THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 254

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:01.457)
Well, Dr. Atlas, welcome back to The Accrescent Podcast. It’s been some time since we’ve had you on, and both of the previous conversations we had on generational trauma, your first book on generational trauma, emotional inheritance. And then we had you on again to talk about repressed memories, childhood trauma, and now you’re back to talk to us about your book, Come Closer. So welcome back.

Galit (00:27.358)
I’m really excited to be here today. Thank you for inviting me.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:31.717)
I know we always have such a fun time. So I think the place to start, because the audience can definitely go back and listen to some of your previous our previous episodes. So the question I had, even as I was reading through the book, is what got you, Dr. Atlas, interested in this topic so much that you wanted to write an entire book on it?

Galit (00:51.118)
Well, first of all, it is true. It’s not a small undertaking. And yet it’s almost necessary, especially after I I went after our emotional inheritance and trauma. And at some point I felt like okay, I go back to where I started. And

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:52.285)
‘Cause that is a not a small undertaking.

Galit (01:16.556)
when I started teaching and teaching at the NYU postdoctoral program, my course was on sexuality and I still teach sexuality and intimacy and relationships and somehow I felt there was a link between the way I looked at unconscious communication between parents and children and then think about everything that happens in early life.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (01:23.421)
Mm.

Galit (01:46.37)
that impacts our adult life. And our love starts with our parents.

Those are our first love objects and how that love impacts who we are in our adult life and especially in our love life.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:06.256)
Yeah, I think it’s something I was telling you off air before we started recording. The the intimacy paradox, if you will, of so many of us yearn for it, crave for it, and yet at the same time are like unconsciously rejecting it or keeping people at arms distance. And I am the poster child for this of of my whole life.

Galit (02:15.574)
Mm.

Galit (02:31.086)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But to some degree all of us, right? I think that what you’re talking about, and this book is filled with these paradoxes, is the paradox of wanting to be close and also being really afraid of it. And everything that we carry from childhood, our defenses, our wounds, of course, our losses, our longings. And

And everything we got, right, plays itself out in our patterns later in life. And some of it is with within those paradoxes of I want and I’m afraid, I want to stay close, and I’m I’m afraid of loss, but I’m staying too long in places that are already empty, right? Am I worthy enough? Do will will you am I’m am I lovable? And so on.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:21.606)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:29.798)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. For me, it was, and I see this with clients too. And I there’s so many parts I’m excited to get into. But for me, I just remember most of my life there was this feeling of I never felt lonely. You know, there were people around, but I felt very alone and just yearning and yearning. When am I gonna find the people who really get me and really understand me? And as I got older and started to do

My deeper unconscious work and tending of the psyche, what I started to realize is, there’s something I’m doing. On some level, I am keeping everyone at arm’s distance. I’m saying, like, get close, but not too close. But somehow I want you to like get around my arm that’s keeping you away from me. But it’s so scary for me to actually let my arm down and let you get closer. And so just starting to realize I had all of these.

Galit (03:58.967)
Mm.

Galit (04:12.93)
Yeah, yeah.

Galit (04:23.662)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:26.008)
unconscious narratives that on the one hand wanted closeness.

Galit (04:28.598)
You know what it makes me feel think when you say that? I’m thinking about longing, about that. Will anyone ever love me? Imaginary friends, like the the fantasy about love, right? And how in so many ways what you’ve described now could be a defense against actual relationship.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:32.23)
But yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:57.638)
Yeah.

Galit (04:57.826)
Right, because because to love is a capacity. And to long is a different capacity. They’re not they don’t necessarily match.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:02.128)
Absolutely. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. yeah. And what I see so often for clients is that longing for closeness and connection. But it’s it’s almost like this catch 22 of I will let you in when I feel that I am safe or loved. But in order to be able to feel safe and loved, I have to let you in. And so sometimes it creates this standstill in relationships that I often see.

Galit (05:15.182)
Mm.

Galit (05:31.063)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:36.261)
And so part of what I would love for you to help us understand is how do we break that catch 22? How do we break that standstill of? I want it so much, but I am so afraid or so paralyzed. And I know you talk about w I guess we’re gonna get into this, the child types and this there’s six different types you identify. So, but I’ll kind of let you lead the way because we definitely could get into each of those types more specifically. I think that could be really helpful for the audience to be able to hear, but

Galit (05:52.342)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (06:06.768)
I also want to give you free reign to take us wherever you think is important.

Galit (06:11.852)
Let me maybe start with where you’re ending, because you’re talking about so what do we do with that? Here we are, I have this dilemma, which I believe in some way or another everybody has, and everybody has it in has it in a different way. And what do we do? And I think before we go into the specifics, because each of us again has it slightly differently, there is one idea.

