Evie Mpras: you you Hi, welcome, Mamas. So I imagine like most of us moms, you have been frustrated and have had frustrating experiences when someone in your extended family, like either your parent, an aunt, a sibling, an in-law, either comments or nitpicks on your choices with your baby or maybe makes passive aggressive jabs that cut deep sometimes or just dealing with rigid expectations about, when were we getting together for a holiday or how much are we going to see each other? And all of that is exhausting in itself to deal with, but it gets harder after we become parents. This can become more raw. When we are tired, depleted, we have more responsibilities, we need more support, and the tolerance goes down, almost the capacity. I've seen this a lot where, and know, women, couples that I've worked with where of these family dynamics that might be annoying before become angering. And that can come from a few different reasons. Some of it is just because we're not as depleted, it's easier to avoid. And when we are depleted and we need support, it's more frustrating when these kind of dynamics play out. But also when we have children, we start to think more about our own childhood or our own experiences because we want maybe want something different for our own kids. And so there's almost like this antenna that can go up even if we don't realize it. Being more sensitive, more absorbent, more impacted, or just connecting with the impact that family dynamics, ways of communicating that we don't like, it just gets touchier. the thing is, look, in another episode I'll get into extended family relationships and all of that. But today, I wanna get into when this happens, when you or your partner getting frustrated with extended family, either your own or in-laws, how do you guys show up for each other when these disappointments and frustrations happen? How do you protect your family unit? Because remember, you have a new family unit, now you've created one. Do you end up staying on the same side and approaching these things as a team, or do you get on opposing sides, right? Does it get adversarial? Do you get emotional support when things get rough with your parents or siblings or in-laws? Or does it become one more thing that gets avoided or too touchy to talk about or too many defenses come up? So we all know ideally extended family like our own parents, aunts, uncles, in-laws, etc. They should be. We would want them to be ideally sources of support. But again, disappointments and frustrations happen. And when there's a big backlog of history in these relationships, whether that's with our own families or with our in-laws, there can be a backlog of history with our in-laws before we have kids too. Again, it gets even more sensitive at this time. And this is why I'm not just focusing on, hey, what do you guys do to deal with this? But also the emotional support around this because there's a lot of emotional material here. to tune into with yourself and with your partner. And that can bring so much intimacy. remember when conflict, I talk about this a lot, but when conflict comes up, people usually see it as a threat or danger, but it's actually a massive opportunity for more connection. And I'm gonna share what I've seen be extremely helpful with the hundreds of families I've worked with as a therapist, when we're parenting young children. As you're adapting, as parents are adapting to a new way of being with each other, new roles, everybody gets in a new role when a new member of a family comes into a system. How you guys can show up for each other, feel supported, support your partner, get on the same page, get on the same side emotionally so you can navigate boundaries, which can be very, very hard to deal with together. So there's two big mindset shifts here that are really important. and they'll lay a better foundation for navigating. One is realizing that postpartum, you know, becoming parents early in parenthood, it's not just about caring for a baby. It's about protecting like your whole new family unit. And even if it's your second or third child, it's still, right, there's still a new member of family coming in and it creates a new dynamic and that bubble of your either family of three or whatever it is needs to be protected. You're not just someone else's child anymore. You're not just a spouse. are someone's partner and someone's parent. so the family hierarchy shifts. It goes in a different place. Now you have a new nuclear family and your extended family, and I'm certainly not saying to be dismissive or to disavow extended family. actually believe having a very close community of family, if that's possible, is extremely protective and brings a lot of meaning to life. but realizing that your new bubble family, your new nuclear family is going to have different and separate needs, okay? And to acknowledge that and to realize that there is a different shift in your family system that requires a different sort of protection or a different attunement of needs, okay? And I know that may sound simple. Well, yeah, I know we started a family, but you'd be surprised maybe how... That perspective really isn't there when we start thinking about navigating boundaries or dealing with extended family members. We kind of continue old patterns of how we usually deal with that. And that's not always gonna be the most helpful way if you're