Fresh Take: Dr. Cassidy Freitas on How to Stay Calm When Parenting Feels Overwhelming

What if the fact that we sometimes we "lose it" as parents doesn't make us bad parents? What if those times stem from an overwhelmed nervous system, and what happens when we get curious about what's underneath? Marriage and family therapist Dr. Cassidy Freitas, host of the "Holding Space" podcast and author of the new book MOM NEEDS A MOMENT, explains why parents "lose it," what our emotional reactions are really telling us, and how we can interrupt generational patterns without striving for perfection. In this episode, you'll learn: How childhood experiences shape your parenting triggers today. The difference between guilt and shame. Why repair after conflict is often more powerful than trying to be a perfect parent. How social media and intensive parenting culture fuel parental burnout and self-criticism. What "creating margin" means—and why a few moments of space can transform your relationship with your children. How to recognize your triggers before reacting. The simple phrase Dr. Freitas uses to calm her nervous system in difficult parenting moments. Here's where you can find Dr. Freitas: www.drcassidymft.com @drcassidy on IG Buy MOM NEEDS A MOMENT: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781523533534 What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What are the best ways for us to support our kids' interests? Should we help them become the best gymnasts and singers they can be, as soon as they show glimmers of true interest? Or are they better off exploring many interests, without all of that added pressure? From travel sports to elite ballet training and specialized extracurriculars, childhood activities feel increasingly professionalized, with a lot less room for beginners, dabblers, or kids who just want to have fun. This week, we're wondering whether encouraging curiosity and exploration may be healthier than pushing early specialization. We discuss: The difference between supporting a child's interests and managing their career Why exploration—not specialization—is often the key to discovering lifelong passions How parents can praise effort and enjoyment instead of performance Why your child's purpose may be much bigger than any single job or talent How to encourage resilience when interests change or dreams evolve Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode: Lindsay Karp for Business Insider: My parents told me to have a career that could support me. I'm telling my kids to follow their passions. Daniel B. Peters for HuffPost: Are We Missing the Mark If We Support Our Children's Passions? Lisa Heffernan for the NYT: Our Push for ‘Passion,’ and Why It Harms Kids Susan Newman for Psychology Today: How to Support and Nurture Your Child's Passions What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This month, our "Deep Dive" is into some of our past episodes about screen time: the effects it has on our kids, how tech companies engineer their devices to be as addictive as possible, and how we can allow our kids to enjoy screens with supportive limits. The dreaded question "When should my kid get a phone?" is one we're asked often. These days "whether" is not part of the equation, and the ages at which our kids' peers are getting phones seems younger than ever. Dr. Catherine Pearlman, author of the new book ⁠First Phone: A Child's Guide To Digital Responsibility, Safety, and Etiquette⁠, is the founder of ⁠The Family Coach⁠ and a licensed clinical social worker who has been working with children and families for more than 25 years. First Phone– a book written not for parents, but for our kids– puts the risks and rewards of a phone in perspective for our children, and helps them consider what parameters they themselves might want to put on their phones and how they can use them wisely. In this episode, Catherine, Amy and Margaret discuss: What we often don't think about when we hand our kids their first phones [12:55] When kids should get their own social media accounts [17:55] How to teach kids about digital consent [31:00] Here's where you can find Catherine: ⁠www.thefamilycoach.com⁠ @thefamilycoach on FB/Twitter @thefamilycoachsays on IG Find Catherine's book in our bookshop: ⁠https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593538333⁠ What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Laura Clery has built a massive digital empire, of over 25 million followers, offering her own blend of silly sketch comedy and unflinchingly vulnerable reality. In this interview, Laura tells Margaret about her new memoir, WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU HOTTER , and the unraveling of a marriage shaped by sobriety, relapse, codependency, fame, and the pressure of living so much of life online. Laura and Margaret discuss: Her experience raising a child on the autism spectrum What happens when a relationship falls apart in public Why it can be hard to recognize destructive patterns from the inside How motherhood has made Laura brave Here's where you can find Laura: @laura.clery on FB @lauraclery on IG and TikTok @LauraMarieClery on YouTube Listen to Laura's podcast Idiot Buy WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU MAKES YOU HOTTER: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781668087343 What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know how sometimes when you're in charge, in a really hard moment, you keep watching the door for an actual grownup to show up? Because it can't possibly be 42-year-old YOU who's in charge at this moment? In this episode we discuss the strange experience of being the person in charge while also feeling wildly underqualified. From broken bones and dinner logistics to taxes, travel mishaps, and medical decision-making, here are the times when we— and our listeners— were hoping for an authorit figure besides ourselves to show up and fix everything. Join our Facebook group to see all of our listeners' hilarious responses! What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This month, our "Deep Dive" is into some of our past episodes about screen time: the effects it has on our kids, how tech companies engineer their devices to be as addictive as possible, and how we can allow our kids to enjoy screens with supportive limits. Psychologist Susan Linn, author of ⁠WHO'S RAISING THE KIDS? BIG TECH, BIG BUSINESS, AND THE LIVES OF CHILDREN⁠, isn't anti-technology. She's anti-advertising to children, and has spent her long career spotlighting the "monumental shift towards a digitized-commercialized childhood." With smart speakers and screens at arms' reach wherever kids go, digital technologies continue to evolve much faster than our understanding of the ramifications of their dominance in our kids' lives. Susan began her career as award-winning ventriloquist (here she is on ⁠Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood⁠!) and has become a world-renowned expert on creative play and the impact of media and commercial marketing on children. In this episode, Susan tells us Why her point isn't to make parents feel guilty Why the best kinds of toys for children do very little How branding can creep in where we sometimes don't even perceive it What we can do to set parameters on the commercializing of our own kids' lives Here's where you can find Susan: Twitter: @drsusanlinn ⁠susanlinn.net⁠ ⁠fairplayforkids.org⁠ Buy Susan's book: ⁠https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781620972274⁠ What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are these things that you just don't understand why anybody would do. But some people do them. We aren't about judgment at the What Fresh Hell podcast, but we do sometimes have to ask: what kind of monster? What kind of monster listens to videos on speaker? Or keeps the keyboard clicks on their phone? What kind of monster takes up two parking spots? Puts empty cereal boxes back in the cabinet? Gives small children toys with one hundred tiny pieces? We went to our ⁠Facebook page⁠ and we asked people to share what kind of monsters they were encountering on a daily basis. In this episode we explore quite a few. And here's a disclaimer: we may each have been one or more of these monsters before. What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Have you ever felt like your life consisted of too many moving parts at the same time? In this episode, we explore why life tends to deliver too much change at once—and the difference between an actual change and the larger, more uncertain area of transition that both precedes and follows any big change. We discuss: Why even positive and worked-toward life transitions can feel overwhelming once they arrive What "change saturation" and "change fatigue" look like How your business partners, family members, or loved ones might be going through the same change, but on a very different transition timeline Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode: Our episode "Why We Avoid Uncertainty (And How That Gets In Our Way)" Talkspace blog: How to Keep It Together When Everything Keeps Changing North Highland blog: How Much Change is Too Much Change? Cassandra Worthy: The 3 Stages Of Change Fatigue And How To Recover Prosci blog: Bridges Transition Model Explained and Made Actionable William Bridges Associates: William Bridges Bio Cassandra Worthy: CHANGE ENTHUSIASM Get tickets to see Amy in 42nd Street at the Sharon Playhouse, July 25th through August 9th! sharonplayhouse.org/42nd-street What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This Deep Dive series is all about tips to stay sane while traveling with family —immediate or extended, kids younger or older in tow, across the state or across the globe! Does it seem like just as much work to leave your kids behind for a couple of days as not to go in the first place? Do your instructions for family operational procedures during your absence run more than five pages?  Getting away from our kids—for work, for the weekend, for a friend’s 40th—isn’t just good for us. It’s also an opportunity for our kids to realize that “only Mommy” stuff they pull when we’re around is not as necessary as they might have thought. Margaret and Amy discuss: Why our kids may behave better when we aren’t around (and why it's not a bad thing) Why the best time to call your kids when you travel is in the morning How the instructions you leave behind can change as your kids grow Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode: Kari Bodnarchuk for The Boston Globe: ⁠Preparing Kids for When a Parent Travels⁠ Smart Women Travelers: ⁠Keeping Mom’s Business Trip from Being Mom’s Guilt Trip⁠ Our episode ⁠"We Forgot What Little Kids Were Like"⁠ ⁠Kara Williams has great advice for vacationing with kids of all ages⁠ What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why are autoimmune conditions so much more common in women? And does that have anything to do with the fact that those same conditions are misunderstood, under-researched, and accepted as things we just have to live with? Sara Hirsh Bordo, author of the new book AUTOIMMUNITY AND THE GOOD GIRLS, discusses the questions that led her to examine the connection between women’s health, caregiving, stress, and identity. After receiving her own autoimmune diagnoses, Sara began noticing that her fellow sufferers shared similar life patterns: especially eldest daughters, caretakers, and women raised to prioritize everyone else’s needs. That observation led her to fund original research exploring the relationship between girlhood experiences, cultural expectations, and autoimmune disease. Amy and Sara discuss: What autoimmune disease, means and why these conditions remain misunderstood Hypotheses on why autoimmune diagnoses disproportionately affect women The connection between caregiving roles, chronic stress, and the nervous system How our life experiences can shape our long-term health The difference between understanding mind-body connections and blaming ourselves when our bodies fail us Why learning to receive care can be just as important as giving it What it means to rewrite the stories that teach women to earn love through self-denial This conversation explores a question many women may recognize: What happens when being “good” means becoming disconnected from your own needs? Here's where you can find Sara: https://autoimmunityandthegoodgirls.com https://goodgirlsbook.com @sarahirshbordo on IG @sarahirshbordo on LinkedIn Buy AUTOIMMUNITY AND THE GOOD GIRLS: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780063450660 What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: ⁠⁠https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices