Nurturers, Parenting Type Series #60

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In this episode, Jon introduces the Nurturer parent—the caregiver who leads with empathy, emotional attunement, and an instinct to make everyone feel okay. Centered on the tension between care and self-erasure, he names how deep connection can quietly slide into over-responsibility, especially when worth gets tied to being needed. Parents will walk away feeling deeply understood, with language for their strengths, clarity around their blind spots, and reassurance that their value was never meant to be earned through endless giving.

Chapters

• 0:00 What The Nurturer Type Means
• 3:16 Why Nurturers Flock To Gentle Parenting
• 6:44 Core Strength: Deep Emotional Attunement
• 12:20 Pillar One: If Everyone Feels Okay
• 21:55 Co‑Regulation As A Superpower
• 28:31 Pillar Two: Worth Tied To Being Needed
• 37:11 Pillar Three: Enmeshment Disguised As Empathy
• 45:41 Pillar Four: Self‑Erasure Framed As Kindness

Transcript

Jon @WholeParent: 0:00

Welcome back to the Whole Parent Podcast. My name is John and I am Whole Parent at Whole Parent on all the social medias and all that other good stuff. And if you this is the first time you're listening to my podcast, perhaps you found this episode because you took the quiz that I'm talking about in this episode, the parenting type quiz. If this is just your first episode that you happen to be listening to, welcome. This is kind of a weird episode. This is one of four episodes in a sequence. This is the second of four, where I'm talking about the four different parenting types that come from the parenting quiz that I spent well over a hundred hours researching, testing, creating, retesting, recreating, so that I could offer it out to the masses. This is something that I've been using inside my membership for a little while now, and I had individual test people before that. And the idea of these parenting types is just to give you an idea, to give you some descriptive content in how you may be experiencing life as a parent, whether you're a new parent, maybe you've been doing this for a while and you're wondering why you do the things that you do. And so that's what this episode is about. This episode is about nurturers. That is the second of the four types that I'm talking about. And the next two episodes after this one, so the previous episode, this episode, and then the next two, are going to be deep dives on each of those types. If you are a guardian or one of the other two types, uh this is still a good episode for you to listen to because there are people in your life who are nurturers. There are perhaps times in your life where you act more like a nurturer. I think, especially early, early in parenthood. In the first six, eight to eight to nine months with a new baby, even the first year, many of us lean into our nurturing instincts. You may have a partner who's a nurturer. You may have had a parent yourself who fell into the nurturer category in both the positive and also the more problematic ways in which that may have occurred. And so it's still a great episode to listen to, no matter whether you are listening to this because that is your type or it's a different type. But yes, we're talking about nurturers. That's what we're going into. And uh if you want to hear that, then let's get into it. Uh, if you were able to uh watch this right now, which I do have all of these recorded on video, and I think I should put them up on YouTube or Substack or something so that you can actually watch them. Because why have the videos if you're not able to watch them? But if you were able to see right now, you would see that my coffee is just absolutely steaming out here because the temperature dropped again and it is freezing. And so you can tell uh by how much steam comes off my coffee, not just how hot my coffee is, but how cold the air is around it. It is chilly today and nippy today. But I'm out here again because I can't wait to talk about, and it's warming me up to even think about it, talking about one of the warmest of the parenting types, perhaps the warmest, the nurturer type. And there are a lot of strengths when it comes to nurturers. I have my five pillars of what it means to be a nurturer, just like had my five pillars for the guardians. Uh, but I realized after doing the guardians that like I'm hoping to interlace these strengths throughout, but but I want to start with one really central strength that you can kind of lean on for each of these. And so for the guardians, I apologize that I didn't really do this. I I tried to do this, it's really that that ability to just be the protector, not in necessarily the protector in like you're gonna go fight somebody for your kid, which I don't think, by the way, is is positive. I think that that's if you are resorting to violence to solve your problems, like we got we got other things. But a protector in that like you keep your kid safe, and that's a central point for a guardian. Uh emotional safety oftentimes is the deep emotional attunement, is the exact words that I wrote down, are are the central strength of nurturers. And so if you the nurturers out there already, probably when they got their quiz results, and I imagine there are a lot of you, when I initially was testing the quiz, I actually had a problem that I was afraid that too many people were going to get nurturer. And I had to kind of make sure that there were enough