[LISA LEWIS] The Am I Ok? Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like Faith Fringes, the Holistic Counseling Podcast, and Beta Male Revolution, go to the website, www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. Welcome to the Am I Ok? Podcast, where you will discover that being highly sensitive is something to embrace and it’s actually a gift you bring to the world. We will learn together how to take ownership of your high sensitivity, so you can make positive changes in your life, in the lives of others, and it’s totally okay to feel this way. I’m your host, Lisa Lewis. I’m so glad you’re here for the journey. Welcome to today’s episode of the Am I Ok? Podcast. This is Lisa Lewis, your host. Thank you so much for being here today, for tuning in. I would like to remind my listeners, all of you that I offer a free eight-week email course titled Highly Sensitive People. My email course provides weekly tools that help you feel more whole in a world isn’t exactly made for us and I show you how your sensitivity can be seen as a unique gift and how many others are just like you. To find out more about my email course, please go to my website, amiokpodcast.com. We are in the month of July, and the weather is hot, it sure is hot where I’m at, I’m in California, so it’s time to be outside, cool off in a pool, a lake, the ocean, a stream, a river. When it’s hot, emotions tend to flare up too. Just like the weather, relationships can heat up, get harder and more difficult to manage and today’s guest is going to talk to us about one particular relationship that can heat up too and that is the mother-daughter relationship. Today’s guest is Hilary Truong. Hilary is the leading expert on healing mother-daughter relationships. When she realized she was helping girl after girl and her private therapy practice struggle with her well-intentioned mother, she knew that was the real problem that she was meant to solve. As a human who does not settle for the status quo, Hilary was on a mission to learn the intricacies of the mother-daughter dynamics to stop mothers and teen daughters from accepting that their relationship was meant to be hard. Now, Hilary coaches mothers and daughters privately and host heirloom experiences to take the relationship to the next level. Welcome to the podcast, Hilary. [HILARY TRUONG] Thank you, Lisa. I’m so excited to be here. [LISA] I’m so excited to have you here too. Just reading your intro and it’s like, woo, that is a hot topic. I’m sure there’s a lot of listeners that can relate to this or have heard, if not their own experience, maybe someone else’s experience. [HILARY] Yes. Anytime I’m talking to a woman about what I do, they’re always like, that is so interesting. Everyone does have a story, whether it’s one of struggle or one of just utter love and respect for their mother or daughter. It definitely gets people talking, which of course I love talking about what I do. [LISA] Okay, so let’s get started. As I like to ask all my guests experts that come on the show, do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person or not? If so or not, can you share a story about that with us? [HILARY] I do consider myself a highly sensitive person. When I was thinking this through, when we we started our conversation, I went back to childhood and how much I struggled with my own feelings, knowing how to express them properly but also managing feelings I had in reaction to how people were treating me. I was definitely a kid and even adult who would have interactions with people and then that night be spinning in my head and think about did I say the right thing? Did I say the wrong thing? What are they thinking about me now? I was very much in my head about what was happening in my world and if someone asked me recently, I imagine you became a therapist for a reason. That’s not always a story I tell anymore because I mostly talk about why I work with mothers and daughters now. But it is definitely a reason why I became a therapist because I was so sensitive to how other people feel and so curious about it. and being able to have empathy. I remember driving with my mom, we lived in a little small farm town. It was outside of a bigger town that was sort of a low-income area and we were driving through that town, and I remember seeing homeless people walking along that road and my mom explaining it to me for the first time. I just remembered, I remember the pain I felt, just the, I was so sad that people lived their life that way and that that was their experience. I feel like that was maybe the first time I became aware of how much I care about other people. So it’s really become sort of my life’s journey is taking care of myself and being able to focus on myself. It’s all woven into what I do with mothers and daughters now. [LISA] Oh, well, thank you for sharing that story. That’s really beautiful. I could just relate just being a therapist myself and just wanting people not to have the same experience as me growing up and then going, oh, like, you’re just perfect the way you are and let’s help you be okay with all the experiences that you’re having and know how to help yourself and also know how to help other people without taking on all of their emotions and feelings. [HILARY] I read