not realizing, hey, this is a new unit and the functioning of our unit is really important and may need a different approach now when we're dealing with family members. So that's the first mind shift. The second is, what is your perspective on boundaries? So often people could see boundaries in one of two extreme ways. One is like in almost a rejecting way of, yeah, hey, we need to have boundaries with everything and everyone. And that's gonna mean, you know, a closed door and a wall is gonna go up if you're not responding the way I want you to, or you're disappointing me. Now I actually see that less. That can be when there's a low capacity to deal with disappointment with family and it goes to kind of an extreme place. And usually it can go to that place because there's really been a long history of difficult family functioning. And then that tolerance just isn't there. The skillset like all around just hasn't been developed in that family for dealing with conflict and conflict resolution and talking things out in communication. Actually, what I see more of is avoidance and a massive discomfort around boundaries and a lot of narratives around boundaries that, that's rejecting family and that's going to hurt them. And then I'm to blame if I'm hurting family by holding boundaries, but it's not, it's not rejection. Okay. So it's actually, again, sorry to sound repetitive, but it's actually another opportunity to build trust. Now that may sound strange, but if you think about it, what Like, what do you find as health or intimacy in relationships? If you imagine relationships as people being able to be really authentically themselves and to share their authenticity and to share needs and being able to take your relatives' needs seriously and their limits seriously and to care about how they're affected and to show them that you care by respecting boundaries, doesn't that actually sound really nice? I mean... I think that actually I've seen it. I've seen this actually brings more closeness. So when you hear the word boundary, it may seem like a wall goes up, but it's actually not. It's just navigating and communicating preferences. It's responding respectfully. It's an opportunity to build a lot of trust because we are going to feel more trust with someone and they're going to build that with us too. When ⁓ Hey, if we share this doesn't sit right with me, actually we need such and such. If you hear someone say, be dismissive of that, right? That's gonna be kind of a wound in that moment or in the relationship. If you hear someone say, hey, I totally get it. That makes sense. I understand where you're coming from. Aren't you gonna feel closer to that person saying that to you, right? It's an opportunity for that. Now, discomfort around boundaries, I understand it, right? Because I would say most family members, unfortunately, don't respond in that way, at least immediately, where you're not going to get the hay, totally get it, you're not going to get understood. There might be some feelings on their end that leads to reactivity, either dismissiveness or guilt tripping or aggression or even shutting down. And so if one of you or both of you have family members where when you have tried to push back, when you have tried to hold a boundary that there's a reaction that's either aggressive or it ices you out or leads to guilt tripping. Well, yeah, you're not going to magically feel comfortable to be setting boundaries again. And actually, I'm going to add a third mindset shift spontaneously. is related to this is like an expectation that you can find some way to communicate boundaries where everyone's going to be happy. And I think when people chase that fantasy, it actually leads to a lot more distress. Sometimes we also, depending on the relationship, depending on the person we're dealing with, there also needs to be an acceptance of, yeah, it's really uncomfortable for me when they lash out or when they shut down or when they act like this is my fault or my issue. It's very hurtful and upsetting when that happens, but I still need to hold this boundary, right? Like there's a cost. You have to look at the... cost of if you don't hold the boundary or if you do. And what is the worst cost? Where are your priorities? ⁓ And sometimes I think just tolerating and realizing that no, finding a magical way to express boundaries won't necessarily mean that everyone's happy or that everyone is able to hear it or meet in an emotionally responsive or mature way. Okay. Now I'm not saying that's a dead end. Like, hopefully that's something that can be worked on. It depends again on the family member. If you want to start a podcast or grow your existing one, Juliana Barbati and her team have you covered. They handle the entire process from building episode funnels to production and marketing. So you can focus on reaching your audience. Visit julianabarbati.com and let them know I sent you. So if we look at three mindset shifts that are really important just to recap, one is you have a new nuclear family. The ways of dealing before with family need to change. because there is a new dynamic and a new family hierarchy in the system. And your child, your spouse, your relationship needs protection, not in a sense of, make sure we're protected from the evil forces of our family, but in the sense of we need to attune to the needs of our nuclear family and