273. Overcoming Expectations and Living Life on Your Own Terms with Dr. Frieda Birnbaum

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I am so grateful that you are a part of our happiness solve family, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your ongoing support. Now let's dive into today's episode where I will be having an amazing conversation. With yet another rock star. Oh, and remember, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Dr. Frieda Bernbaum, it's such a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much for joining me. How are you today? I'm wonderful.

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Thank you so much for having me. Oh my gosh, it's such a pleasure because for the audience, Dr. Frieda Bernbaum is a research psychologist and psychoanalytic therapist. And you're the award winning author of Life begins at 60. And you work with a lot of people on topics such as family dynamics, parenthood, relationships, addiction, anxiety, and depression.

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So we're going to have such a great conversation. I have no idea where it's going to go. But tell me a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today. Because I love to hear people's stories, because I feel like that's how we learn. Yeah.

00:03:35
Love to tell stories. And my story to me was interesting. I was standing in line, believe it or not. What is she talking about? I'm standing in line in the supermarket with my two children, beautiful little kids, and I'm seeing this lady in front of me who looks so happy with her two little kids, and I'm wondering to myself, why am I not happy?

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I have a beautiful house, a wonderful husband, two cars in the driveway, the american dream. What's wrong with me? So I researched it, and I realized that women who have more assertive tendencies end up being more involved with, let's say, business with academia, away from the home. And so I explored that, and I did my dissertation on what happens to a housewife, me that becomes a professional. Well, after five years, I found one sentence, and that was that people listen to you, and your husband listens to you, and socially and financially, things change.

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You have control in your life. I was not a different person, but I was respected in a way that I wasn't respected before. And it's really unfair, because I found being a mother is really the most difficult thing you could do and the most responsible thing. So I always felt it was something that was extremely rewarding. But I did miss the fact that I put my husband, excuse me, through law school, and he became an attorney.

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And one morning, I'm sitting there with my little baby in my hand, giving him the baby food, putting some in my mouth. I was completely depressed. And I'm in this robe. I'm looking at him. He has a three piece suit on.

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He's wearing this. What are they called, attaches or whatever. And he's going to have lunch out with his friends, and he's going to see adults, and he's going to be driving into the city. I said, boy, how come he gets to do all that stuff? So I decided to go back to school.

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And I did so, and I went in increments. I went when my children were little, and I waited for them to go to school themselves so I could go to school. And I was very fortunate. I was accepted to Columbia University for my master's in psychology. But what did happen was my husband was supposed to take care of the children.

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And women have this dual role. Men have wives, women don't have wives. You could have all kinds of help. You know what I mean? I wanted to write a book once, was how I left my husband and kept a housekeeper, because really, that's what women really need.

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I had to leave because he would call me and say, what are you doing? I said, I'm not going to be home. I have class, I have work. He said, good, I'll come home later. And meanwhile, my daughter is upstairs watching tv, going out of her mind with just being a zombie on tv, and my son is there.

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And I said, you know what? No. My innate feeling is to be a nurturing person first. I'm not going to do it. So I dropped out, and then I got my phd when I was 46 years old.

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It took me a long time to get there, but my children had a mother, so that's important. Forgot your question? But I just want to tell you, this is how my history, how it started. But one other thing I found in research was that women who had mothers who were happy staying home did so, and women who had mothers who were happy being career women did so. But I had a mother that was conflicted.

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She could have been a businesswoman. She grew up in a time where women didn't have that opportunity. So I became a wonderful wife and mother. But because she was conflicted, these women often change in the midst of their relationship, which was me. And it's usually better than ever.

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When you do change, sometimes divorce comes in because a man marries a woman for a certain reason, and that changes. So they're threatened. But aren't you glad you asked me that question? I love it. No, that's a great story, because everybody has different circumstances that they are in, in their life.

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And while some families and households can afford to have one parent stay home with the children, not all of them can. And there's no right or wrong answer. Given a choice. I really believe that most women would choose to be home with their children if they could, because it's so much a part of our dna. And I was grateful to have ten years at home with my son until I went back to the corporate world full time.

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Yeah, you're absolutely right. Women cannot often afford to have help. And what's interesting is that women that can afford to have help often don't stay home either leave that the child with a housekeeper or children, and they will go out and exercise and do all kinds of things. So the child doesn't know where the mother is. So they tend also not to be home women who have to work and have to have somebody to watch the child, often in a childcare center, not a nanny or a housekeeper, they are the most depressed because they're not in control of what they have to do.