something on your website where you had shared about how you realized being sensitive was one of your superpowers or one of your strengths, and that finally being able to see it that way, how you were able to embrace that and use it for good and be able to really feel empowered by that. There were definitely parts of myself where I felt the same way, or it just took someone to spin it for me another way to realize, oh, wow, that actually doesn’t have to be something that holds me back, or something that’s wrong with me. That that’s actually one of my powers. It’s one of the reasons why I’m special and unique. I loved reading that because I think a lot of people can relate to that. It’s just figuring out what’s the story, what’s the right story that feels good for me about that? [LISA] Yes. I wish that it didn’t take till my forties to figure that out. I wish it would, it was a little sooner in life, but at least I figured that out and that’s okay. [HILARY] Now you’re giving this gift to others, right, sharing that message with so many people. [LISA] And s are you. So how do you work with mothers and daughters? [HILARY] Right now, I work with them virtually. I can work as a coach so I can reach anyone and no matter where they are. I also work with them in person and outside of Philadelphia. I, most of the time I’m seeing them as a couple, but sometimes they come to me and the other one’s not ready yet. It’s usually a mother who’s reached out and her daughter has put up a wall and is refusing communication, invitations all of that. So usually the mom is reaching out and hoping I can help. I usually work with her for a little while individually to get her in a better place to get her relating to her daughter, understanding where her daughter’s coming from and then we invite daughter into work. [LISA] Do you have the daughter reach out and say, “Hey, I need help with my mom?” [HILARY] Sometimes. I do work with mothers and daughters of all ages but often it’s the mother of a teen girl who’s reaching out. I’m on Instagram and I’m pretty, this tends to be the place where I hang out. So I do sometimes get young women who reach out to me there who will ask, it is interesting though, daughters do reach out a lot, and typically mothers are on board if they’re being invited. They’ll say yes. There’s not usually an issue there. [LISA] Do you find that in the dynamic that both of them are highly sensitive or one of them is highly sensitive and maybe not understanding what that even is or how that can be affecting the relationship? [HILARY] Yes, absolutely. One of them can certainly be that way, be highly sensitive and the other will have a hard time understanding it. Typically, I want to say typically mothers are struggling more with understanding their daughter when she’s different from her when she has different needs. That’s difficult. I mean, it’s difficult for us as parents in general when our kids are different from us. We’ve got to learn how they function, what they need, how to meet their needs but I do think that that tends to be another layer of this is who she is and she is beautiful and perfect just as she is. So now it’s about understanding. That’s really what is at the core of this, is mothers and daughters being able to understand and listen to each other and listen to how each other feels versus the story we tell ourselves about our relationship and about the other person. [LISA] I love that. Do you find that, like the mother had trouble in her relationship with her own mother? Is it pass down generation from generation, or is that not true? [HILARY] No, it’s definitely part of a pattern. It’s always, the first or second thing I do with mothers and daughters is map their, their history. I map the mothers and daughters and their family, so their relationships with each other, and also their relationship with the men and the family to understand if they were heard, if they were supported, if they got to live the life that they dreamed of and not one of expectation or pressure of what they were supposed to do. Obviously as we go back, generations we have mothers who were getting married really young, having children very young, because they felt like that was the next logical thing to do. Many of them didn’t live out the dreams they had as a girl to be a teacher or a lawyer or go to college because they weren’t allowed to. So we do take a look at that history and see how did it impact their relationship. Sometimes the relationship will be similar between, let’s say if I’m working with a mother and daughter, we’ll map the mother’s history, so we might look at her mother and grandmother’s relationship with each other, and it might be strained and it might be difficult, but it doesn’t always, it’s not always in the exact same way. Like one of the breakdowns tends to be that women didn’t ask for what they needed. They wouldn’t ask for support or help, they would just do it all. They’re just expected to just get it done and be be responsible for everything, the kids, the home, the career, if they had it, their husband, their parents. When women don’t have their needs met, mothers don’t have their needs met, they tend to put that pressure on their daughter. The daughter feels like no one’s taking care of mom so I have to. That’s