questions in the quiz. That's why there's 20 questions, that if I only asked you 10 questions, many people would come back as a nurturer. And probably if I asked a hundred questions or a thousand questions, or I finally someday turn it into the adaptive quiz that I had really been experimenting with. But again, with the adaptive quiz, even so many people, it was it was kind of coding people too early as nurturers, and then it was hard for them to get out. Many of us have this deep desire to be nurturers, and so it's unsurprising that many, the, the, the highest percentage of people fall into this category that take the quiz. And it is a bi it's a biased population. When I think about my friends' parents and my parents and like my partner's parents, like I don't necessarily think that these people were all nurturers or that there was a higher percentage of nurturers than other types that I have kind of categorized people into. But it just as it as it lands, um nurturers tend to be the type of people who listen to my content and who are engage with gentle parenting type content. Although I obviously, not obviously, if this is your first time listening to me, I don't like the term gentle parenting at all. And I talk about it frequently, how much I dislike it. But um, as you can imagine, people who are nurturers, like that's that's kind of what they're in. But but why should you imagine that? Because I haven't explained anything about it. So the strength, the central strength of a of a nurturer is this deep emotional attunement, the ability to see in a healthy way, right? We have to talk about this in a healthy way, and also the attunement is the healthy version of this, codependence is the unhealthy version of this. But when when it comes to the healthy version of this, the ability to see and deeply attune or connect with, or as my friend Eli says, take a sip of and really experience and empathize with the emotional needs of another. What we have talked about in the Guardian type, what we will talk about in some of the other types, is that there is a tendency or a proclivity to dismiss some emotions often. Nurturers, if anything, over-emphasize and over-indulge emotions, if that's even possible to overindulge emotions. And so nurturers is that that is their central strength, and they don't leave when things get messy. They they're they're they stick through, and that's really important. They're peacemakers, they're care givers, they they don't often uh feel the need to like do extract care from their kids. The the the act of caring is what makes a nurturer feel fulfilled often. And so I want to get into my five pillars because if I if I don't start talking about these, I'm just gonna tend to dance around all of them. And this is to keep me on task because after spending so much time nailing these down, if I didn't have these five pillars, I would just talk in circles for 90 minutes, and you don't want to listen to that. You want the brass tacks. And if I lean a little bit heavy into the neurosic, you know, the um the neuroses of these types and the problems that come with these types, it's because I think that that's often the helpful piece. And so if it feels a little bit like pessimistic when it comes to your type, what one of the things that I'm I'm anticipating is that when people listen to these episodes, especially if you're willing to listen to all four, my guess is the type that sticks out to you is like, oh man, all of those problems with that type are like really bad. And I would hate to be that type. Oftentimes that is the type that you are, because it means that I'm touching on a nerve when I talk about the problems with that type. Versus when I think about the types that I'm not, then I often will say, like, oh, you know what, that that can be a problem, but like that's not a big deal. Like, we like that you you can work with that. The strengths outweigh the weaknesses. Except for when it comes to my type, then I go, no, the weaknesses outweigh the strengths. And that's because we're always tend to be more critical of ourselves than others. In the same way, the the parts of our kid that we find often the most annoying or the most problematic or the most like shark music, we're afraid to see like what's gonna happen to them if they don't change this, are the parts that we can identify with. Those are the parts that we struggle with, right? Like we're more afraid of our kid being bullied if we were bullied. We're more afraid of our kid being seen as annoying if we were kind of seen as annoying. Uh, these are things that are by the way, that's me. Both of those, I was bullied and I was kind of annoying. Uh maybe I was bullied because I was annoying, or maybe I was annoying because I was bullied. I don't know. Probably both and anyway. I was partially bullied because I had a uh a sense of humor that was like uh 10 years too old for me, and my teachers thought that was really funny, but other kids were like, what are you even talking about? So yeah, there you go. I needed a nurturer in my life to uh make me feel seen and valued. Okay, so let me get into the five pillars. Pillar number one, numero uno, is if everybody feels okay, then we're all safe. This is a central premise for the nurturing type. Their goal is to make everybody feel good in the room. This is why nurturers outside of parental relationships can often be the people who like when you have that awkward interaction with that uncle