That is the main idea in this book. And that is that our childhood wounds are the key to our adult relationships. What that means for all of us, that in order to understand where we are stuck or what what gets in our way, we need to first look at what happened to us and and what shaped our lives early on.

And that means that we, and again, each of us in a different way, will look at the child that we used to be. And as a therapist, what I do is really invite those children in. I frame that in a more relational way as a self state, the child self-state. That is that comes in theory from Phil Bromberg.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:28.092)
Galit (07:39.127)
in the 90s that really defined the self as multiple, meaning that we are not only one self. The the old way was to really think about only true self and false self. And now we’re thinking yes there is a true true self and a false self, but our self is not unified. It’s not a one true self. We have multiple self states. What I try to do

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:44.068)
Mm.

Galit (08:08.512)
Again, I don’t use these words so much in the book, but for therapists I think that’s the framework behind it, is to really look at the different self-states. What that means is that the children we were live inside us, and we actually not only did we have multiple self-states, we also have multiple children inside us. So when I identify six different children.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:15.142)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:34.012)
Mm.

Galit (08:38.59)
I believe that we all carry more than one.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:42.384)
Right. Well yes, because even as I was reading through the six different types, I was like, ooh, I’ve got at least three of these, maybe four, that I might alternate between. And I think that’s something that we can get into a little bit deeper. But yet this premise of

Galit (08:48.614)
Mm. Exactly.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:00.312)
If I as an adult am struggling to find, and we’re using this word intimacy, but we’re not just talking about romantic relationships or even sexual relationships. It’s intimacy with loved ones, friends, whomever it is we’re wanting that closeness with. And so if I’m an adult who’s struggling to find that, attract that, or it’s in my orbit, but I’m having a hard time letting it in.

Galit (09:05.614)
Mm.

Galit (09:13.336)
Right.

Galit (09:24.078)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:26.084)
And actually receiving it, what your book is saying, what your book Come Closer is saying is we’ve got to look at childhood. What were the dynamics that were present? And I think you give such a great framework of, let’s start to identify the child self at play here. And once we’ve identified that, you give us a little bit of tools of how to work with that child self.

Galit (09:42.254)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Galit (09:48.075)
Right, and a different children, right? So for example, the first chapter is on the frightened child. The frightened child had parents who were either scared or scary or both. Many people had parents who were scary and or traumatized, scared. And you would have a hard time trusting that closeness and love are not dangerous and

I invite you through therapeutic stories, right? So in the the frightened child I tell the story of Zoe, who came to therapy because she felt that her relationship with her husband Eric was numb or dead or limited. And as we start knowing each other I learn that Zoe is actually very attached to her ex boyfriend, which she says she has an unfinished business with.

And I’m very curious about that framing and the phrase unfinished business. And slowly I I realized that the unfinished business is actually with her father. And there is a lot of fear. There was a lot of abuse in her history. And the and the examples that I give from her childhood are actually not so extreme. They’re something that

A parent could look at and say, you know, this child might be, as her parents called her, sensitive. But what we actually see is that these these parents, the father was aggressive, the mother was very passive. So Zoe did not have a safety in her life. And she had a parent who colluded in some ways, where

the mother who was very traumatized did not protect her. So sh this is this is the landscape we’re in for the frightened child. The landscape of children who are their attachment figure is both the ones who are they’re s protecting them, we’re supposed to protect them, and also the ones who scare them.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:12.878)
Mm-hmm. Right. And then how does that manifest in adult relationships? How do we know? Like for an ad for someone listening, how would they know, there’s a frightened child at play here because of this thing that just happened in this relationship or this thing I just did, this compulsive behavior I kind of went into in this relationship.

Galit (12:24.046)
Mm.

Galit (12:35.136)
You know, infant research tells us that frightened children always go towards and away. Towards and away. They are overwhelmed by a lot of strong emotional reaction to closeness, fearful avoidance or flight, or freezing, or depressive expressions, and that’s from from the research of young children.

Who are searching for the parents and backing away at the same time, seeking closeness and feeling threatened by it. That same ambivalence is something we can we can observe in in adult relationships. We often choose as as frightened children, we often ch choose you know, unavailable partners who don’t overwhelm us with too much closeness.

We can prioritize harmony and safety over real intimacy. And it’s interesting because what I found in the research is really that that ambivalence that is really difficult, being threatened by closeness, but also upset by distance. So nowhere no matter where you go, it’s a lose-lose situation. Right? That you’re you’re really

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:58.429)
Right, right.