where that trickles down to the next generation so that daughter learns, no one’s going to take care of what I need. Either I do it myself, or she leans on her daughter, and then I call it the rebel daughter who decides, this is not working, this isn’t working for our family, and I’ve got to stop this pattern. She’s the one that says, this isn’t happening anymore. Sometimes that’s where the conflict begins when we have a rebel daughter and a family who stands up and says, I’m not doing it the way everyone’s always done it, and I’m going to change the course of this, but she doesn’t know that’s what she’s doing. So she’s not able to really put that into words. Often that’s where a breakdown will happen between mother and daughter, because mother’s like, what is this? What’s this life you’re leading? You’re making choices for yourself, not based on what works for the family or what makes me happy. So a lot of times that’s when I see mothers and daughters is they are reaching a new stage in life and they’re not navigating it properly because it’s all new. It’s new for where they are in their relationship. [LISA] Oh, wow. That’s really impressive how you just map that out for us. I have so many questions I want to ask, how does this affect the fathers or if there are sons involved and the whole family dynamics? [HILARY] Sure, happy to share. So some of this comes from Roka Haszeldine who’s done a lot of research in this field. One of the things she talks about is the golden brother where the daughters feel pressure, there’s expectations for them helping out around the house, being just as responsible as the mom. Then the brothers tend to have lower expectations of what they can do, what they can help with, how well they’re going to do in school. It’s so interesting because a lot of the women I talk to when we go over the family history and they have a brother, I’ll talk about that. I’ll ask about how, what were the responsibilities within the home? Always they’ll say, my brother didn’t have to do as much as I did. The younger ones the younger women or teenagers really resent that, they really do feel like it’s not fair, that thing. It’s so interesting when I open mother’s eyes to this about how there’s lower expectations for sons than there are for daughters. It’s hard to take a look at that and see what you’ve done, but when we understand that it’s been done for generations it helps us to see, okay maybe we can chart a new path here and not have such pressure for our daughters. [LISA] How long do you usually work with the mother-daughter relationship, the dynamics? [HILARY] I have it down to a science now where my goal is not to have mothers and daughters going to endless sessions for years like some of us do. It is usually six to 12 weeks, depending on what they need. I’m sort of, I’m all in and supporting them wholly during that time. It’s sessions together, it’s sessions individually. I’m educating them through the process and teaching them. So my goal is for them to not need another session for their relationship in the future because I’ve taught them everything they need to get through the next phases of their life and really make a plan for change for themselves and the daughters to come. [LISA] Oh, wow, that’s fast. Yes. Is that meeting like once a week or it’s how many, it’s whatever how many sessions you need a week? [HILARY] Yes, it’s typically about six sessions together. Then individually it’s usually between two and six. Some mothers and daughters want to take advantage of that time with me alone and so they’ll take every week, they’ll meet with me alone and they’ll meet with me together. Others do it as needed but it really helps because what comes up in their sessions together, we might decide, let’s spend a little more time pulling that apart, those feelings you shared and the situation that happened. Then I do that with each of them, and then we come back together and they can really understand each other in a different way. They’re always saying things they’ve never said in other places and understanding each other on a different level. My goal is for them to know how to listen and understand each other, but see each other with empathy too, to have empathy for each other’s role. That always happens. When they’re open to the process, that is what they always get. [LISA] I would imagine that would trickle down to the rest of the family too, with the father or the husband or their sibling. [HILARY] Absolutely. It’s hard for anything to be the same when they start to have a voice to ask for what they need and get the support that they need, take time for themselves, for their friendships, for their other relationships. Often what I see is dad is usually in a position of mediator and doesn’t have the skills to do it. So sometimes it’s actually splitting the two of them more unintentionally, but he’s relieved of that role now. They just have their relationship. They have a husband and wife relationship and they have a father-daughter relationship that they maybe need to rewrite as well. [LISA] I read on your website, the words I want more, and that is very powerful. Can you tell us about what those words mean? [HILARY] Sure. It’s often for mothers, it’s saying, I’m going to have fun with my daughter. I don’t want to