The Inner Work Behind Staying Present, with Matthew Fishleder

Debbie:
Hey, Matthew, welcome to the podcast.

Matthew Fishleder:
Thanks so much for having me.

Debbie:
I would love to hear a little bit more about you. just give us a little bit about your background and the lens through which you do the work that you do and maybe as part of that your personal why.

Matthew Fishleder:
Yeah, I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist in Maryland, Virginia and California. I work with adults on understanding kind of a depth oriented way their current relationships, how they’re showing up with important people in their life, especially parents. and the connections between what the present moment can feel like and a person’s own past experiences in a relationship, like how we show up as parents relative to how we were parented, the impact that the lifespan can have on the present moment. The journey is both being a child of parents and a parent myself. But also I’ve been interested in this work since high school. I started reading about psychotherapy and the benefits of a healing relationship when other kids were playing sports. And it’s always been a deep curiosity of mine, a passion of mine to connect. people’s stories.

Debbie:
Yeah, I actually read in your bio that you were using nonviolent communication to help support conflicts in the fourth grade. Can you say more about that?

Matthew Fishleder:
Yeah, yeah, in fourth grade there was this conflict resolution team at my school that I volunteered for. was just inclined. It was like, yeah, I want to do that. That when we saw any kind of dispute or even like a physical reasonably safe physical fight on the playground. I would go toward that and I would ask people to stand, would you stand over here? You stand over here. And why don’t we talk about what happened and try to use I statements, sentences that start with I. I feel or I was doing this. And we would kind of parse through whatever the conflict was. And I just found that the process of helping people through that present moment was really rewarding. And I went different directions in my life and circled back to counseling and psychotherapy. It’s always been kind of a sort of home base for me.

Debbie:
Wow. That’s super interesting. Yeah, when I read it, I didn’t realize it. I was like, wow, you are a very precocious young person, but that’s so cool that there was actually a formal kind of team, conflict team. That’s very cool.

Matthew Fishleder:
Yeah, I had my little blue shirt with a conflict resolution team on it. Yeah. Sure.

Debbie:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So all right, well, let’s let’s move into the present day then and I you know, in the work that you do with parents and I’d love if we could kind of to start so we’re all on the same page, kind of define this idea of a parent’s inner life and go a little deeper there. What does that mean? And when you refer to a parent’s inner life?

Matthew Fishleder:
I guess I’m thinking of the experience inside that we are aware of, that we’re less aware of as we’re parenting in those moments, in the things that we are sometimes say out loud and sometimes not able to say out loud. reality of just how frustrated we can be feeling. We’re trying to manifest a sense of calm and trying to get a kid out the door or into the bath or out of the bath. Also the inner life, meaning the connections between how our inner experience of that moment looks and what that might be connected to. in terms of other stressors in our day, in our week as parents, other relationships from our past, from childhood, from adulthood, even from the present, marital relationships, social relationships, co-workers, the parents in your life, I think of being this sort of holistic wholeness to what it is to be a person who is parenting.

Debbie:
Yeah, and as you’re saying that a person who is parenting, think, so many of us, me included, I had no idea that becoming a parent was going to kind of lead me on this, you know, deep dive into who I was as a person and kind of really shine a big spotlight on all of my things, all of my stuff, all of my baggage. So can you talk a little bit about that, you know, this maybe it’s a surprise for a lot of parents. I’m curious to know from you how that kind of hits people when they realize, this is a totally different journey than I realized I was on.

Matthew Fishleder:
Yeah, it’s a journey of of growth, of self-discovery, and in a lot of surprising ways to recognize that there’s this, there’s all of these undiscovered, unexplored, really uncharted areas of oneself that get activated and that get kind of partially lit up as we’re parenting, as we’re going through the the process both in really starting from many leading up to pregnancy even. And certainly from the newborn period all the way through. I was telling my son the other day about the first time I looked at him realizing that I didn’t. realized that I could love something this way and this much. That even that was just a deep surprise. It was like, my gosh, there’s this depth to love that I never could have imagined. That’s true of love, that’s true of joy, that’s true of frustration, that’s true of guilt, shame. jealousy, well, it’s kind of the range of human emotions we can encounter in new ways. And it can be surprising. And that’s why I often try to work with parents on normalizing these things, meaning getting a sense that it’s within the range of what parents experience and that these are acceptable things to be feeling and thinking as surprising and shocking as they may be.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s super uncomfortable, right? Especially if the areas of ourselves that are revealed are maybe parts that we’re, we don’t maybe like so much, right? You know, to kind of show this side of ourselves that might feel out of control or you know, I know there are no bad emotions, but things that don’t feel great to experience. I’m wondering, you you said there try to let parents know that these are all within the range of normal parent experiences, but where do you find resistance to that? Because I know I resisted kind of accepting that part of me. What does that look like in your