who just like says out-of-pocket political takes that nobody agrees with, or just like a conspiracy theorist, right? Like all of us have that person around the dining room table at Thanksgiving or Christmas or around the holidays. I'm recording this around the holidays, where like there's they show up and they just said that out-of-pocket thing. The the nurturer in the room is the one who can kind of say, like, oh yeah, you know, I could kind of, yeah, I get I get what you're saying, but like let's not talk about that anymore. Let's just move on. They tend to be peacemakers who can really see everybody, and their goal is to make peace. And so calm isn't just pleasant, it's regulating to them. Like their goal is for everybody to feel good, and they will do so at the expense of themselves often. Like they will, they would rather they are uncomfortable than other people are uncomfortable. So, a great example for me of a nurturer in my life is my grandmother. And I think about my grandmother, we called her more more. She taught Sunday school at my church for 75 years. I know that that seems impossible, but she started when she was like under, you know, 15 years old. She was like 14 when she started teaching Sunday school, and then proceeded to teach Sunday school until she was almost 90 years old. She had 75 years of service teaching Sunday school. And she didn't teach, you know, adult Sunday school or high schoolers. She taught two-year-olds and three-year-olds for the overwhelming majority of that time. So she was like Mr. Rogers, but imagine your Sunday school teacher, and she's a woman, and she instead of doing puppets like Daniel Tiger, she was doing a felt board with a bear named Winky. Uh, this is all totally transparently honest, by the way. I'm not, I'm not sugarcoating this, I'm not changing any of the fact. This is 100% true. And so when I when we went over to her house, for example, you know, her goal was that nobody fights. And so if there was an argument that started brewing between me and my siblings, or often my siblings with each other, I'm a lot quite a bit younger, so who's arguing with me over anything? I was eight years younger than my younger, my next oldest brother. Nobody really cared uh what I thought. They just kind of just were like, eh, whatever. Uh, but when they would fight with each other, she was like the peacemaker. Oh no, everybody just everybody calm down. Like everybody she goes, let's not have that kind of talk right now. And this tension for her, any sort of tension, felt intolerable. Not because she hated feelings, but because these difficult feelings felt dangerous. They felt like too much. And so if you have a nurturer in your life or you are a nurturer, you can often find that like it is it is viscerally hard to see somebody going through a hard time and not just immediately fix that emotion. And that's the first growing edge that comes with this very positive first pillar, which is hey, you you're out here trying to make people feel good. And that's a good thing. That's a positive thing. Making other people try and like have a good time and you know, being calm and being regulated, those are all positive things in a home. The problem is when we are so focused on it that we don't let our kids experience those difficult emotions. The the typical, you know, nurturing parent often tends to be a little bit helicoptery or permissive even. And I don't want to say that my that was necessarily my grandmother because that you have a different relationship with your grandparents, but I had a friend who had a parent who definitely had this kind of permissive nature of just like, uh, I don't really want to make my kids mad. And so I'm just gonna kind of distract and move to this other thing. Or like, uh, have you how about we have ice cream? And and it was never like sit in the hard, deep emotion. Now, at the most beautiful, a well-adjusted level of a nurturer, they learn to get past that intolerable tension and make it tolerable and sit deeply with emotions. And not because, not because, again, this is not because emotions are scary to them. That's the there are other types for whom, like, for example, the guardians we talked about last time, like there are other types for whom the difficult emotions can feel too much, and so they immediately pivot off of those difficult emotions or say, stop, stop feeling that. This is not the nurturer. They're like, I know it's hard to feel sad, and so I don't want you to have to feel sad. And so I'm gonna try and fix the sad. And the problem with the nurturer is in this way, because when everyone feels okay, we're safe, it means that often they go on fixing emotions without actually letting their kids learn to have those emotions and experience those emotions. And so the the result can be to a child, they feel like they're not allowed to have those emotions because every time I had one of those emotions, my mom always tried to fix it, or my dad always tried to fix it. He always tried to come in and say, Oh, let's not talk like that. Let's not let's not do that. I I'm gonna be here for you. And so that that that's a that's a piece. And I think we need to name it and claim it. Not because it's like a horrible thing ever, the most horrible thing ever, but because it is a potential for a struggle. Now, this immediately pivots onto one of the deep strengths too, which is that there is a capacity for co-regulation in nurturers that transcends