make decisions based on that priority. So that's the first mindset shift. The second is boundaries do not mean you're just rejecting. that you're trying to build walls. No, it just means that when you have certain needs and priorities and that gets communicated, that's actually just healthy family functioning. It's perfectly fair to have limits or to have certain expectations. And it's an opportunity to build trust and more closeness. And the third is do not expect that there's some magical way to implement boundaries in a way that like everyone's happy and everyone's satisfied all the time. Let go of that fantasy and shift more to this is necessary. Find out where the priorities are and if it's necessary, realize that you may need to just tolerate the discomfort of other people's reactions because you are prioritizing your nuclear family, okay? So those mindset shifts can really help, all right? Just keep in mind, when you're sleep deprived, when hormones are shifting, your identities are shifting, you're adapting to so many new responsibilities and you're exhausted, this is just a time where there's more vulnerability and when we don't navigate and take care of each other in this time of life, it's going to lead to resentment and disconnection. Especially if one partner out of the two becomes the person who deals with all the family stuff. Like that can happen too. And then that feels really unbalanced and usually leads to resentment. Now I will say just as a caveat here in very early postpartum in those first months, know, mom may be recovering and just going through so much, so depleted, adapting to so much that actually the partner, it is best for a partner to be a gatekeeper generally during that time to protect, to lay foundations for boundaries, to say, actually we are not accepting visitors at this time or et cetera, et cetera, whatever you need to do. But long-term, like as you get out of that stage and mom builds more capacity and you get kind of out of the survival mode, it's good for both to be a team in this way, okay? It's important that, you know, extended family members needs don't unintentionally just come before a couple and nuclear family needs. Again, I'm not being dismissive of extended family members. I'm actually, I personally, I come from a family that's very collectivist, that's very interdependent and I think that can be incredibly healthy and wonderful. It's just you don't want to start unintentionally deprioritizing your spouse because sometimes our needs conflict. Needs and desires conflict. And so it's going to sometimes be a matter of choosing, my spouse's needs need to come first here. Our couple needs need to come first here because when we are well, our child as well, we are able to be more peaceful and calm in our house, et cetera, okay? The goal is like that you guys are on each other's side, it's gonna feel good for both of you. And the thing is, we have to keep remembering like this reverberates onto your child. Children absorb tension, I mean, some tension is okay, I'm just saying like when this becomes a consistent or recurring thing, it's something you wanna check. What do you wanna model for your child growing up too about how... you handle and navigate things like this. So these are things that you catch in the postpartum, you know, like the first years when you have a baby, but they actually establish long-term habits, healthier habits of navigating, and it's gonna protect your guys' health, your relationship, and the way you bond together. So trust is gonna be built when it's like, we choose us first, we choose each other, we choose this nuclear family, all right? Now, look, we all know what the familiar boundary pushing looks like, right? Like unannounced visits. I hear this so much from moms that there's like pressure to host. Everyone's excited to see the baby and then they feel like, ⁓ God, does the house have to be clean? Do I need to prepare something? You know, how am going to like pump or feed, you know, with privacy at this time? And it's a lot of pressure. so sometimes there, you know, is a desire for there to be more. protection or privacy and that can get hard to communicate. This is maybe the biggest one actually, the more I think about it, the advice, quote unquote. So not just advice, but advice can come out not just as, I heard this might be good idea, but also as passive aggressive jabs or, ⁓ we didn't do all that stuff when we were, like a dismissive tone as if the choices that you might be making are silly or unnecessary or overdoing it. Definitely expectations are on holidays and travel. This comes up all the time. wanting alone time with your baby, like who gets time with a baby? Sometimes there's tension around that. And also I've heard this too, where moms feel really forgotten by their extended family. Like everything becomes about the baby once the baby's born and they're like, hey, I'm still here. I also need to be seen for what I'm struggling with too. And I'm tired and I'm doing my best. Does anyone see that I'm doing my best here? Also, cultural and generational differences. So, like had a client, they were Indian, and their daughter, know, an adult woman had married someone outside of their culture. And navigating just different approaches and the different styles and between the two different families, sometimes there were comments that weren't appreciated