Matthew Fishleder:
There’s oftentimes I find that there’s kind of at the surface level, it can feel like when somebody says this is a normal range of feeling and you can feel it and you can make your own choice about what to do, that can feel like qualitatively for some, for many people, really similar to what I would call like a fawning. response of identifying here’s what I’m feeling, it’s not safe for me to express that, it’s not safe for me to feel that, so I have to stuff that away. or I have to let that out authentically. And when neither of those feels doable, feels acceptable, we’re stuck in this like double-bind of not allowing ourselves to feel what we’re feeling in order to be safe, not allowing ourselves to express it. And as a result, feeling like we have to change ourselves, like we have to withhold something, we have to act in a way that feels unnatural with our kids. that can be a tough difference to navigate and it can be Yeah. say a child is,

Debbie:
Can you give an example of what that might look like in real life?

Matthew Fishleder:
It’s time for a kid to get their shoes on so they can get to the bus on time. We can identify in ourselves that we’re feeling frustrated and we can try to take the acceptance of that feeling and ask ourselves, okay, I’m feeling frustrated. What do I need to do to help my kid in a way that’s aligned with my values as a parent, as a person, to help my kid get out the door on time, to help him get his shoes on? And parsing out for that particular person what’s aligned for them versus I’m feeling so frustrated with my kid. and I need to yell at them. I need to, not necessarily the conscious decision to, but that impulse, that reaction. Or I have to pretend that I’m not frustrated speak in as close to a calm sounding voice as I can. A shaky voice, a tense voice. to just get him to put on his shoes. And it may produce something seemingly similar. Honey, it’s time to put on your shoes so you don’t miss the bus. And there are these small differences in the way that a person is thinking about it and also potentially in the ways that it affects the kid because children perceive these these pair of communications, the tone of voice, the tension, the shakiness, the uneasiness or uncertainty, and can feel the urgency and the pressure when what a parent is trying to do is to slow themselves down, to slow their kid down, ultimately to speed their kid up to get their shoes on.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s like trying to be a magician in some ways, I think. And especially, you know, with neurodivergent kids who tend to be highly sensitive, they feel our energy before we even know what’s going on. So I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about kind of anxiety and chronic worry. I think, you know, I’ve been interviewing a lot of folks about anxiety and concern that we have about our kids’ future about their social lives, about their screen time, about their futures, right? It’s a really complex time to be human. and especially to be raising complex kids. And there is so much kind of depletion and concern and worry that so many parents are navigating. could you talk maybe broadly about what you’re noticing in your practice or kind of what kind of things parents are coming in with that where you see kind of the most need for support when it comes to anxiety and worry?

Matthew Fishleder:
I think we are fundamentally, in many ways, animals that seek to have a sense of control over the world around us. It seems to be part of how we’re put together. And especially as parents, I was saying earlier, looking at my son for the first time, my firstborn, especially in encountering the feeling for the first time There’s that inclination toward having control, being the best parent, doing all the things right, and in looking for answers, both in the world around us and internally. we can counter all these different ideas. In one doom scroll, we can find a TikTok video that tells us to have more screen time and a TikTok that tells us to have less and a TikTok that tells us it doesn’t matter. Fundamentally, it’s about the parents desire to set up their kids for success in their own independent life. And tend to shy away from giving advice on these things if only because even in research there’s so many different answers. But what I do often speak to parents about is just how confusing it is and to validate and again normalize. We’re not equipped to do what we’re driven to do as parents. to set up our kits for success in every single way. And the anxiety comes out of that very human need to experience control and anxiety actually presents us, presents the conscious mind with a sense of control, almost illusion of control in that if I can… think through every possible scenario if I can look at every possible study or American Academy of Pediatrics page that I’ll be able to come up with the answer and Ultimately we’re talking about balancing Our best efforts to prepare kids to make their own choices with being able to tolerate the uncertainty and the ambiguity of it all. I wish I had a better answer, but the anxiety is so natural. I come back to that idea of normalizing and universalizing this stuff. Of course, you’re anxious about where your kid’s gonna go to college. Of course you’re anxious about… whether to do this type of preschool or that type of preschool, whether more screen time or less screen time, and exactly what kind of screen time. The important piece, I think, is that parents are thinking about it and helping people to see the natural inclination toward wanting control and the presence of anxiety. That anxiety can be adaptive, can be helpful in thinking through what are my attitudes about screen time and how can I help my kid to think through to develop their own over time independent complex view of something like this, of something like screen time.