the other types, in my opinion. Like as with anything, as with any personality typing system, as with any, even we talk about neurodivergency, right? Like when we talk about the setbacks or drawbacks of a person having ADHD, like they may struggle with executive functioning, they might struggle with follow-through, they might struggle with delayed emotional regulation skills, things like that that are typical with people who have ADHD. They might struggle to follow orders. They don't like to take orders from people, they want to be innovating and thinking. We also know that people with ADHD tend to be more creative than people without ADHD. They uh tend to be more driven to actually like think in big and audacious ways. They tend to be more easily um uh fall into leadership roles. Leadership roles tend to be cast on them and they just take those and they run with them because it's kind of like often in leadership, you have to kind of figure it out as you're going, and that's how ADHD people live their lives. So it's a trade-off, right? In the same way, nurturers, because even though the like they struggle with that experience of watching others experience negative emotions, they are they have a deeper capacity to co-regulate, and their responsiveness really can bring people into connection, which actually can give permission, paradoxically, for people to feel, for your kids to feel those big overwhelming feelings. Because the thing about big overwhelming feelings is a child who is experiencing big overwhelming feelings, feelings like grief, feelings like fear, feelings like anxiety, right? Like all of these feelings of of like, I'm trying to think of all the all of the really big ones, just like distress, those feelings are far less scary to a child when they have a person to process with. This is why we say that a stress, a negative stressor, whether that there's good stress and bad stress, the negative stressors, those things that can be maladaptive and identified as toxic stress that causes lifelong, like post-traumatic stress disorder. Like those toxic stressors, what we know is that the way to turn toxic stress into tolerable stress, or even to process toxic stress to make it more uh adjustable to alleviate or even eliminate the symptoms of PTSD, are by going to a trusted co-regulation partner, often a trained therapist, trained comic trauma counselor. But it also, as Bruce Perry says, a famous child psychologist, psychiatrist rather, uh he says the most healing relationship for most children is outside of the therapist. It's the relationship that comes from a securely attached caregiver. And so the good news as a nurturer is if you can get past your aversion to those intolerable feelings, big, dark, scary feelings that your kid is having, your kid will feel more able to feel those things deeply and learn how to process those things effectively as a result, because actually you're the perfect person for them to process with. You just have to lean into that. And that kind of gets me to pillar number two, which is that oftentimes, and this is again, there's good and bad here, oftentimes nurturers feel that their worth is earned externally through how others need them. And so the worth can be earned, you know, can I get everybody to get along? Well, then I'm valuable. Can I really be that primary caretaker? Can I be that person who defines themselves based on their kids, right? The oftentimes a nurturer, when you say, Okay, what like tell me about your life, immediately they pivot to all the people who they care for. Well, you know, let me tell you about my kids. Let me tell you about this next door neighbor that I'm taking care of, let me tell you about this person or that person or the other. Like immediately, nurturers will kind of ground themselves in being needed. And in this way, there are many of us have, like I said, nurturer tendencies, even if we're not like a pure nurturer type. My mom does this for sure. She's not. I don't Think like she would not qualify as a nurturer if she took the quiz, but definitely she grounds herself in like how she can help others, and she has done that as a career, both as an educator and as a nurse of 50 years at the same hospital, and then uh moving out of being a nurse and nursing supervisor and nursing educator into just like her retirement life, where I find that she is just constantly caring for everybody around her, right? And so you think, oh, she must be a nurturer. See, you can actually have these tendencies without it being your kind of you know core type. But the worth feeling like it comes from being needed, that your sense of worth is tied to what you can give. And here's a really big one how little you can ask of others becomes a recipe for resentment, and it's not a healthy way to live. What we have to remember is that the goal of parenting and relationships is not it's not in independence. Our children are completely independent, then they don't need anyone they can live as a hermit in the woods and be just fine. Humans do not do well with independence, not in any sort of long-term way. We can have independent qualities and that's good, but we all we truly independent people who live out in the forest wind up going crazy and and they don't last well. It does not do wonders for the human psyche to not need other people. Um the the tendency here for a nurture is towards codependence, or what we'll talk about is enmeshment in pillar three. But um