Galit (14:02.616)
can’t be too close, but being far is very upsetting. You want and it’s exactly what you described before, right? There is a longing to be close. But then when closeness comes, it’s threatening. And I have to tell you, I think most people experience that frightened child dynamic to to some degree. To some degree. Some more and some less.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:26.394)
Yeah. And even as you’re talking, it creates this sensation of despair, that particular seesaw of I want the closeness, but I also want to run away because I’m scared. And it’s it creates this sense of despair of I’m always going between these two or how am I ever gonna get out of this? A stuckness.

Galit (14:32.15)
Mm.

Yeah.

Galit (14:45.868)
Right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:50.38)
And again, I’ve I’ve experienced that within myself for so many years and and work with clients who are experiencing that too. And it’s just it’s a particular type of kind of whirlpool that feels really hard to get out of.

Galit (14:50.638)
Mm.

Galit (14:54.53)
Yeah.

Galit (15:00.59)
Mm.

Galit (15:04.288)
Yeah, and I think therapy is a really important thing here because therapy and new relationships. Because for the frightened child, two main things happen. One is the therapist could potentially hopefully become a secure base, something that they never had before. And also the therapist becomes a reliable witness.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:25.788)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (15:33.071)
‘Cause these frightened children usually did not have reliable witnesses. They had witnesses, but those witnesses were not reliable. Like in Zoe’s case, you know. The mother was a witness. But the mother, because she had her own agenda, because she needed the family to not break, and she protected the family. The family was more important than the child, which I see your face, and I think that is s right, so common that for parents

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:36.923)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (16:01.89)
The couple or the family is more important than the child, then Zoe’s mother just dismissed what she said and she was a witness that actually gaslit her child and told her child that she is too dramatic, that this is not actual her harm, and that why can’t she be easy?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (16:27.056)
Yeah. And what a for lack of a better word, mindfuck. In that particular dynamic where one right I think the child psyche inherently knows these two people who brought me into the world are supposed to love me more and protect me better than anyone else. And so

Galit (16:33.526)
Yeah, I know.

Galit (16:42.51)
Mm.

Galit (16:46.446)
You’re right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (16:47.238)
How confusing it is when there’s one parent who is harmful in a very overt way, whether it’s aggression, you know, yelling, screaming, hitting. But then there’s a parent who’s harmful in a very covert way. That passivity, that gaslighting, that’s maybe they’re not the parent who’s hitting you, but their passivity is just as harmful and devastating and unsafe to the child.

Galit (16:54.03)
Mm.

Galit (17:01.538)
Mm.

Galit (17:05.891)
Right.

Galit (17:14.09)
Exactly, exactly. And then the child feels that the whole world is against them, right? ‘Cause it’s ’cause the the two parents or the three parents or the family is their whole world. So it does feel and and you know, in Zoe’s stories related to what you just said, there is a moment when she said, They they are my parents, so and they love me. Who else loves me? Who ha who else cares about me?

Right. And I think that is where the child is so vulnerable to blaming themselves. And the f and the frightened child tends to blame themselves. And you could hear how a new attachment figure is is crucial for the for the frightened child. The new attachment figure and if I’m thinking of therapy.

The therapist becomes someone who can process with them. By the way, not only what happened to them, but also their love t towards their parents and the confusion that you just mentioned. All of it, the complexity of that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:32.433)
Yeah, absolutely. Let’s move on. So the second one is the melancholic child. And I don’t know if we I I have these listed. We can go through them in any order we want to.

Galit (18:41.901)
Yeah.

The melancholic child is one of my favorites. And you could ask me, I think I’m I’m all of them, so it’s a you know, and and maybe we are all to some degree all of them. The melancholic child is a childhood experience, an early sense of loss, and as an adult struggles with separations and is anxious about transitions and endings. So this is the child inside us who is nostalgic.

And doesn’t want to let go. An emotional hoarder, so to speak. And what you see, and I think sometimes the melancholic child is identified more because of the symptoms as an adult than because of what happened to them as a child. And that is that as grown ups we have a lot of difficulties with endings. That means

That many, many time the melancholic child would be that person who insists to stay in relationships even after they ended. They insists to you know to to stay in their relationship, to cling to their relationship even after there is not a lot to cling to.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (20:09.669)
Yeah, that fear and what you speak to is it’s a lot of unprocessed grief over maybe loss in childhood that wasn’t supported or metabolized in a way that allows us to not be so afraid or at least so devastated by loss in adulthood.

Galit (20:31.074)
Right, right. Exactly. I what we’re talking about really that in in in some ways every melancholic child has been abandoned. and there are many ways of being abandoned, right? It could be something happens in the family. The f the fact we feel abandoned doesn’t mean that somebody did something to us, right? In in some ways, unconsciously, any form of separation or ending

Even unintentional ones like death or parental depression activates a primary feeling of being left. And in the book I write that even the act of leaving, meaning the choice to end a relationship, the choice to move or to change jobs or to you know to break up with someone evokes the same fundamental sense of abandonment. So so in

I write that it doesn’t matter who’s doing the leaving, unconsciously we’re always also feeling left.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:37.807)
Yeah. And does that also maybe manifest as if we’re using attachment theory as like anxious attachment?