settle for feeling tense. When we’re in the same room, or knowing eventually a vacation’s going to go bad and we’re going to be stressed and have lots of conflict with each other, I want to be able to get along and to just feel love from each other. I think especially for mothers as well, wanting more out of her own life and feeling like she has more control and can make more choices for herself, not always thinking about how everyone else feels and whether everyone else’s needs are met, but now she has permission to make decisions for herself. Like, no, I actually, I can’t come for dinner on Sunday night because my friends invited me to go to the movies and have a night out, and I’m going to do that. That she can say what she really wants without the guilt of, I’ve got to be there for my family. I have to, anything they ask me, I’ve got to be there to meet that need. That’s what I think I want more, is what life do you want and how do we make your relationship serve you both? [LISA] Where does that mother guilt come from? I mean, I feel it myself as a mother, I’ve talked to other mothers and there’s this guilt that I just think it’s just, we inherit just being a mother. [HILARY] We do, we do. I think it comes from this responsibility. We feel mothers tend to be blamed for everything. We see that, we see that with our own mothers. So like, oh, you didn’t pack my lunch. Or I remember my daughter said to me just a month ago, “It started to rain at school today and you didn’t pack my raincoat.” I thought, I can’t always predict the weather while you’re at school and prevent you from ever struggling. I’m human. So I didn’t check the weather for four hours into your school day, but they’re not saying the same things to their dad. They’re not talking to him about like, “Oh, you’re at work for eight hours and I don’t get to see you all day. Now I want time with you.” They’re saying that to me. The expectation is mothers are there and they give their all. My kids also had me in that way for a few years before I started to realize I need to put myself first. I need to actually ask for help, say what is working for me and what’s not working for me? I don’t need to do this all I felt like I did because I watched my mom do that and she watched her mom do that. We all had careers and we were basically full-time moms. So I think that it is ingrained in us and some of it is that we are just, mothers are blamed just historically for when things go wrong. I think, I may not be getting my facts correct here, we have to fact check this, but I think kids who were diagnosed years ago, decades ago with autism, it was, at first they thought it was because their mothers didn’t love them enough. They had cold mothers. This is what I remember from grad school learning about. Now we know obviously that’s not the case, it’s not the mother’s fault, but this is historically right, mothers are blamed for everything that goes wrong. [LISA] I want to go back to what did you tell your daughter when she said, “How come you impact my raincoat?” [HILARY] What did I say? I think I said I had no idea it was going to rain. I couldn’t predict that and I’m human and sometimes I don’t realize these things. [LISA] Was she okay with the answer? [HILARY] I say things like that a lot to her but yes, she was. She was like, “Oh, you’re right. Okay. You know you’re right. You can’t predict that it was good rain.” But I think it’s important to say those things to our kids. I’m just human. I didn’t know the weather just like you didn’t know the weather. Please don’t have a higher expectation of me to know everything in advance. [LISA] Maybe it’s that high expectation of us and maybe we’re put on a pedestal or something and we have no room to fall off. That sets us up for failure because no one’s perfect. [HILARY] Yes. I have a client I’m working with now who had said to me, just a few months ago she realized I could not, I can no longer run all the missed, the forgotten lunches and school projects and coats and things like that. I can no longer do that. My kids have to know that when they make these mistakes, that there are consequences and I’m not going to always be there to make sure that they don’t struggle or suffer. I think that it’s so important that we do that often. It’s not that we don’t love them. You need to learn that this is your responsibility and not everything falls on mom. [LISA] Can you tell me what is an heirloom experience? That sounds so interesting. [HILARY] So those are my in-person experiences and they’re on a luxury level. So when I have this summer in England is at a five-star hotel. It’s actually at Manor House in Oxford. So it’s an opportunity where mothers and daughters can come together and have every need taken care of. That’s really important. When I work with mothers and daughters is that they just feel like they’re in this safe place where they don’t have to think about anything. Like everything is just at their fingertips. I want it to be easy for them. I want them to be able to focus on themselves and focus on the relationship with each other, not all of the little details of their regular responsibilities in life. This is an escape into a world where they land and they’re picked up and they’re brought to this beautiful place and they