ultimately the goal should be interdependence, which is not being entirely dependent on someone else, or having other people be entirely dependent on you, which by the way, if if others are entirely dependent on you, well, we'll get to that in the next pillar. I shouldn't talk about that yet. But not being entirely dependent, not being entirely independent, but being interdependent, knowing when you need help, when you can go off and get the help that you need. And if your sense of worth is tied to how much you others can need you and how little you can be needed by or and how little um you need others. Be not because you're this, you know, lone wolf. And this is how there are other types that come up, you know, guardians in in many ways. Well, I don't ever want to be seen as needed because I always want to see it be seen as like having all my stuff together. Yeah, but that's not that's not a nurturer. They don't want to be a burden on anyone. And my grandmother used to say that, actually. She used to literally say out loud, Well, I don't want to be a burden. Um, you have to be willing to be a burden sometimes, because that's how human relationship works. And it's not good for other people to have this monodirectional relationship where you take and take and they take and take and take and take and take, and you give and give and give and give and give, and there's no back and forth. It's not healthy. And often when we start to wrap our worth up in this concept of being needed, that can happen. And it doesn't allow space for us to take care of our own needs and be taken care of. And that's the real risk here. Again, deep emotional attunement comes with this and a capacity to co-regulate others. And so it's understandable why you would think as this person, right? They can be balancing, like they they can they can be the ultimate peacemaker who can walk into a situation with people who are totally at odds with one another, and they can just like de-escalate and just like kind of in a magical way soothe everything over and smooth everything over. It makes sense to think that your worth comes from that because it's such a valuable skill. But your worth is intrinsic and it's inherent, and I talk about it all the time, but probably not as much on the podcast as I ought to. Your worth, you are deserving of respect, dignity, and belonging simply for being a person. You don't need to do anything to earn your place. And as I said in the last episode, and as I'll talk about in each of these, this is where that tribal need to belong comes in, where oftentimes they're like, well, what do I need to do so that nobody ever kicks me out of the tribe? Well, never inconvenience anyone and just be caring for everybody all the time and be making peace within with people who are disgreeing. And that's how they feel, and and I don't want that to get too down the road before you learn that you you don't have to always be that. You can you can have needs too. Okay, let me take a quick break before we get into pillar number three. Alright, we're back. I'm warming up as I do this episode, as I get fired up about the warm people that are nurturers. Pillar three. I think this one, I I do have like a favorite pillar for each of them. I think this one is my favorite pillar for nurturers. I call it enmeshment disguised as empathy. The real shortcoming of a nurture is that as we've talked about with their worth being tied up and being needed and making sure that everybody else is okay all the time and not really needing yourself. One of the things that can happen in the process is that they begin, nurturers that is, begin to so fixate on how they're helping others that they don't realize that they're actually getting something out of that helping. That they kind of need to be needed. And the most extreme so I'm gonna give you the most extreme, and I don't think that this is this is the overwhelming majority, and this is such a tiny percentage of nurturers, but the most extreme like neurotic personality disorder type antisocial thing that a nurturer can do at its most extreme is Munchausen's by proxy. So if you don't know what Munchhausen's by proxy is, it's this condition where a caregiver will actually start to like poison or or another way cripple or lie to, manipulate a child often or a spouse or a partner into thinking that they have like a debilitating terminal illness when the person does not have that. And they might do go to extreme lengths, like I said, poisoning them, drugging them, so that they have the symptoms of a debilitating lifelong illness. And the reason why they do this, psychologists and psychiatrists say and and hypothesize, is because they so desperately need to be needed, and they're so afraid that this child or adult is going to go grow up and not need them anymore, that they keep them in this kind of perpetual childlike vulnerable state where they are constantly needed. Now, I don't think that nurturers do that like inherently, but I think that that is the most extreme version. And so sometimes it's it's helpful to take things to their most extreme so that we can understand what are like the the minor problems can be too. And so it can often look like a parent saying, like, you don't, you don't need to move out yet. Like, oh, you you you know what? You you have plenty of time to figure this out later. You don't need to get a job yet, you don't need to get a car yet, you don't need to be in relationships yet, you