Debbie:
Yeah. I mean, I think in everything that you shared, mean, a lot, my, my brain was pinging in lots of different directions. One is that I’m currently reading Dan Pink’s book called regret. And he talks about if only versus at least, and how our brains spend so much more time focused on the if onlys. And I think, you know, what you’re saying is we’re always trying to prevent making the wrong decision as if there is a right way to do this. and I think today there really aren’t there, there are no rules. Like things are moving so quickly. Technology is advancing exponentially. No one has raised kids in this kind of climate with these, you know, just what our kids are exposed to. It’s a very unique time. I was actually just having a conversation in my community about the chronic hypervigilance that so many of us have and, specifically surrounding our ability to track our kids locations and how that just that piece of technology can create so much stress and anxiety and hypervigilance and just this almost obsessive checking of as if by knowing where our kids are we can control things I’d love to know your thoughts on that level of hypervigilance.

Matthew Fishleder:
I’ve been kind of tossing this idea back and forth in my head about, or many ideas, about the reality that we are these animals in 2026 with brains that haven’t evolved much in the last 200,000 years. We have the same hardware. We have the same software. The same operating system. And we have, we keep developing this new software. We’re these animals that lived in small tribes that we could be out hunting and wonder, is our kid out hunting with me or is my kid with the tribe? Does my kid have enough food? or not? Is there a predator near a camp or not? And have the same fundamental brains that are trying to adapt to social media, cyber bullying and having an air tag or knowing exactly where your kid is, the hypervigilance about grades and all of these levels of civilization that have been built up over the last 200,000 years, 8,000. So it’s natural for us to be inclined toward being vigilant. And it’s so important because that’s how we keep our kids safe. And the question is how to balance vigilance with the technology, for example, they were saying that allows for hypervigilance. A parent can, from what I understand, go online and check what their kids’ current grades are at any time in the semester. Our anxious brains are fed by that information. And the acceptance of the need to have that information balanced with what am I choosing? to do, how often am I choosing to check where my kid physically is on my phone? It’s about making decisions about the anxiety, but we’re naturally inclined to want to protect our kids. It’s so important. It’s so important.

Debbie:
We’ll go to break in a minute. But before we do, I’m just curious, what happens to a parent’s identity, their sense of self when raising their, you know, in our case, neurodivergent child and all that comes with it becomes kind of our core identity becomes so all consuming, that it kind of crowds out other aspects of who we are.

Matthew Fishleder:
That’s a big part of what I work with parents in therapy on in part because what can happen is when one part of the identity can become so central at a conscious level, kind of so when we become so focused on it, other areas of of stand in the background. In that image of like the Homer Simpson gif where he’s backing into the bushes. Like I gotta get out of that parenting identity of takeover in terms of interacting with the kid, with our kids, especially neurodivergent kids who need a lot of support from their parents, a lot of support. Contrary to what the conscious lived experience might be in those periods, we have this, you talking about, you mentioned parts earlier, we have all of these parts. of ourselves, all of these different facets of identity, these different layers of ourselves, that in getting our kids through their routines, through their days, trying to help them to live sustainable and responsible lives, these other parts of ourselves kind of can shrink away. And so finding some kinds of opportunities where we can, it’s not easy to connect with those other areas of ourselves, those other parts of our identities, as a parent, as a partner, as adult child of parents, as an artistic person, a creative, athletic person, or even just as that whole self that can observe all the different parts of ourselves in a holistic way. And that’s what I, part of what I try to make space for with people in therapy is like, what else is, this question, what else is going on? What else, what other parts of you are, need to come out of the bushes, right? Having a broader connection to these other areas of the self can, paradoxically, help people to feel more centered in their whole self while they’re helping to connect with what part of me right now wants to be sassy with my kid out of frustration. And is that what I am choosing to follow right now? Or do I have other options? getting kind of accessing this drop down menu. I have a lot of the parents I work with work in tech and so I end up using a lot of a lot of tech metaphors.