relax and ahead of time. I already have learned about them and know their story and know where they want to go and I know what their goals are and so it’s part working together, doing the work to improve their relationship and open up the communication and teach them the tools that they need to navigate every stage of their relationship to come. Also enjoying a luxury experience, having fun. I call it an heirloom experience because I do believe that the memories they create, the change they create is passed down to the next generation so the mothers and daughters to come have more opportunity than they did and it’ll be an experience that they’ll be seeing the pictures of hearing about and knowing exactly why the mothers and daughters, the women and their family do things differently. [LISA] Wow. That does sound like an incredible experience. Is it just the mother daughter or is this like a group experience? [HILARY] So this one that I’m talking about is just for one mother and daughter. But next year I plan to offer group experiences, so mothers and daughters of different ages can join together and have this experience together. I think those will be in France. [LISA] Wow. Is there a particular age that you recommend this experience? [HILARY] Yes 18 or older but I do find, I work with a lot of young women that age who are in college and they’re in a place where they want to learn about themselves. So that is a really good age to begin having those experiences and those conversations. [LISA] When you are working with mothers and daughters, if someone, if you notice is highly sensitive, is there extra steps that you have to take or do they need something extra that they need in their relationship compared to, let’s say a non-highly sensitive person? [HILARY] I think what becomes extra time is the understanding that their needs are okay on both ends. For mother and daughter to both understand it’s okay that I have these needs, it’s okay that I’m more sensitive in these areas, or I question more, or it’s harder for me to ask for what I need or to be honest about how I feel. Because maybe in the past they’ve been told they’re too much or they need too much or they’re too sensitive. So it’s probably more time and being more gentle with that is okay, and that is who you are and that is what you need and whoever it is, whether it’s the daughter who’s highly sensitive and the mother has to take the time to understand that and to understand that that probably will not change. That is who she is. I think it’s probably more time pulling that apart and helping them understand. [LISA] Yes, the highly sensitivity is a personality trait, something that we’re born with, it’s innate within us. It’s not something that we can get rid of and we don’t want to get rid of it. Hilary, what would you like listeners to take away from the show today? [HILARY] I think what most women don’t realize is that the mother-daughter relationship isn’t meant to be difficult, and we’re not meant to have a lot of conflict because we’re sensitive or emotional or hormonal. There’s actually reasons why mothers and daughters struggle and and once they understand the history and the solutions within the relationship they truly can have a beautiful relationship where they’re feeling supported on both sides. It’s just about understanding what comes between us and what brings us back together. [LISA] I can hear it in your voice how passionate you are about this topic and the relationship between mother and daughter and how well that you listen and care and that empathetic care. [HILARY] Oh, thank you. [LISA] Where can listeners get in touch with you? [HILARY] They can connect with you on my website, which is hilarymae.com. I’m also on Instagram, like I said, I tend to hang out there the most. It’s Hilary Mae Co on Instagram. [LISA] Thank you for coming on the show today, Hilary. So wonderful to have you here. [HILARY] Thank you so much for having me, Lisa. This has been great [LISA] Thank you, my listeners, for tuning in today. Please let me know what you thought of the episode. Send me an email to lisa@amiokpodcast.com. Remember to subscribe, rate and review wherever you get your podcast. To find out more about Highly Sensitive Persons, please my website at amiokpodcast.com and also while you’re there at my website, subscribe to my free eight-week email course to help you navigate your own sensitivities and to show you that it’s okay not to take on everyone else’s problems or issues. This is Lisa Lewis reminding each and every one of you that you are okay. Until next time, be well. [LISA] Thank you for listening today at Am I Ok? Podcast. If you are loving the show, please rate, review and subscribe to it on your favorite podcast platform. Also, if you’d like to learn how to manage situations as a highly sensitive person, discover your unique gift as a highly sensitive person, and learn how to be comfortable in your own skin, I offer a free eight-week email course called Highly Sensitive People. Just go to amiokpodcast.com to sign up. In addition, I love hearing from my listeners, drop me an email to let me know what is on your mind. You can reach me at lisa@amiokpodcast.com. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want to professional, you should find one.