don't need this. And it's not because they're trying to be controlling, it's because they're afraid that as their children grow and make mistakes and learn and become independent, that they will no longer be needed. And so it looks like empathy, saying, like, oh, you know, the world just doesn't understand you, and they don't understand that you can just live in my basement forever and I'll love you, and I'll you can just play video games and that'll be great. They don't, that looks like empathy. They disguise as empathy, but really it's just enmeshment. It's an in it's a codependency. It's a it's it's an inability to say, I don't need to be like this involved anymore. I'm intelligent, I'm connected, I'm present, I'm responsive, and this person needs me. But their nervous system is not distinguishing between what they actually need and what you need. Ultimately, your emotional distress is is actually causing them distress. And it becomes this, like, you know, really toxic, messy relationship. And parents can even do this when their kids are really, really little, right? So, like, this is like the little kid who goes out and like has a hard time at the soccer game and comes back and cries, and the parent cannot cope with that level of emotional distress. Let's just quit soccer and we'll just go out to ice cream every Saturday morning instead of going to soccer. Or, you know, you don't need that teacher is not being nice to you. We're just gonna pull you out of their class and just like you never have to deal with that. Now, in some ways, like you should believe your kid, you should trust your kid. And so this is when like a nurturer is going to go and you know fight for their kid. But you have to know when to fight and when your fighting is really about your inability to not be the central person. And in this way, simultaneously, they are the most selfless. And this is, by the way, I'll I'll I'll move this into pillar four, which is self-erasure is framed as kindness and caring. Um, in many ways, they see themselves as kind of erasing their themselves from the narrative with their kids. I'm just, I'm not even here, right? I'm just just just your mom or your dad, like I'm not even around, like you don't even have to worry about me. I'm just a fly on the wall. They see this self-erasure as this ultimate act of selflessness. But actually, they all the time, and again, this is I hate to harp on the negative stuff, but this is this is the big problem, and I wanna, and I want to hit it on the head. They see themselves as so intrinsically important to their child's narrative that in a way that they're actually not selfless. They're the hero of the story, right? Like all of the stories are not about how the child had this problem and then they learned to overcome, and then they like made meaning out of it, and then they like, you know, joined, even though they never scored a goal in the soccer team, they learned that being part of a team meant sitting on the bench sometimes. Or, you know, that even though they never really got out of that class and they still got a B in the end, they learned that you can still get a B even when your teacher seems to hate you for no good reason, right? Like instead of seeing those things as like kind of hero origin stories that kids need in their childhood, because they're building a sense of self and a sense of like who I am out in the world, because the parent has essentially robbed their child of all of the hard things by being this selfless caregiver who drops everything at the, you know, drop of a hat to go run and save them from anything. Actually, all the stories are just about how mom saved me or dad saved me. All the stories are about how dad showed up in the nick of time and I didn't ever have to face anything hard because dad was there to get me out of it. And this is where you have parents who essentially become, again, the hero of their child's story and they're framing it as kindness and they're framing it as compassion and caring. But really, this self-erasure is actually just when you erase yourself, you have to find a new place for yourself. And often that place is in an inappropriate place. So if you essentially eliminate all of your needs and wants and desires, because again, your worth is earned through not is through is earned through being needed and not anyone else uh helping you with anything. If you erase yourself and all of your needs and you never do anything for yourself, and Christmas morning is everybody about everybody else, and and and you know, family get together is about everybody else. And my grandmother notably, like our joke always was that her seat at the dining room table was never sat in because she was constantly serving everybody else. She never took a moment to sit down. And my grandmother, again, super, super hardcore Christian. I wish that I had had the language at the time to say that there's a story in the Bible about this, about two women, one of whom sits down and doesn't do the housework and doesn't care for all the guests, and the other one is constantly caring for all the guests and doing all the housework. And I wish I had them the language to tell my grandmother now. I guess maybe she's off in the universe listening to me somewhere. Um sometimes you needed to just sit down and just be present because actually what we needed from you was your stories. And here's the beautiful thing, right? When we actually, when I when