Galit (21:48.507)
Very good question, because I think that you could say that melancholic children are more have more anxious attachment. I think that my model is slightly different because I feel that they could be that attachment could manifest in many, many ways for melancholic children. The melancholic child i could protest. So you’re right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (22:03.218)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (22:11.111)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (22:16.568)
to think about the the anxious attachment because what what we see in melancholic children is that they protest, that they resist, they wait, they wish. Even and and when I say we, I mean the child in us, right? Because as grown-up we maybe even gave up. But the child in us resists any change. And so I think that it’s a little broader in a sense that any change

is is a is e experienced as intolerable.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (22:53.669)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And how else does this look in relationship? And again, many of us might be thinking romantic relationship, but even even in friendships, what you know, how might this express? Is it the kind of dynamic of, you know, my my friend changed plans on me last minute and it it creates such an intense reaction within me, even if I logically know maybe it shouldn’t.

Galit (23:04.942)
Yeah.

Galit (23:16.174)
Mm.

Galit (23:22.476)
Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good example. I’ll give you another example. I think that many melancholic children are actually really afraid to be authentic and to say what they need. Because think about it that if underneath I’m always afraid that I would lose you, I have to do anything, everything, all the time to not lose you. So

I I’m very worried. I don’t want you to be af to be upset at me. I don’t want you to think that yeah that I’m asking for too much. I don’t want you to I don’t want to express d any dissatisfaction. And we often choose unhappiness instead of facing the uncertainty that comes with change. And that is, I think, true even in your example, right? That the

Those would be the friends who are not going to express a feeling of r being rejected or hurt by the fact that, you know, their friend is late or never or or actually never showed up. Right? They would say, It’s okay, don’t worry about it, as long as you don’t leave me.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (24:30.791)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (24:34.973)
Mm-hmm. Right. And then we start to see how it creates this dynamic of okay, I have you. You’re still with me. Whether it’s a friend, a family member, a romantic partner, you’re still with me, but there isn’t really intimacy because I’m not being authentic in expressing my discomfort, my disappointment, my needs. And that I feel like is such a crux of the book is

Galit (24:42.87)
Mm.

Exactly.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (25:03.843)
maybe even in some ways how these patterns allow maybe faux intimacy to persist.

Galit (25:12.014)
Mm-hmm. That’s exactly right. And the melancholic child chapter. The melancholic child chapter begins with Noor, who started therapy a few months after I lost my boyfriend to cancer. So separation and loss became the central theme of Noor treatment because she had just dropped her child and called her her only child. And she and I go in parallel processes and

this chapter is very personal. I go back and forth between us and how to talk about loss, how to stay loyal to the past while still invested in the future, how to move forward, how to mourn. And what happened with Noor is that she was married for many years, I think 25 years, and her

relationship became exactly what you described, they became really distant. They didn’t have sex anymore, they didn’t talk anymore, they didn’t they were not close to each other anymore, but nobody wanted to do anything about it. My guess is and when you read the chapter, when people read the chapter they see that her husband, Jordan, obviously pseudonyms and it was for it worked for him.

But for Noor it actually didn’t work and she stayed in that relationship because she was afraid of change. And then we learn, and I’m not gonna spoil it for people, but we actually do learn that she had a lot of loss, invisible losses and never processed as a child. She immigrated, she her family lost somebody in their family that nobody talked about, and all of those invisible losses.

appeared as symptoms when she was young, because as a child she used to hide things in her closet. She didn’t want to throw anything. So she became a l a little child hoarder who like didn’t want to throw the garbage away. She wanted to to put everything in her closet. And she and even in therapy, she at at first she doesn’t fully understand what that was about.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:18.104)
wow.

Galit (27:37.312)
So slowly we really understand that there was something there that she tried to preserve.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:46.939)
Yeah. A d a sense of I I’ve already quote unquote lost so much, I can’t lose anymore, even if it’s this piece of trash.

Galit (27:57.813)
Exactly, exactly. And you can even think about the piece of trash which I think is other people and losing things as herself too. It’s almost like she can have a breakdown and she can lose herself, which we see after she drops her daughter, you know, at college. And we see that she struggles with with the feeling that she might fall apart in the same way that her mother fell apart when she was young.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (28:30.043)
It’s so powerful. You you always write so beautifully and the way you bring in so graciously and respectfully your client experiences is I think one of the most powerful aspects of your writing specifically and why I love recommending your books to clients because it’s so digestible and relatable in a way. When you read it when you read someone else’s story like that, you’re like it just clicks so much easier.