Debbie:
So you were just starting to share what you make space for and how you like to support parents and people that you work with and kind of tapping into the bigger pieces of who they are as part of their journey to maybe show up more fully as themselves and live more. fulfilling lives in their families. So I’m curious if you could share a little bit more about what that actually looks like. So maybe as an example, you a parent comes in and they are feeling burned out. They are kind of chronically anxious as we’ve been talking about, and they are feeling kind of out of control and depleted and they have lost themselves, right? Where would you start? What are some of the grounding things that you would have a parent start to think about to begin a healing journey.

Matthew Fishleder:
I tend to start right where we are. tend to, in that case, might kind of tag in my mind these things that the person is saying, burnt out, anxious, out of touch with themselves. and ask if there’s any of those three things that they might want to talk more about. Because what that does ultimately is it accepts this is what you’re feeling. Oftentimes if we say to a friend or a family member, I’m burnt out, I’m anxious, and I’m losing touch with myself, we’ll get, well, you have to do this for… or, you’re doing just fine. But being able to have heard what’s going on inside and have curiosity, the response be just authentic curiosity, can be an opening for building that relationship that’s safe to talk about. Just how burnt out I’m feeling. And I’m burnt out because this happens and this happens and I’m anxious because I’m worried about this and that and the other. And I feel like I’m just a parent and I have lost touch with these other parts of myself. But opening the door for people to talk more. And what that really is doing is it’s giving people, giving that parent the space to authentically name what they’re doing to feel accepted in relationship with me. way I approach my work is I believe that when, that’s able to be talked about and accepted in this relationship, that it becomes easier for a person to accept it within themselves, to have that observer stance toward themselves. There’s a wonderful psychiatrist, Dan Siegel, who talks about this, the strategy of name it to tame it. And I love it because it rhymes. And I also find I’ve been doing it for for quite a long time. when when we name it, there’s some kind of process when we name it, especially in relationship, but even when we name it in an accepting way for ourselves. There’s some kind of process that the in the brain that the passing the emotion or the thought through our language centers actually kind of encodes it differently and it allows us to sort of to hold it in front of us like a prism that we can then look at and we can turn and we can notice how can I how can I adjust my perception of this and what do I want to do now that I have it? So really the starting point is the reflection and recognition of what someone’s bringing in.

Debbie:
Yeah, I think that’s huge because it’s there’s so many things that we as these like, humans walking around who’ve been on this earth for 304050 or more years that are inside of us that maybe, you know, a dark deep deep secret that we are have this whole kind of shame, surrounding it. And saying it out loud to someone can almost instantly make that shame disappear. There’s something about the unspoken, right? And then bringing it to the light of day, it’s never as bad as we made it to be.

Matthew Fishleder:
Something about, yeah, saying it out loud to someone who doesn’t respond in a shaming way, but responds in a deeply accepting way. A kind of unconditional positive view of a person.

Debbie:
A lot of my listeners and community are women who are, you know, very high functioning, high performing, doing all the things and, you know, there can be, in fact, the episode I’m releasing today on my show, as we’re recording this is about ADHD and burnout and being a mom and there there seems to be for so many people this you know unwillingness to even accept that I’m in burnout because what would that mean if I’m in burnout and it feels too scary right to to be fallible in that way have you found that?