when we she moved into a retirement community and we would go and sit with her, and she didn't have to do anything because it was a wait staff, and and they would come and you know serve you at dinner, literally. They would come, their server would come up and they'd hand you a menu, and it was just like being in a restaurant, but it was at her retirement community. All of a sudden, all of these stories came out. She was this brilliant storyteller. It turned out that she spent her nights when she couldn't fall asleep, she would just spend them writing stories, and she would tell you these stories, or she'd tell stories about she's a brilliant, brilliant storyteller. She could just just keep you wrapped in a conversation. Stories about her own life. But I never heard many, and many of my family members never heard those because she was too busy serving everybody else to actually give us the gift of her presence. She was too busy erasing herself to realize that actually, if she hadn't erased herself, if she had just been there, it would have been better for everybody. It would have, we would have actually gotten something out of it. And then maybe some of us could have done some dishes and it wouldn't have been the end of the world, right? But if you erase yourself, the only place that that is left for you is in this position where you, you know, essentially join your kid's life. And this is the most codependent, kind of sick version of this, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but I I there's a nurturer I think about um a parent who I I worked with a long time ago, who like never ever ever missed a performance, never missed a game, never missed like a rehearsal that there was that you were allowed to sit in. And I realized that her life basically just revolved around her child. That like at any given time, if their child had something, it didn't matter what she had going on, she just had to be there for the child at all times. When the child had a field trip, she was always the chaperone. And when she had erased her life entirely, her child could do nothing without her mom there. And that was its own kind of form of narcissism, if you will, invading another person's life and story in a way that is not, you know, good. Alright, get into pillar five. We're coming close to the end. And pillar five, if you haven't seen this coming a long way off, um, it's it's what you feel like is gonna get you kicked out of the tribe. And I want to say this the last kind of really positive thing before I before I get into the the fifth pillar. And that is that at with everything that I've said so far, because the last pillar is gonna kind of take it all home, everything that I've said so far, there is no person in the world who is more relationally loyal and able to keep showing up in the midst of hard, difficult relational strife. There's no person who is going to apologize as well as a nurturer can apologize, and who can accept like like there is nothing that you will ever do that will make me love you any less is the is the mantra of the nurturer, and it should be all of our mantras. And so when I say that their greatest fear, pillar five, is fear of abandonment if they become unuseful, if they stop giving, if they stop being the person who everybody can go to with all of their problems all the time, that they fear their deepest level, that if they don't keep showing up, nobody will want them anymore. That actually, because their worth comes from being needed, that if they are no longer needed because their child ages out and goes and lives their own life, if they're no longer needed because other people take up the gauntlet and somebody else wants to make that that dish and somebody else wants to do the dishes and somebody else wants to do this, then all of a sudden everyone will abandon them because the only reason that they were ever lovable in the first place was because of what they could give to others. This is this is a hard thing to hear. People often compared my grandmother to Mr. Rogers. I don't know how close the comparisons actually were, but um she loved him, she loved Fred Rogers. One of the saddest things I you will hear me absolutely stand for Fred Rogers. I mean, like I did this guy, I think this guy is the greatest human that's ever walked this earth in in many ways. Um definitely in the last 200 years. One of the saddest things you ever hear is how Mr. Rogers died. 75 years old on his deathbed. He was not super conscious and aware. He was kind of not lucid for those who have I've watched many people die as part of my old job, and this is a pretty typical experience. And oftentimes when people aren't lucid, things will come out that that you can't really hold them to, right? They'll be aggressive in ways that they never were, and and and and there's things that like I I try and say don't remember that person, right? Like don't don't try and think of that person as like, oh, this is who dad really was or who Rot mom really was. But sometimes their deepest insecurities come out. And that was true, Fred. He didn't get mean, he didn't get nasty, he didn't get weirdly racist or sexist or something at the end. But but he just kept repeating, I don't think that I've done enough for others. I don't think that I've helped enough people. I think that I'm gonna die and nobody it's not gonna matter because I didn't help, didn't do enough to help others. And let me just tell you, I'm so glad that my