Galit (28:57.512)
Mm-hmm. Because maybe and hopefully, you know, the way I when I wrote it, I recognized myself in each patient as well. And I say it, I’m very explicitly open about where I am in that process. So I my hope is that when people read it, I take them with me into the psychoanalytic room, into my head, into my heart, into my mind.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:05.984)
yeah.

Galit (29:26.69)
To find himself there.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:30.749)
Absolutely. So tell us about the ashamed child.

Galit (29:36.87)
So here here is the thing that we all know as therapists. I I’ll put the ashamed and the guilty next to each other for a second. Because if the guilty child feels that they did something bad, the ashamed child they feel that they are bad.

Galit (30:00.2)
As a result of feeling belittled and rejected as a child, the ashamed child inside us feels that they don’t matter, that they don’t belong, that they are that something is wrong with them. And as ashamed children, we often struggle with the feeling that we are deficient, unworthy, inferior. And that is a very, very complicated.

is structure of the mind.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:35.397)
It’s making me think a quick example, someone I’m in relationship with, not a not a romantic partner, but someone I’m in relationship with in my life. And we spent some time together over the weekend, and he came to me after the next day, and he was like, you know, I I did this, I said this. Was I bad? And that phrase just made me pause because essentially what he was trying to say is like.

Galit (30:57.75)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:03.961)
Did I show up for you, you know, as a person in my life in a good way, in a way that made you feel seen? But the phrase he used is, was I bad? And that just struck me so deeply of like, well, hang on, what what does this have to do with being good or bad? But it revealed so much of how he perceived it as if I do or say the wrong thing, I am inherently bad.

Galit (31:06.64)
Mm.

Galit (31:14.264)
Yeah.

Galit (31:20.718)
Bad, exactly.

Galit (31:29.826)
Yeah, yeah. And think about it that if I feel that I’m inherently bad, first of all obviously I feel a lot of shame for that. And what I need to do is either to hide and I think it’s very difficult to be in very intimate relationships when when you are in a shame child who needs to hide because intimacy is about being seen and being known.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:57.094)
And making mistakes. Yeah, and disappointing.

Galit (31:58.497)
And making mistakes, right? Exactly. Secure secure attachment is about making mistakes and disappointing, right? So there is something very painful for the ashamed child because the ashamed child is deeply, deeply afraid of rejection, right? Because deep inside we feel we’re not worthy. And the ashamed child, also another characteristic of the ashamed child that I that I describe in that chapter.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:04.124)
Yeah.

Galit (32:27.382)
of David that David is looking for w what we call the one, right? The best person, the person that is like amazing, right? And of course, very and and one in some ways the the emotional dynamic underneath is that an attempt to feel worthy by associating yourself with someone who you perceive as special. So you look for someone really, really special to manage your own shame.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:56.048)
wow.

Galit (32:56.15)
And of course everyone falls short, right? Because who is who could be that special and so and that good if we use the good and bad, to to make up for intense shame.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:12.889)
Yeah. What are the childhood dynamics that create this ashamed child complex or archetype?

Galit (33:21.71)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s usually being humiliated as a child, being belittled, feeling small. You know, the the ashamed child, it’s really interesting. It to me, again, if I go back to the ashamed and the guilty, which is another chap chapter later on, the the guilty child is afraid of being too big. It’s afraid of their power. They’re afraid that they might do something wrong. The ashamed child is a fr is really feeling too small.

And a lot of what they do, and by the way, you could be both, which is interesting. You could you could you you don’t have to be afraid only of not one of those, you could be afraid of w of both. And as as in a shame child, there is a feeling that pe you feel easily rejected, humiliated, that you’re that that something is really that you’re deficient. And a lot of it goes back to attacks on the self by care.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:55.697)
Right, right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:00.456)
Uh-huh.

Galit (34:20.024)
Givers, you know, or or many times extreme abandonment. And in in David’s story, we see that his childhood memory are so he at the beginning he doesn’t even remember them, you know, and he he doesn’t talk about his father at all. And then slowly we really we really understand how.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:26.493)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (34:48.312)
how small he felt and how how much how much envy he had towards his sibling siblings who were more loved than him, how how neglected he felt. And there are a lot of really heartbreaking moments in that chapter that describe David’s childhood.

Like wanting to connect with the parents and the p his father never shows up. His father says he shouldn’t come to visit him, that his parents were were divorced. And so he’s left his his defense was really to erase his father. And but in therapy you trace that, right? You you you listen to what’s missing and the father was completely missing.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (35:32.645)
Mm.