and that there was frustration about, and it was really hard. understandably hard for the couple to navigate, how do we talk to our parents about this? Like, this does not feel good. And it didn't feel respectful. So that's just maybe religious ceremonies that you don't participate in and the grandparents are disappointed in that, you know, things like that. So like, how do you get on the same page? Now, advice here usually focuses on what to do, what to say, what to do. And I'm going to get to that in a minute. And I'm going to give some really concrete advice. But here's the thing. This is one really important part that gets missed when there's advice around how to navigate boundaries. And I think it's the most important part, okay? And it is, can you empathize with how hard it is for one another? First, people do not get, couples do not get, when I talk about this, like, yeah, I guess, I mean, I guess we can do that. And then they see how powerful it is and how it lays a foundation for a soft connected. foundation that is just going to help you navigate these conversations in a more loving way, in a way where you really want to protect your partner. Imagine, for the one of you that wants to be protected from either intrusiveness or rudeness, and for the other partner that hasn't learned to place boundaries and is really uncomfortable with it for a variety of reasons, or maybe you're both really uncomfortable with it for different reasons, or maybe one of you gets aggressive rather than assertive or direct about it because so much has been bottled up inside. way, whatever difficulty either of you is having or both of you are having, there's a good reason why it's difficult. The thing is you can still be frustrated with your partner about the way they're showing up or not showing up, but still empathetic. Imagine, just in your body right now, listen to my voice and imagine hearing from your spouse, I totally get why it was awful hearing what my mom said to you. And I'm really upset that you had to hear that. And I know that's not okay. And even though it's really, really difficult for me to put boundaries, like I care about how you feel, okay? Imagine, right? Imagine hearing, you guys avoid hard conversations like you always have since you were a kid. I can't imagine what it's like for you now to try to... get out of your comfort zone to that level to be that intimidated for these conversations, but to really try to make an effort. I'm sorry this has been so hard for you at a time where like it shouldn't be this hard for you. I wish, you know, your parents made it easier for you. Can you imagine you and your partner hearing this from one another? It's very powerful. Okay. And I'm assuming you can see that if you heard that, if your partner hears something like that, you're going to be more inclined to want to take care of each other. Okay. So if you try to meet each other in that way, to see each other, to have empathy for why this is difficult, that's a good foundation. And then here's just some concrete tips that I'm just going to share, really briefly straightforward tips that can be helpful. First of all, have like getting on the same page conversation. Look, hey, what do we want these months to feel like? What is going to help you feel protected and supported? What are some things that you have not appreciated in your relationship with either your family or mine that you want to be shielded from or at least for there to be conversations about? What's overwhelming to you? Just getting it all out there on the same page. Then the next step is to say, where can we be flexible and where is this non-negotiable thing? example, maybe – and this is just a hypothetical. It's going to depend on you know, each couple, like, depending on what your guys' priorities are. But one way to be flexible might say, hey, I actually, I don't mind when your mom might make comments here there about like, that she's sad that we don't go to these church services with the baby, but it is really not okay with me when she criticizes me directly for how I'm raising the child. Like when she says, ⁓ you shouldn't be breastfeeding at this age, the baby's too old or something. Like, that's not okay with me. So that's just like a random example, but it could be anything. And then so that gives you a roadmap of, okay, what do we need to deal with? And it is important to see, you know, we're not trying to micromanage everything about our family or to like never be disappointed in any way. And it's good to have some flexibility. And it's good to say like, but what are my deal breakers here? Like, what is not okay? And sometimes that might evolve. because in postpartum, like I remember there were things I could not handle hearing at the, you know, like a few weeks after birth that actually didn't strike me in the same way a year later. And so it's not like this is a one and done conversation. These are, these are good conversations to have check-ins about as things evolve or as things happen. Okay. Another good tip is speak to your own family. This is not a role. Like very rarely I have found some couples where actually one could speak to their in-laws about these issues and it went okay and they all felt okay about it. So take the temperature in your own family, but most of the time it goes best when, like if it's your parents doing something that needs to be