what ways can you improve your response to positive cues and primes?
WRITING ON REJECTION SENSITIVITY
As objectively as you can, spend time thinking about how sensitive you are to rejection or possible signs of rejection. Write about how your sensitivity has affected you in all areas of your life, including both friendship and romantic relationships, as well as your work. See whether or not there are areas that are more affected and others that are less affected, and explore why.
RECLAIM STAGE: CHAPTER SEVEN
WRITING ON COGNITIVE REAPPRAISAL
Describe a recent emotionally stressful situation such as an argument you had with someone close to you or a situation in which you felt emotionally threatened in some way; focus on why you felt as you did, using cool processing. Now rewrite your description of your behaviors and feelings as they might have been had you availed yourself of cognitive reappraisal. The closer you come to capturing the moment-by-moment escalation of your emotions, the better.
WRITING ON NAMING EMOTIONS
This exercise should be done over the course of at least a week or longer. Becoming conscious of your feelings in the moment can help you become more adept at naming emotions. Forcing yourself to take a time-out from the rush of daily life and giving yourself time to reflect on what you’re feeling and why can help you make real progress. You’ll need a pocket-size pad or notebook so that when you perceive a shift in your emotions or a change in mood, you can jot down your observations. At the end of each day, use these observat
ions to write about what you felt and why, working hard to name emotions with specificity and to identify triggers with precision.
Making this a conscious exercise will make you more aware of your emotions, especially if you’re used to pushing off from them, and improve your ability to know exactly what you’re feeling. Let’s say, for example, you had a stressful day at work and get home feeling wiped. Spend some time thinking about the interactions that made you feel stressed and specifically the emotions you felt. For example: “My colleague didn’t do her part on time, which pissed me off, but I got increasingly anxious that I would get blamed” (anger morphing into anxiety) or “I was so frustrated that no one responded to my email blast, and then I started worrying that maybe I’d done something wrong” (frustration changing into self-criticism), etc.
WRITING ON SELF-COMPASSION
Combining goal setting with an effort at self-compassion in a journal entry can be very instructive and revealing. Write down five of your goals; they can be personal or professional, as well as short-term, intermediate, and long-view ones. Under each goal, describe your personal attributes and qualities that you believe will make this goal possibly attainable. Then imagine what you would say to yourself if you encountered a setback or failed to achieve any one of these goals. Explore what your self-compassionate voice sounds like.
REDIRECTING STAGE: CHAPTER EIGHT
WRITING ON DEALING WITH YOUR MOTHER
If you are still on the fence about how to manage your relationship to your mother, think about the following questions and then answer them as fully and honestly as you can in your journal.
♦ What are the primary obstacles to salvaging or repairing the relationship?
♦ Is it possible to discuss the issues with your mother? If not, why?
♦ What rules or boundaries would have to be in place and respected for the relationship to continue?
♦ Do you believe low or infrequent contact is an option? Why or why not ?
♦ How do you feel about maternal divorce or going no-contact?
♦ What are your greatest fears and worries about the decision you will make?
WRITING ON RELATIONAL GOALS
Taking a survey of all your relationships can be a helpful step toward growth. Of course, seeing how your behaviors contribute to the shape these connections take continues to be paramount. There will be some relationships you may wish to change or dispense with entirely, as well as important ties to others that need to be strengthened. Spend time thinking and then writing about five relational goals you wish to set for the future. They can be general (expand my circle of friends, develop a support system) or highly specific (communicate my needs more clearly to my partner or spouse, deal with my emotions when I argue with my sister). For each goal, come up with plans and strategies to achieve it.
WRITING ON SELF-DEFINITION
This exercise has two parts and explores whether you define yourself in simple or complex ways. Complexity yields greater personal resilience when there’s a setback in life. The self is defined by relational roles; interests, activities, and hobbies; and work or vocation.
Part 1: Spend time thinking about how you define yourself, and then write about it with as much detail as possible. In addition to listing the definitions, expand upon why or why not these definitions sustain you in both good and stressful times.
Part 2: Describe how you want to redefine yourself in the months and years ahead. This may include how you will think about yourself—“I want to define myself not by my childhood or my status as a daughter but as the woman I am today”—as well as activities and roles you will take on in the future. Once again, enumerate how you will achieve these goals.
WRITING ON MOTHERHOOD
Whether you are a parent, still considering the question, or have already decided against motherhood, it’s important to explore and clarify this issue, which is so closely bound both to childhood experiences and your definition of self. Answer the following questions in as much detail as possible, plumbing your deepest thoughts:
♦ What primarily drives your thinking about motherhood?
♦ What, if any, are your greatest concerns about the choice that you are making?
♦ How does being a mother or choosing not to mother define you?
♦ How do your childhood experiences influence your thinking?
RECOVERY STAGE: CHAPTER NINE
WRITING AND REFLECTING ON HEALING
This exercise should be done in two steps, preferably several days apart. Give yourself time to explore your thoughts in depth.