Galit (35:43.305)
at the beginning and it’s interesting because I I write in that chapter that many patients actually start therapy by talking about the parent who was more available and more present in their life. Paradoxically. Right? With the safe parent. And I think as therapists it’s it’s sometimes remembran to remember that the parent that the patient talks about is not necessarily

Leigh Ann Lindsey (35:56.506)
Right.

Galit (36:12.84)
the n it sometimes it is, but not always and not necessarily the parent that was the most harmful one. we always listen to what’s missing, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:19.709)
Yeah, completely.

Completely. I you think about it, the parent who was present just by default has so many more instances of letting you down, disappointing you, because the parent who wasn’t present just wasn’t there to make a bunch of disappointing mistakes other than not being present. So it’s so powerful and I think it’s a good reminder for all of us to go.

Galit (36:33.847)
Right.

Galit (36:43.586)
Right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:48.609)
Who do I often, you know, in in therapy or in conversations with friends, which parent am I talking about the most? And why am I not talking about the other one? And what’s there?

Galit (36:55.694)
Mm.

Galit (36:59.79)
Mm-hmm. I think that’s really good question. It’s a really good question for for patients. It’s a good pati it’s a good question for therapist to keep in mind, not necessarily to interrupt. You know, just keep in mind there is a parent who is missing. And I think it’s also a good point what you’re saying for for for parents too. Because sometimes if you are the parent who is present, you’re going to get all the emotional hunger, the frustration.

you know, everything that belongs also to the other parent, but the other parent is not safe enough to to express it towards them. So so the child will ch always choose to start the communication with with the parent who is present. Which is not fair to parents.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (37:44.666)
Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I can see, excuse me, I could see how that would also for the parent manifest as this kind of hopelessness of, wait a second, but I was the one who stayed. I was the one who showed up. Why am I coming under so much fire when, you know, the other parent is the one who left us or abandoned or just was completely emotionally absent, whatever it might be. Mm-hmm.

Galit (37:56.777)
I know. yeah.

Galit (38:11.06)
Mm-hmm. And as in David’s story, the absent parent often becomes idealized. It becomes bigger than life. It becomes longed for, going back to longing. It’s the parent that you we really, really want to have. And that’s too very it can be very, very painful for the parent who woke up at night and made all the lunch boxes and was actually there.

where they are they are so to speak taking for granted it’s not always like that but sometimes when it’s not processed enough that parent becomes the parent that is there and the other parent is idealized and and longed for.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:02.535)
Can you talk for a second about the shame blame cycle that sometimes appears in adulthood be f be coming from the ashamed child?

Galit (39:09.794)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s a very that’s a very complicated cycle because we because shame is an intolerable feeling and even in therapy it is very very shameful to talk about shame and it’s very difficult to talk about shame it’s and it usually happens way into the treatment when the

the therapist and the patient and therapist already established something really stable because it’s intolerable. What ashamed children tend to do is to try to get rid of the shame through blame. So when I feel ashamed, I will project some of it on you and

I will be defensive and blame you for something because I really cannot tolerate staying with the feeling that is already overwhelming that I’m bad or that I did something bad. So we see that a lot of defensiveness and and blaming happens because of shame.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:35.451)
Yeah, and it’s it’s the defense mechanism is I can’t reckon with this perception, this internal perception that I’m bad. So actually I need to make you bad. It’s you. You did something and you’re bad, and so that’s how I can protect myself from having to sit with this overwhelming perception of myself.

Galit (40:43.854)
Mm.

Galit (40:49.624)
Yes.

Galit (40:59.596)
Yes, yes. And that is what you said before, related to patterns in in romantic relationships, that when the ashamed child sees anything that is not perfect in the other person, they will project their own shame and will immediately be turned off by that person who is not perfect. I found something wrong with you. So I’m gonna leave you.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:23.175)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:29.649)
Yeah.

Galit (41:29.708)
You know, because you become an extension of me. I project myself on you. And if you, you know, are I’m trying to think of an example of of being not perfect, but it could be actually anything. I hear it from patients. It could be anything that is where nobody’s perfect. So it could be anything that they locate the imperfection in the other person and and project their own feeling on them and usually abandon them because that’s the part of

Leigh Ann Lindsey (41:51.612)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (41:59.575)
ourselves that we want to abandon.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (42:01.35)
Yeah. Yeah, completely. You know, and this underlying sentiment of I feel that I’m so bad. You already said this but in different words, I feel that I’m so bad that my partner needs to be so good to make up for my badness. You have to be perfect to make up for this.