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They don't have that choice of staying home where the mothers who aren't staying home and don't and have help, they're not depressed. They don't feel guilty at all. Yeah. So what advice can you give? If there's a woman out there that's listening right now and she is one of those that has to work and she has to put her child in daycare, what advice can you give to them so that they don't go down that cycle of depression and that they can find some sort of meaning and purpose so that they can be happy?

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Because at the end of the day, that's what we all want, of course. And they say quality, not quantity. And you go, yeah, sure. But it's true. If you stay home with the child all the time, how much quality can you give that child?

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After a while, you'll just throw some toys on the floor and say, play here, I'm sitting down or whatever. So it's really hard to be in the moment all the time. As I said to you before, I was craving adult conversation. So that child doesn't know. The important thing really, is, where are you putting that child?

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Whose hands is this child in? Is this child having a good experience? In some places they do have cameras that you could watch, right? I came to one center once. I don't know why.

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I forgot why. And the person who was taking one of this care center people there, a little boy was crying and I was watching, and what they did was they were talking to each other. He's always crying. Let him cry. And I was in a lot of pain when I saw that.

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Because a child is crying, a child is giving a message and he's being ignored, that could damage the child for the rest of his life. Because I can guarantee you this was not an inconsistent behavior that bothered me. So you have to be very careful about the reputation. Look around and see what the children look like. Are they smiling?

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Are they happy? Is there enough space and activities and a schedule for the children? And also the caretakers, what are they like? Are they happy people? Are they people that are getting their needs met?

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Do they feel that they can handle it in a way that's connected to who you are? So that's really what the guilt is. About is to see that you're putting your child in good hands. Whether the people, women who are not guilty that don't stay home because they're having fun, or the women who have to work, it all comes down to the same thing. Good hands.

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Somebody you can depend on. Yeah, for sure, because we've all heard so many nightmares about different childcare. But I think I find that you don't hear about it too often anymore, but I'm sure it still exists in this world. So, shifting gears a bit, Dr. Frieda, I want to talk about your book, life begins at 60, a new view of motherhood, marriage, and reinventing ourselves.

00:12:18
When I read that title, it just resonated so deeply with me because I'm at an age where I just turned 58 years young. Wow. Great, by the way. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

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The thing is, for the longest time, I came back into this space that I've been in for a very long time. But after going through a divorce, I had to go back to corporate America and left my life coaching. And I'd had a blog, talk radio show. I was writing books, all of that. I put it all behind me to go back to work, because getting the divorce was more important than staying in that life.

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Right. So when I come back into this whole arena that I'm in with writing books and speaking on stage and doing my podcast and coaching clients and all of that, I went through a period where I had this limiting belief that I was too old because social media. Thank you. Social media, right? I see all these other women that are 1015 years younger than me, and I look at them and I'm like, but then it's like, wait a second.

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I've got 15 years of wisdom on them that they don't have, and you. Look the same age as they do. Actually, I don't know people. Thank you. But you do.

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You look the same age. Well, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. You really do. And that's why I made the book life begins at 60, because people would say to me, why don't you just say life begins at any age?

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No, I'm making a comment here. Don't fear getting older. 60 can be marvelous. And I was 6015 years ago and the most exciting time in my life, to tell you the truth. I had more energy.

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I was happier. Don't ask me why. I mean, externally, things didn't really change. I was with the same man, the kids, my life, whatever. But there's something about a comfort level of a direction of knowing what your future and then most of all, going and getting your future.

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We're given the message that other people can do things for us. No one's going to do anything for you. You have to do it. And I saw that, and that's what the excitement was about. And also I saw that it didn't really matter what age you were.

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It really mattered what you were doing with your life. And today, more than ever, we're all doing basically the same thing. You can be 40, 50, 60, 70, and you could be traveling, career, relationships, family. I mean, you name it, it's all together now. There's no divide in the schools.

00:15:06
Also, you can't tell the difference between women today and their different ages. There aren't any too many mothers in their 20s anymore. I don't see that anymore. We have changed a lot. And that's why I made the book life begins at 60, because don't fear getting older because you have something that you didn't have before, including your looks, including that you're physically okay.

00:15:32
As you know, I learned a few years ago, I've had so many amazing mentors and coaches, but there was one in particular that stood out. Jen Gottlieb. And I just got her book in the mail yesterday, and I was so happy about this. Be seen. There you go, Jen, putting another plug in for you.

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But she said something in a group call that I was in a few years ago, and she said, everything I do today is for my future self. And that resonated so deeply with me because I want to get to that, whatever that time is that I have left on this earth. I want to get to the end of my life and know that I've lived to my full potential, that I've done everything. And there's been so many people that have gone before me that are older than me, such as yourself. And I look at that and it's like, thank you so much for that message, because I'm just one of many women that I have a story to tell.

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I have an impact to make in this world. And age is just a number. It's all a mindset. And I feel better today. I'm no different.

00:16:46
The same. And you know what? Women, exactly. Women don't know that till they experience, because I'm basically the same person I was before somebody came into my house the other day. I was wearing whatever I'm wearing now, these stretch pants, whatever they're called.

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And she says, wow, look at that. Look how you dress. I'm saying, what is she talking about? I'm comfortable. This is what I'm.

00:17:06
Sneakers. We've been wearing leggings since the 80s. What are they talking about? They're not new. Talking about.

00:17:12
What am I trying to prove here? I'm comfortable in my own home. Wow, look at you. You really dress young or something. Say, are you kidding me?

00:17:21
So we have a different outlook on who you're supposed to be. I had children when I was 60. I had twins at the age of 60. You had twins? Yeah.

00:17:37
Holy moly. Read my book. So anyway, sorry, obviously. So they came from Germany. I mean, they physically came from Germany to interview me.

00:17:47
And the man said to me, step aside, where's the old lady? And I said, I'm the old lady. So age is differently defined today. And my sons, whoever saw them, they're 16 and they're gorgeous. Almost 6ft tall.

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Wonderful students, wonderful people. I'm blessed. I'm living longer, younger. I don't think I look any different either. I don't feel any different.

00:18:11
And to tell you the truth, we're stepping in a new time in our lives, that our lifestyles are really changing according to who you are. Now, personally with me about my history, I've never really fit in. I went back to school when my friend said, you're crazy. Why are you bothering? I got at that time, a man's a male oriented degree, a PhD, because it was very time consuming.

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Why are you bothering doing that? Why don't you just go for social work? And I said, are you kidding me? So all these things I did, and it was always a stigma. And having children later is definitely a stigma.

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And I was supposed to be on one of these shows, Oprah show, and Trump decided to go back. It was may 1 of the last shows, so I was kicked off, but he came on with a little baby on his lap. No one said a word, but he's a man. And then he came on with his grandchildren, too. So that's about me.

00:19:16
When I feel right now I'm doing exactly what I want to do, I'm not comfortable doing it. It's not about talking to you, but talking to you is fun, it's a pleasure. But what direction I'm going in my life. And sometimes I say to myself, why are you bothering? Why are you doing this?

00:19:37
What for? Why go and go for a nature walk or something? But when I do it, I feel so much better. And I have tried many times to do what people I know do with my sweats on. Go to the supermarket.

00:19:57
Let me see. Okay, go to the supermarket. And one man said to me, you bought all this food, now you have to put it away and cook it. I said, oh, my God, he's right. I didn't achieve that much yet.

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All right, you go to the supermarket, you take the food, you put it in, you put it out, you cook it, you clean up, you serve, you're exhausted. You fall over till the next day. And I said, oh, my God, it's so meaningless to me. To me was so meaningless. This is the day, and I just couldn't do it.

00:20:30
I felt as if I'm copying out of life in some way. And I always had it, my innate feeling. And I come from a second generation, Holocaust survivors, so I was always the caretaker for my family. So I was always that innate feeling of doing something that's going to make some kind of difference somewhere. And so surviving was something I was born with.

00:20:58
I had to always learn to survive for my parents, for illnesses, for my children. I just had a tragic incident. I'm not talking about it because it's very raw, but with all that stuff, resilience is really what makes the person. And I remember my son walking around our block, and we live in a block where people are well to do. And he said, you know, ma, I feel sorry.

00:21:29
See, I didn't know what I was going to say. Here I'm talking. I feel sorry for these kids who have it all for themselves, because there's no goal, there's nothing that they can feel accomplished about. So that's what it is. It's about feeling that you have a purpose, feeling you can be in a wheelchair and have a purpose.

00:21:57
You can be 90 and have a purpose. On my podcast, I had a 90 year old man talking about what his life is like, a very rich lifestyle, emotionally, physically. So I'm just saying that it's what's in eight and how you present it. And women don't tell their age, so we don't even know what age means today. And society has to catch up with where we are in our lives, which is really living our lives differently than my mother lived her life when she was 40.

00:22:30
She had a miscarriage on purpose for the shame of it all. Today, women in their 40s are having kids, so things have changed. And women looked older in their house dresses. And I used to think, when I was young, I remember woman women got on the bus, and she's wearing these black, comfortable shoes, and to me, they're old lady shoes. And I was a child, little girl, and I said, if she didn't wear those old lady shoes.