Part 1: Spend time exploring what you believe healing from childhood experience entails and whether you think that healing fully is possible. Be as honest as you can be with yourself and then write about the degree to which you have begun healing and what stands in the way of coping with your childhood experiences. Detail the specific issues you still have trouble with.
Part 2: Set at least five goals for healing as you look forward; you can, of course, set more. Be as specific as possible as you write about them, and come up with ways that you will implement those goals. For example: “I will try to be more open to experiences with new people by letting down my guard and engaging in new activities.” “I will work through the pain in the holiday season by making plans with friends and doing things for myself and the people I care about.” “I will actively work on self-compassion by writing down small victories in my journal every day.”
WRITING ON THE MOTHER YOU DESERVED
Visualizing and then mourning the mother you deserved and needed are important to recovery. Writing may help you with this exercise as you imagine this mother in all the detail that you can—describing her personality and her reactions—and then move on to describe the interactions you would have had with her. Writing about the mother you deserved helps to legitimatize the needs that weren’t met in childhood, and your ability to summon up this mother in times of stress will be bolstered and solidified by the act of writing.
WRITING ON SEEING YOURSELF AS MOM DIDN’T
Shifting your perspective on the mother-daughter relationship by focusing on what your mother missed out on is one way of moving yourself out of the old role. Using cool processing, make a list of all the things your mother never noticed about you, appreciated, or paid attention to; moments and milestones she wasn’t a part of; as well as the people in your life she never really got to know or enjoy. Expand on each item with lots of detail.
WRITING ON MOMENTUM
Charting your progress—baby steps turn into strides over time—can keep you encouraged and shifts the focus from your flaws and weaknesses to positive changes. Pick a skill you’ve been actively working on—it could be managing your emotions, dealing with rumination, veering away from the habit of self-criticism—and write a progress report on how your efforts have begun to pay off and what you’d like to be able to achieve in the near future. Date your entry, and go back to it in a month and update it. You can do this as often as you like so that you can keep being your own best cheerleader! You can chart as many skills as you wish.
REVISITING THE CORE CONFLICT
This isn’t a single exercise but one you should go back to again and again as a way of mapping your recovery. Again, dating your entries will be of use to you over time. Examine how you’ve been dealing with the core conflict and building your ability to let go by writing about it in detail. Explore how letting go of the core conflict helps to redefine your sense of self. Then, finally, journal about where you hope to find yourself in six months’ time, a year from now, and five years hence. Go back to this exercise as often as you need to, reflecting on your previous entries and continuing to write.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wouldn’t have written this book if it hadn’t been for my readers, and I wouldn’t have known my readers had I not started blogging at Psychology Today in 2012 and then at Psych Central in 2016. I thought I was pretty much done with the subject after I wrote Mean Mother
s , but when I returned to it, this time as more of a science writer than before, I realized I wasn’t. And the more I posted, the more readers asked me questions I couldn’t answer in a single post or even a series of them. My hope is that Daughter Detox supplies at least some of the answers they seek.
And of course, there wouldn’t be any stories to share if it weren’t for my readers. Thank you all for participating, whether by filling out the questionnaire for the book or answering callouts for posts that became part of the book, especially The Stalwart Crew who were on my Facebook page when it was tiny. Thanks to Kaja Perina, Lybi Ma, and Matt Huston at Psychology Today and John Grohol at Psych Central for giving me a perch.
My friend Claudia Karabaic Sargent has been a great cheerleader and did me the honor of designing the book you hold in your hand, which required more than a little finesse because of all of its moving parts, and a honey of a cover design. Many mercis! The Hedgehog Angel came through in the end. You are very wonderful, my dear, and who knew we’d go back into the book business together?
Thanks to my pal, fellow writer Leslie Garisto Pfaff, for both hand-holding and skillful copyediting. Lori Stein, she of the best omelets in New York, was both enthusiastic and helpful. My agent, Gillian Mackenzie, believed in the project despite what we both knew about how publishing operates, and I thank her for the initial support and the title. Thank you to Maria Fairchild for her eagle eye. Patti Pitcher, thank you for everything, and helping as always. Rich Kelley, your wisdom over drinks was much appreciated and taught me about the flywheel effect and more. To all of my friends who passed along my posts when I was just starting to garner an audience, thank you—and I mean Robyn Cooper Henning, Ann Keeler Evans, and Joanne Almvig, in particular. Thanks to Stephen Marmon for the deer.
I cannot be grateful enough to both Dr. Joseph Burgo and Dr. Craig Malkin, whom I am listing alphabetically because, with two great guys, it’s impossible to decide whom to put first. They are both terrific writers, happen to be experts in narcissism, and they read the manuscript with enthusiasm and dedication. I owe you big time! A special shout-out to Joe for unveiling the mysteries of self-publishing and for glittering and stimulating conversations.