Matthew Fishleder:
Absolutely. I mean, I work with parents who are high achieving professionals who are also carrying certain mothers specifically who are high achieving professionals who are carrying so much of the mental load of parenthood, even in very progressive forward thinking. relationships that are relatively egalitarian. There’s still so much that gets carried by mothers and in addition to their family of origin, in addition to their professional life in a dual-ordinary household, or even a stay-at-home mom, there’s so much that’s getting carried, the possibility of something called burnout that indicates it’s time to slow down. You don’t have time to slow down. That’s the feeling is that it can be so terrifying to recognize there’s this feeling that you need to slow down because there’s so much that needs to get done. you slow down, who’s going to do it? Who’s going to bring the snacks to soccer practice on Sunday? Right? Who’s going to get new socks because the 12 year old socks have holes in them. Nobody else is thinking about these things and it has to get done. So it’s scary to think about slowing down. And in part, validating how scary that is, like you’re saying, in a safe relationship, talking about it. can give a person the reflection back in hearing from, sometimes in hearing from me, it’s really scary to think about slowing down. I’ll hear a mother that’s carrying so much of this suddenly say, but maybe I need to. And that’s not, it ends up not coming from me because I can’t be the one to say that. it’s so much more valuable coming from herself to recognize and then parsing through like, well, what would that actually look like for her? Yeah.

Debbie:
So, we started this conversation talking about the parents in our life. And I’m just wondering, you know, of course, there’s no one size fits all do this, this and this, and you’re good to go. But I’m just wondering, you know, in your experience and the way that you work with folks, what are some of the most important things when supporting the parents in our life? What are the considerations that they would want to kind of take or just things that they should or could be? I hate the word should things that they could be paying attention to or might want to spend more time exploring.

Matthew Fishleder:
I think the question they could ask themselves is what. To what degree does my whole self look at what’s happening and feel aligned with it? Aligned with what’s happening, with how I’m doing things. What would fill up some of the gaps? That’s what comes to mind for me. Taking a kind of relatively holistic view of the self. I was talking to someone the other day about the parts of herself being… sewn together like a quilt. are these different parts of the self that are sewn together into this huge living quilt. And to be able to step back from the quilt and take a look at it and recognize I am not any of these one pieces. I am observing. I’m the thing that observes the quilt. And the thing standing in the gallery looking at the quilt hanging on the wall. And as I’m looking at the quilt, what do I do now? As I’m looking at what squares feel the brightest, what feel the loudest right now. And as I’m looking at it, how do I want to respond to my kid that’s climbing onto my shoulders, as our neurodiversion kids can sometimes do, seeking that sensory information? How do I choose to act in this moment from that whole sense of self? And it takes practice. I’m not always able to do it myself, though I tell it. I help people with it day in and day out. It’s a challenge.

Debbie:
Yeah, takes a lot of practice, we get a lot of opportunity to practice though, right? That’s, that’s the great thing. I really like that I love that visual of the quilt. And as you were also responding and thinking about that idea of being aligned, going back to this idea of parenting from our core values, which you mentioned values also at the beginning. I think when we are in the thick of it, and we are reacting constantly to things that we can really forget, you know, what really matters to us. So that idea of looking at the big picture. what are all the parts of me but also kind of zooming out in general, like what actually matters to me, what matters for my child to feel, how do I want my family to operate, what matters most can be a good reset, but it does require taking that pause, right?

Matthew Fishleder:
And that pause can start with naming what’s here. It can start with not just responding to that square of the quilt that’s the loudest right now, but noticing which square it is that’s speaking up. Noticing what part of ourself is speaking up and recognizing, it’s okay for that to be there, because that’s related to these other things. And I can zoom out. Once we name what’s happening, the way the brain works in those moments, by naming it, being mindful of it, we can step back from it and look at the bigger picture and bigger quilt.

Debbie:
Yeah, and also not assigning value to any of those parts. Like that’s a good part or that’s a bad part. Well, you know, in the internal family systems, there are no bad parts, right? So it’s just kind of like, yeah, that is a part. Okay, so clearly we could just keep going down all different directions. Fascinating conversation, but I really appreciated you sharing today. I think it’s really good to just kind of slow down and think about these aspects of our internal experience and how they influence how we feel day to day with our kids. So I hope this has been a conversation that has given listeners some food for thought, something to noodle on tonight and then the days and weeks to come. Are there any kind of closing thoughts that you’d like to share before we say goodbye?

Matthew Fishleder:
Thank you for listening. I this has been helpful and it’s been a pleasure talking to you,

Debbie:
Yeah, you too, Matthew and listeners, I will have links to Matthew’s website, it’s growingpresent.com on the show notes page. And I’ll also include a link to the conversation we had with Dan Siegel many, many years ago, it was a great episode, so check that out as well. And Matthew, again, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today.

Matthew Fishleder:
Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.