THE GOOD ENOUGH MOTHER PODCAST

somatic tools for

congruent parenting

December 13, 2022

MATRESCENCE, CONGRUENT PARENTING, SOMATIC TOOLS, PARENTING PODCAST

with psychologist and motherhood coach Yara Heary

In this conversation I speak with psychologist and motherhood coach Yara Heary.

Yara supports women to find their place of balance and authenticity as mothers. Today she shares ways to come home to our bodies in those moments when mothering can bring up hard feelings, using somatic tools for nervous system regulation which can help to connect with ourselves and our children in a way that fosters intimacy and trust. We look at the process of repairing with our children after a rupture, what this feels like for children and for us as adults who may or may not have received repair as children ourselves.

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“When we are angry, what happens is there is dysregulation - we cannot communicate with this sort of frontal lobe, the part that does all of the problem solving and being able to rationalise and doing the breath work allows that to come back online because it soothes the nervous system. So it's wonderful, but whatever it is that works for people, whether that's going and doing some movement, shaking, going outside and standing in the grass, feeling the sun on your face, splashing water on your face, whatever it is that works for people - find the thing that allows you to reconnect with that part of the brain that allows us now to go okay, what do I need to do in this moment?"

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast
“I'm getting congruent with how I'm speaking and how I'm feeling. So they can really pick up on that sameness there. And then when they are not around, the stuff that I do is expressing anger is some rage release practice. And that really involves just a lot of screaming. And I mean, like the kind of shouting and screaming that really connects me back to the sounds that I made when I was birthing. So it's not, it's not this high pitched kind of screaming. And I talked to the kids about that, I never do that in front of them. Because it's just, it's a lot. But I do talk to the kids about it. And I encourage them to do it. And I can hold space for that, so I can be there when they're doing that, because it doesn't frighten me. So I encourage them to do that. Sometimes when I can see the tension between them, and it's really escalating, I might take one of them outside and encourage them to do that with me to try and release some of that and then do a little bit of breath and then return back and see if we can work out whatever the problem was. So that's kind of what some of that somatic work looks like, some basic stuff in relation to the kids.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast
“So if we have been taught to fear things like anger, or sadness, then we can, whether consciously or not, sort of shut that down in our children as well, which then sets up the possibility that there's going to be that suppression for them as well. And especially for women, one of my biggest things is really teaching them about how our own anger and how to really harness that, and use it to actually create change in their individual lives as well as on a bigger scale.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast
“What would it feel like, if you had a parent come to you now and offer that repair to you now that they may never have done before? And this is for some people, that's like 20 years on, 30 years, and 50 years on? Most people, when I ask them that question, become really emotional about that. It's very profound to even think about that. So imagine the power of repair close to the moment when there's a misattunement in the first place. We're not perfect, we will never be perfect, we're always going to have misattunements in our relationship with our children, but we can be armed with tools to be able to manage that.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast
“One of the things that I find with working with women in this space is that there are so many kinds of like rules and standards and history involved in who they are, up until that point, that sometimes the work that I do involves kind of peeling back a lot of that and getting to the core of who they are, so that they can make really independent choices about what matters for them as women, what matters for them as mothers, and then use that information to really guide them along their journey.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast
“I definitely had times where I acted in ways that were not in alignment with my values around mothering, right. But what I always did was I repaired that, whenever I could.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother Podcast

Using our voices.

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother

“The other thing that I do a lot of as well as I add, like a vocalisation, which just sounds like a zoo sound when I do the outbreath. And often he comes in and puts his head on my chest, because he really likes the sound of the vibration. And sometimes that's enough to calm us down together as well. It's a beautiful co-regulation thing there as well”.

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— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother

“And even the very fact that children cry, that's one of the things that I hear as well, a real concern for my children - my child is crying. And that must mean they're unhappy, or I'm doing something wrong. Crying is just the way that babies and children communicate. So that doesn't necessarily mean that something that you're doing is wrong.

The other thing, thing that I want people to take away is that we will never be able to protect our children from harm 100%, and sometimes that harm may be as a result of what we do, right? When we respond in a way that's out of alignment with our values. We ignore their feelings, there are misattunements that happen all of the time in parenting and in mothering. But what we can do is we can repair and we can also teach our children the tools to be able to manage distress. And that's I think, the more important goal. For us as mothers giving our children the skill set to be able to manage disappointment to be able to manage something that could end up being a trauma. Whether that's something that happens with us or something that happens externally at school or whatever, it's giving them the actual skills to be able to process that themselves, giving them a safe space to talk about how they're feeling about these things. And giving them strategies.

I do a lot of some added work as well as giving them strategies to actually manage these things somatically. So that's what I would say to people because I know especially because there's so much perfectionism in mothering. When people learn about attachment, or about this sort of family of origin stuff, they can be worried about the impact it will have. One of the things is that if you're thinking about this stuff, you already have so much more insight than potentially your parents had.”

meet

YARA

HEARY

Yara is a Perth psychologist and motherhood coach who works exclusively with women throughout conception, pregnancy, and motherhood. Yara started Life After Birth following the birth of her first son which started her on yet another journey of self-rediscovery. Her experiences throughout early motherhood drew her to support other women as they navigate their own family of origin dynamics, the social programming of the “good mother”, relationship changes with those around them, identity shifts, and role changes to find their place of balance and authenticity as mothers.

“At the core of all of that, the work that I do is on helping mothers gain a sense of or get in touch with their true authentic selves, and to bring that into their mothering so that it starts to inform their behaviours through their value systems.”

— Yara Heary in conversation with Sophie Brock, Ep #85 The Good Enough Mother