grandmother did not die that way. I'm so glad that she had processed enough that she knew that people loved her and that she was chosen even though she was 96 and couldn't wait on all of us anymore and couldn't teach Sunday school on her hands and knees after 75 years, right? Like I I'm glad that she didn't have to go through that. But I fear for the nurturers that if they don't do their work, and I think Fred did so many so much of his work, but he didn't do this. He did not ever get past that truth that he, you know, I like you just the way you are, is what he used to say over and over on his show. But he never learned that about himself, that we all liked him just the way he was. That's why we loved him. And so in many ways, this means that boundaries for these fiercely loyal, deeply attuned, like master co-regulators, master peacemakers, masters of you know, standing in the gap. Like so many at one point, um, like I could probably list all of the pastors in my life. All the good ones are are nurturers. I'm not, but all the good ones are nurturers. That said, there is this deep fear of abandonment if you don't show up and don't do it. And and that can that can manifest in a lot of ways. It doesn't mean on your deathbed, it's something sometimes it means that boundaries just Holding boundaries in general, not giving in to like your kid doing unsafe things feels risky. What if that scene is me being mean? What if that scene is me being hurtful? I don't want to do that. They don't trust that love is going to exist without the constant maintenance of showing up every day and continuing to be like, like if I stop being useful, if I stop being this kind of codependent person who constantly co-regulates and attunes to everyone at all times and never needs anything from anyone, um I don't know if I'm gonna be loved. I don't know if I'm gonna be valuable. And I just want to say that that is not true. We love you for who you are. And so here is my written out conclusion. I have one for each of the the types. And uh at the end, I will end. Not because I couldn't keep talking about this, I could keep going on about this for another 45 minutes, but I want to leave space and time for us to continue on our path and do the other types as well. So here it is. For most of your life, this is written to all your nurturers, for most of your life, connection has felt like something you maintain, something you monitor, something you work at. You've learned that closeness was preserved through attentiveness by noticing shifts early and smoothing things over, by making sure that no one drifted too far into discomfort or too far away from anyone else. When you stayed emotionally close, your relationships stayed intact. Of course, pulling back doesn't feel like rest. It feels like risk. But here's the part that's easy to miss when you're inside of this pattern. The ability to create connection is not the same thing as the ability to feel secure within a connection. Attunement builds bonds. But boundaries make those bonds sustainable. Your empathy doesn't disappear when you stop absorbing everyone else's emotions. It becomes clearer, more grounded, less frantic. Because the capacity that once kept relationships intact is no longer because the capacity that once kept relationships intact is no longer constantly deployed. Love, as it turns out, doesn't require you to stay emotionally merged in order to stay present. The moment that you pause instead of rushing in, the moment that you notice discomfort without making it your discomfort, the moment that you allow someone else to hold their own emotions without losing your place beside them, you don't stop being a nurturer. You simply stop disappearing into your nurture. And that subtle recalibration, not by caring less, but by caring with edges, personal differentiation, you'll notice something surprising. That you remain connected. And when that happens, you can finally start to trust that love won't vanish the moment you stop holding it all together. In fact, you'll realize the new connection is deeper because it is connection that is true and honest. See you tomorrow, neighbor. Thank you for your time listening to the whole parent podcast today. I hope you got something out of it. I have a couple quick favors to ask of you as we end the episode. The first one is to jump over on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to right now and rate this show five stars. You'll notice there are a lot of five-star ratings on this show, whether that's on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple Podcasts. We have a ton of five-star ratings and it helps our podcast get out to more people than almost any other parenting podcast out there. And so it's a really quick thing that you can do if you have 15 or 20 seconds. And if you have an additional 30 seconds, I'd love to read a review from you. I read all the reviews that come through. If some if you particularly like one part of the podcast or you like when I talk about something or whatever, imagine that you're writing that review directly to me. The second thing that you can do is go and send this episode to somebody in your life who you think could use it. Think about all the parents in your life. Think about your friends, your family members who could use a little bit of help parenting. 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Thank you so much for listening to this episode, and I'll see you next time.