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People wouldn't know she was old, but people dressed a certain way. Right? The house dresses with the pockets. My mother would say, get me that house dress, but make sure it has pockets. And my father was sick of looking at her.

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And he'd say, look at all the. Can't you just wear something else? I'm comfortable. So those are some of my memories. Well, at least nowadays we have a lot more fashionable choices that are comfortable.

00:23:27
So talking about women having babies in their forty s, I remember my son was born one month before I turned 35, so I wasn't considered a geriatric pregnancy. It wasn't a geriatric pregnancy because I was under 35 and yet here. And yes, I saw that you had that, but it didn't register that you were notably the oldest woman in America to give birth to twins at the age of 60. So can we just touch on that for a minute? Because you kind of glossed over it.

00:24:00
And I was like, wait a second. It just didn't register with me. First of all, a couple of questions. Why would you want to have children at a later age? Because it is dangerous.

00:24:10
Right. The older you get. But how did it happen? How did it happen? Why are you assuming it's me?

00:24:16
Why are you assuming that I'm the one that wanted to do it just because. Right. I'm married to a man and he's part of this, too. No. Right.

00:24:28
Of course. Okay. As a group decision, what was it that led to that decision? My husband. Okay, awesome.

00:24:38
Was the one, I always looked younger than my age. I always lived. Oh, you too? You totally do not look the age that you are. Yeah.

00:24:45
Thank you. I don't know why. I think I saw some wrinkles here this morning, but that's okay. I don't do anything. The thing is that I said I had a child when I was 53 years old also.

00:25:00
So anyway, so I said to him, no, I'm not going to do it. And he said, no one's going to know your age. And he said, you're being vain. Who cares about you anyway? If you have a child and you're capable of having a child, maybe you're going to set an example for other women.

00:25:25
Now that I liked that. I always liked to set an example for other women because I was always very supportive of other women. I was at the time with Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug. Do you remember those people? I don't know if you know.

00:25:41
And I was always told by them, that I'm going to speak in public, in the media. I don't know what they were saying it. This is way before anything happened. But when he said that, that sparked. So I said, you know what?

00:25:55
Maybe I shouldn't be selfish. I wouldn't mind it. And I'm a professional. I have the ability to give them a healthy lifestyle. I plan on living a long time.

00:26:06
My parents lived a long time into their ninety s, and they didn't do anything at all, believe me, to live a long time. So because of that, I decided, you know what? I'm going to do it, but I'm not going to tell anybody my age. Well, of course I told everybody my age. And I wrote a book about my age.

00:26:27
My interviews were about my age. Duh. So the hospital that next morning, I just delivered it. I'm like, know, and they're coming in from that, that, you know, I said, are you kidding? How did you get here?

00:26:46
They let us in. We just want to talk to you for a minute. So everybody knew. And I was on, I don't know, whatever that was with Barbara Walters. What was her segment?

00:26:58
Not 2020, but the other 160 minutes. Is it 60 minutes or 2020? Yeah, 2020. I always get those confused. And yeah, I told everybody and what I didn't like, I think her name was Vargas.

00:27:14
I forgot her first name. She said to me, well, she said, aren't you ready to just have fun and aren't you ready to go and retire? And I said, you know what? When I'm 80, I'll have time to retire. Why should I retire now?

00:27:33
There you go. To retire. I have been blessed to have positive energy to see these kids thrive. And one of the best things I did, every time I do something society frowns on, it's because I end up making the right decision, and it's how I live my life now. I'm doing all this, and my kids think I do nothing because they come home from school.

00:28:03
When were you in the media? When are you writing a book? Where did you do a podcast? What are you doing? You don't do anything.

00:28:10
And then I have people coming in. This is my office for sessions. And my teenager, one of them is a little rebellious, says to somebody that comes in, don't go in to see her. She doesn't know what she's saying. She doesn't know what she's doing.

00:28:24
I'm the mom I have in my kitchen. It says if someone's talking and no one's listening, her name is mom. So that's in my kitchen. But when I walk a few feet into my office, people listen and pay me. So he says that, but thank God I'm good enough that they don't believe him.

00:28:42
That's who I am a little bit more. I have to have this kind of challenge, and I have to be able to always have a plan. I'm excited about my next plan. And like yourself, when you turn 60, you're thinking you want to be able to accomplish and get your needs met. And I'm thinking the same way and knowing what it is that you want.

00:29:11
My father said to me, don't go to the media. You're not going to know what to say. I said, thanks a lot. You give me a lot of confidence. And my mother thought that doing this stuff was like being a prostitute or something.