Galit (42:16.652)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. You have to be perfect. So I am you are my girlfriend and you reflect on me, who you are reflects on me. So I get some specialness or goodness through you in association with you. And especially I think that is true in romantic relationships, you know, it’s

It all has a flavor of narcissism if you hear it. It could be I don’t like to use that word because I think that narcissist we are all narcissists in one way or another, right? And I think that it’s on a spectrum between malignancy and healthy narcissism. And I think even shame is on that spectrum between you know, shame that is inevitable that we all feel, we all feel shame. It’s a human feeling.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (42:51.218)
Right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (42:56.263)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:04.412)
Yeah.

Galit (43:16.652)
between excessive shame that that paralyzes us and and and impacts our relationships in in very extreme ways.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:27.867)
Yeah. And again, just keeps keeps people at arm’s distance. You what you’re talking about here is, you know, on the one hand, in its extreme, this is manifesting as I can never no one ever stays in my life very long. And this might be the person who kind of has a track record of every few years their whole friend group resets. They they never have a romantic partner for very long. Maybe they’re in and out of the family unit because, you know, they

Galit (43:32.024)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:55.484)
The family disappoints them, so they have to reject them completely, and then they come back around. But yeah.

Galit (43:56.246)
Mm.

Right, right. And they ghost people. You know, a lot of I don’t know if that’s a word, ghosters. People who ghost others in in repetitively are ashamed children.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:07.805)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:13.853)
Yeah, yeah. So being wary of time, I want to see if we can work in the invisible child, because that’s the one I identify with the most. And then the the chosen child. And I think the chosen child is so important because I think this is the child who in the family unit, the other siblings, maybe even other people in that family unit, might look at them and go.

Galit (44:26.709)
Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:39.375)
You have nothing to be bummed about. You were the golden child. You were always treated the best. You shouldn’t have any complexes.

Galit (44:42.595)
Right.

And that’s actually the w the one of the darkest childhood wounds, the most complicated ones is the chosen child that is lingered into adulthood as well. And so I think the interesting thing is that we left for the and the invisible child and the chosen child, both of them are the main childhood wounds that characterizes therapists. And

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:07.234)
no.

Galit (45:09.644)
Yeah, yeah. Many, many, many therapists, not only as I said, you could be six and seven, and even even children that I did not mention. But the invisible child is develops the art of disappearing as a way of coping, the way to cope with feeling invisible. And later in life lives with a constant battle, I write, between the need to be known and the fear of being exposed. And here we are.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:26.705)
Yeah.

Galit (45:41.143)
Right and as a psychoanalyst of sitting behind the couch. I was just writing a a Substack for my Substack page you know, a post about for how did we end up behind the couch? And that’s that Winnicottian quote it is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found. And that is true for every every invisible child.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:01.606)
Yes.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:05.273)
Mm-hmm. That’s it. I mean, that is the crux of I think for me, the invisible child is the one that comes out in the deepest moments. And a pattern of mine is a lot of people from the outside looking in go, Leigh Ann, you’re so vulnerable. You’re so open. You share things that I could never share with so and so or this or that. And so there’s an appearance of vulnerability on my end, and yet

Galit (46:15.31)
Mm.

Galit (46:29.272)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:31.319)
Those things might be vulnerable to them, but they’re not vulnerable to me. But in a true moment of need, my what what is actually vulnerable to me is so hard, almost impossible to actually share and ask. I can I can break down on my own and then later tell you about the breakdown when I don’t need you anymore. But in the moment of a breakdown where I am actually in need, it is almost impossible to ask for help because it would be so devastating to actually need it and not get it.

Galit (47:01.506)
You summarized it perfectly. I have nothing to add, you know, because what you’re talking about, and that’s the main thing, is vulnerability. And the definition of intimacy is mutual vulnerability. So d the the invisible child really learned to perform vulnerability, but actually hide it. And not trust anyone and be super self-reliant. So here

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:04.446)
Ha ha ha.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:30.407)
Hyper independent.

Galit (47:31.641)
Hyper independent. And I would even I know in in in the chapter I talk about pseudo-independence, you know, because underneath every very independent, especially hyper independent child, there is a a huge emotional hunger and lack. Right? And I’m shifting to the chosen child, which is a here we go, and tell me if you identify with that. The chosen child is

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:49.275)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:55.28)
Beautiful.