addressed, you talk to them. And if it's your partner's parents or extended family, they talk to them or sibling or whatever. Remember, it's not, and this doesn't have to be adversarial either. Do not see it as, okay, it's us versus mother-in-law. It's us versus my sibling. No. It's both of you just protecting your bubble, the bubble of your new nuclear family. Okay. It's just, it's something where it's an act of these are our family's needs right now. We take that really seriously and we still can love our family and appreciate them and still say like some of this behavior is not okay. All right. So trying to decide and have meetings about things in advance, it's not always possible because things unexpected things might come up. But checking in as much in advance as possible about like, I don't know, length of visits, visiting schedule. If you know kind of tendencies that your family members might not have, checking in about what is okay, what's not okay. And use we language. This is a big one. If you start saying, well, Angie doesn't want visitors, so we're not gonna have visitors. You're throwing your spouse under the bus, right? Well, know, Nick just doesn't want to attend the birthday party. Well, you're throwing him under the bus. We have decided because of the baby's nap schedule, we can't attend. Sometimes throwing the pediatrician under the bus is okay, like saying, well, the pediatrician recommended this and we decided to follow the pediatrician's advice. Sometimes that can be helpful too. Even saying like, this isn't something we're interested in discussing, we've made our decision, totally appreciate your perspective on this. Though we've made our decision, it doesn't need to be aggressive, it can just be pretty matter of fact. We're keeping visits short while we adjust. It just makes things a little easier. We can't wait to spend more time with you guys in some months, right? You don't need to over explain. You don't need to apologize for what you're doing, but you can also have empathy for that being hard or disappointing for a family member. I think that's okay too. I think sometimes discussions around this have gone like too far on the other side of the pendulum. It's okay to say, God, I know you can't wait to spend so much time. with your grandbaby and I know your grandbaby is going to love spending time with you and I know it must be hard not to be able to be here for like five hours. And I get that and I look forward to days like that in the future and I can't wait for you to enjoy that. Okay. You can still show empathy even when you're being firm about a boundary. Okay. So I guess the final thing I want to get into is yes, as I mentioned earlier, there's going to be discomfort. There's going to be guilt. It's hard. sometimes because of family dynamics we've grown up with to feel like you're disappointing people that there's something you're doing that's wrong. Dealing with reactive or aggressive family members or family members who will punish you for having boundaries by shutting you out or maybe not talking to you, that's very painful. It's very, very painful because it's a rejection, right? And it can be cruel. And so there might be grief here. Like, I'm not gonna pretend, again, like there's some magical unicorn sentence or something that's gonna change your relative's capacity to hear or deal with this. But again, if you're prioritizing the health of your spouse, your relationship and your child, your family unit, that sometimes can help you bear the discomfort and push back against the idea that you should feel guilty. You know, it's like natural to feel sad if you see family member sad, but it's not your responsibility. They're not sad. Your responsibility is to your nuclear family and it's okay also to have compassion at the same time for them. Okay? So there might be a lot of grief and anger and discomfort around this. And again, this is where you guys can count on each other to be with each other and how hard it is. I don't think it's realistic or kind or great advice to say, well, This is just what you should be doing and that's how you need to show up. You just need to put these boundaries and blah, blah. That oversimplifies a really emotional experience that is going to be happening. And this shouldn't be a solitary experience for just one of you to like figure out or the other one to figure out. And that's that. How can you show up for each other when it's really hard to place boundaries or when you've been impacted in a really hard way by, you know, you're a member of a family. Like it's, I think it's just hard for both. And What would it be like if you guys can share compassion with one another to offer gratitude and encouragement, to offer sympathy when things are hard in this way? So this is going to get you to a place where there's less resentment, you guys, where you're feeling more safe and connected, where you have trust in each other. And you're starting really great patterns as being, a strong parenting team as you're navigating difficult. like relationships or boundary setting with extended families. Okay. So I hope this was helpful. Click the link in my show notes to join my email list to get updates on more resources that can make things go more smoother so you guys can get unstuck from frustrating relationship patterns. I'm here for you and your family. See you next week. Bye. you