Healing Journeys with Suzie Daggett
Gayle Peterson, Ph.D., LCSW is a parenting and family resource expert with a research eye towards Making Healthy Families. She was on NBC Today’s show in July and has authored several books, articles and tapes. Her interest in families started with her own, and continues to this day. If you are a new parent, grandparent, or step-parent, a visit to her award winning website can enlighten you with ways to keep your families’ relationships – child to parent or parent to parent, healthy!
The birth of your first child started you on the path of becoming an expert in childbirth, parenting and creating healthy family relationships - what were the circumstances?
When I became pregnant with my first child in1972, I instinctually decided to give birth at home. However, I had heard of no one who was giving birth at home. Fortunately, I discovered the Santa Cruz Birth Center, run by a lay midwife, Kate Bowland. The prenatal care I received from The Center embraced my past, present and future in becoming a mother. Prenatal Care consisted of not only learning and participating in my own medical care, but a deep and caring exploration over the months of the psychological nature of my relationship with my own mother and the feelings I had about becoming a mother and giving birth. These midwives understood that the psychological task of pregnancy is giving birth to the identity of mother. Becoming a mother is a life transition that our culture greatly underestimates. Few other life changes are as irreversible and few life events provoke as much ambivalence. I know of no other life event that simultaneously stimulates two powerfully divergent fantasies: the promise of ultimate fulfillment and the threat of selfless sacrifice. The impending birth of my first child brought me face to face with myself on an entirely new journey, fraught with excitement and fear.
You have created the Peterson Method to help women prepare for childbirth and becoming a mother-please explain.
I became deeply involved in research on the safety of homebirth and the psychological nature of childbirth. My infant daughter and I visited women in their homes in the weeks before and following their childbirth. These research interviews expanded and highlighted the nature of pregnancy and the importance of including a woman’s psychological process in giving birth and becoming a mother. The research showed that women giving birth experienced a smoother labor and postpartum when they were able to process the psychological nature of their individual experience of pregnancy and childbirth. What was found? How a woman feels about her experience matters and has far reaching effects on her development as a woman, her confidence in mothering and her ability to bond with her child. Through this research, further education and years of clinical experience, I developed a Preventative Prenatal Counseling Program to augment the traditional medical care a woman receives from her doctor or midwife. My book, An Easier Childbirth is an outgrowth of this work and offers women a workbook to explore the significant emotional growth of this period and helps to ready them for childbirth. A personalized visualization script offers women the opportunity to create a body-centered hypnosis tape, which is one of the cornerstones of my Prenatal Counseling Model.
What do you get out of the work you do?
My work with couples, individuals and families brings me an ever-deepening awe of the experience of being human over the course of the life cycle. I remain passionately and continuously engaged in not only what contributes to healthy childbirth, but also what contributes to making healthy families. After all, childbirth is only the beginning. It does pay to have a good start as this beginning forms the foundation for the future family relationships. Still, much is known about what makes for dysfunction in childbirth and in family relationships. What my focus and passion has been for the past 30 years is what contributes to healthy family relationships.
What are some keys to keeping families healthy?
Family processes that promote connection over disconnection are key to healthy relationships. These vary widely, but for example… family rituals and gatherings that keep family members coming back for more over the years; raising and relating to your teenagers in ways that allow them to begin to pull away and separate, yet remain connected; problem-solving conflict that allows for anger to be expressed in a relationship and resentments aired, without withdrawing love; communicating more (much more!) positive appreciations (1-5 ratio) to negative or neutral interactions; learning how to recognize your partner’s “bid for connection” and responding instead of ignoring it; learning to express anger without attacking - recognizing your own “discussion-busters”, that is, what shuts down a discussion rather than gestates it…..and, of course being willing to look at your own family-of-origin and especially your parents’ relationship with an eye towards incorporating the good but leaving behind what does not work.
Gayle Peterson, LCSW, PhD, can be reached at (530) 346-2534 or www.makinghealthyfamilies.com. Dr. Gayle is offering a certification training program next spring for childbirth professionals in Prenatal Counseling and Body-Centered Hypnosis for Childbirth.
Healing Journeys is a column written by Suzie Daggett for the Grass Valley Union newspaper. Suzie interviews a variety of health practitioners most Fridays in the Wellness section. Click here to read past articles. Enter "Suzie Daggett" in the search box to get listing of all articles. |