00:29:24
What if a man came into my office? My mother would say to me, what is a man doing coming in your office? Like, what am I doing in here? Undressing, talking to. What are you doing with a man in the office?

00:29:37
What am I doing with him? Please. That's what she thought of therapy. She didn't know why people came to see me. She thought that if they had food on the table and roof over their heads, isn't that enough?

00:29:50
What are they complaining about? I should have had it so good. She says to me, yeah, that's true. Oh, my goodness. Dr.

00:29:58
Frieda, I love all these perspectives that you are sharing with the audience because it's so important that women have role models such as yourself. Giving birth to twins at the age of 60 is no small feat by any stretch of the word. But also, getting your phd. You said you were 46 years old when you got that. It just demonstrates to all women out there, and to anybody for that matter, that age is just a number.

00:30:29
And don't let it define you and don't let it limit you, because we all have limitless opportunities while we're here. You'll never be sorry. That's right. The biggest problem they had when they get older. I could have.

00:30:44
I should have. You'll never be sorry for trying and say, okay, I did it, I failed, but I did it. I tried it, I did it. We can't do everything at one time. We can't have kids, go to school.

00:30:57
We can't do it all. But you can get it in. That's the difference. You can get it in at different times. I waited to get it in since I was 46.

00:31:06
It took me five years to get my phd. You have to have a lot of patience and I remember I told my mentor when I first got into the program, I said, what do I do? And she says, if you have to ask me, you don't qualify. So I never talked to her again. I didn't say anything to her.

00:31:24
I just tried. But another thing I did that made it easy. I went under the NYU syllabus because to go to school, I went to school for a college instead of Columbia. It's called the college without walls, where you go to certain classes and you have to go through a certain syllabus, but you don't have to necessarily physically be there all the time. So I took statistics, I took research with all the professors, with all the work that I had to do.

00:31:58
But the timing was different. When I was in Colombia, my timing was theirs, and I had to have a paper ready and four in the morning. If it wasn't know, I wouldn't be able to pass the class. And I had to have it at that time. So with this program, it was wonderful because I could take the same courses and I could go ahead and manage my time with my children at home because I didn't want.

00:32:27
My first orientation was to have my children. But you also have to be true to yourself and you have to be able to evolve in your life, and it's good for your children because kids that have mothers who work. And when I lived in Hackensack, New Jersey, I live in New Jersey right now. So I lived in Hackensack, New Jersey. I remember getting off the elevator and a woman said to me, I don't know, I couldn't go to school and work.

00:32:56
Are you sure your kids are okay? Like implying I'm a bad mother, that kind of thing. But research showed me that women who work outside the home actually have more confident kids and their boys end up marrying women also who are out there in businesswomen career, because that's what they saw at home. Right? This is what I have to say.

00:33:20
I love it. Dr. Frieda, is there anything else you want to share with the audience that we haven't talked about so far before we finish up? It's not shared a lot. You're great.

00:33:28
Because I didn't even know I was going to talk about this at all. You know what I mean? That's so much out there. What do I share? If you think it's right, it's probably right.

00:33:39
And the more people criticize you, the more you're doing the right thing. So remember, when people are saying to you, why are you doing it? You don't have to explain to them. Think to yourself why you're doing it. And if you like the answer, just go for it.

00:33:56
I love it. Dr. Frieda, we'll make sure that your information is in the show notes. And are you on social media? I am not on social media.

00:34:09
All right, we'll make sure that's okay. You know what? Your website, by the way. But I have somebody. It's drfrieda.com.

00:34:20
Frieda.com. Perfect. Drfrieda.com. So if you want to learn more about Dr. Frieda and her books, you can go to drfrieda.com.

00:34:29
All right. Thank you so much for joining me today and sharing all of your insight. Nice to meet you and thank you to everybody who joins in. I see that you're similar with ambition and goals and plans and are working things through on your own as well. And women like us really have evolved in a way that is very much into the future that we did not have people to follow and we did it on our own.

00:35:03
That's right. So for you to do this and to do it on your own and to go ahead and have that kind of strength is very unique. And people should know, even though you interviewed me, that you have similar qualities. I saw as we were talking that you also have your stories and you've also endured and you've also persevered. So I commend you on that.

00:35:26
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Frieda, and thank you. And thank you everybody for listening today.

00:35:34
Be well. Take care.

00:35:46
What a great conversation. And thank you again for listening today. If you're enjoying the content, please subscribe, like and review. And if you're eager for more content, go to glow fm slash happiness solved and join our exclusive membership portal. I also invite you to follow me on Instagram and Facebook at coach Sandee Sgarlata.

00:36:06
Again, I am so grateful for you and I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.