Galit (48:02.078)
enmeshed when one with one parent. It’s as you said, it’s the child who people say, what you have such your mother loves you so much. And that’s true. Your mother or your father, it’s not gendered, that parent, one parent, not both, loves you so much. But you’re unable to become your own person, your own separate person. And what it means is that that parent that you

care about and afraid that they are sa when they’re sad and afraid when they’re lonely and know everything about them and enmeshed with is a parent that you feel very, very responsible for, for their well-being. And basically it’s a parentified child who has been who has been cast in the role of the caretaker. And usually it is to a parent who didn’t have caretakers in their own childhood.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (48:43.719)
Hmm. Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (48:50.493)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (48:59.734)
So they recruit the child. It’s very easy to recruit children for any role we want them to play, right? To become our caretakers, especially if it makes them feel special. And I think that’s the trap of the chosen child. They feel special.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (48:59.835)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:10.371)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:16.733)
Yeah. But what makes them feel special is l a loss of identity. I am special only when I lose myself to you, become what you need, care for you know, attend to you, attuned to you. And I imagine part of how that ripples out is

Galit (49:29.294)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:36.862)
It might be difficult to actually have my own identity. You kind of find yourself, no matter what group you’re in, you’re agreeing with everything that’s being said, and you’re kind of like floating from, you know, identity to identity. And all of it maybe rings true a little bit, but not totally. But I also wonder, I’d love your thoughts on this, if some that also manifests as a subtle anxiety, because I think the child who becomes the parent’s caretaker.

Galit (49:41.806)
Yeah.

Galit (49:45.3)
Mm-hmm.

Galit (49:52.814)
Mm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (50:03.127)
on some level understands I am not equipped for this. And I see that sometimes manifest as this like chronic self-doubt. Can I actually handle things? Because they were given something they really couldn’t handle at such a young age.

Galit (50:07.776)
Mm, mm.

Galit (50:13.74)
Yeah.

Galit (50:17.504)
Mm-hmm right. And they also can’t trust themselves because what happens is a vicious cycle is the more you cannot differentiate from for the from the parent and you need to take care of the parent, right? So you learn that you can do that and you really, really, really you have a superpower in that way. But because you’re not differentiated, you can’t actually trust your own mind. So what what we see really is from the outside, the chosen child appears capable, impressive.

many times accomplished, a great performer, but on the inside we feel very lonely, very insecure and often empty.

And I wanna say, you know, the chosen child is the hardest thing to resolve in therapy.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (51:12.413)
Hm.

Galit (51:14.092)
Because and you see that the the tra there are many traps in it. First of all, it’s a seductive. There is a seduct seductive sense of being admired, important and special, and nobody wants to lose that. There is also a real fear of losing the parent. A lot of these parents are responding very negatively to the children’s attempts for autonomy or separation.

Many, many of these people do not have partners because the parent is their partner for the rest of their lives. And if they have partners, the partners have to be recruited in similar ways to take care of their parents. You see partners who are financially, physically, emotionally become an extension of the child, because otherwise they’re rejected from the system.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:05.796)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Galit (52:10.528)
And also there is some illusion of agency. There is an illusion that it was our choice. And this is our achievement. You know? And I think that many times therapists could become too ambitious. And that creates extra layers of resistance, because resistance or r to change already is inevitable.

in the chosen child dynamic.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:42.385)
Yeah. my gosh, there’s so much more we could get into, but I know you’ve got to jump off and we have a hard stop. What I wanna say, just for the audience to understand, is naturally in the book, you go much deeper into each of these child types. You’re giving patient examples, but then you’re also talking about how do we start to repair this wounded child. And you give very specific ways to help repair the invisible child, repair the guilty child.

the ashamed child. And I think that’s important for the audience to know that you also offer guidance of, okay, and what do we do with this? Once we’ve identified it, what do we do with this?

Galit (53:18.318)
I know. I know. It’s important because otherwise it means that I’m leading you into a very, very scary place and leaving you there. It’s like, okay, now this is who you are, goodbye. And that’s not what we’re doing here, right? I think that first of all, we’re talking about awareness. We’re talking about giving these children a seat at the table and starting to have a dialogue with them. And in the in the book I really give a lot of examples of what kind of dialogue appears.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:26.557)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Galit (53:46.326)
In therapy and outside of therapy. It’s not just about therapy. It’s like what do we do when we identify ourselves as, you know, the the melancholic child or the chosen child? And how and and where where do we change and especially as it’s related to our later adult relationships, how do we not re you know, repeat those patterns?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:14.331)
Yes. So tell the audience just last before they go where they can find the book when it comes out. I wasn’t actually sure if it was out yet, publicly available. So where they can find it when it comes out.

Galit (54:25.866)
September twenty-ninth. You can find it in all the bookstores. you could find it on my Instagram page, galit_atlas, on my Substack page and I’ll I’ll keep talking about it. So hopefully you can you can find me.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:43.031)
Yes, yeah. And we’ll make sure it’s all linked in the show notes as well so people can find it really easily. Well, Doctor Atlas, thank you so much.

Galit (54:50.937)
Thank you so so much. This was a real real good conversation.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:56.594)
Mm-hmm.