Episode 42: Cara Fairfax, LCSW
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: You feel so powerless when you're parenting with a difficult person.
Jessica Fowler: Welcome back to What Your Therapist is Reading. I'm your host, Jessica Fowler. Today, we are speaking with Cara Fairfax, LCSW, trauma therapist specializing in perinatal postpartum, maternal mental health, and Early childhood and family mental health and high conflict divorce.
Cara uses several theories and models to support clients including attachment theory, polyvagal, EMDR, CBT, ERP, and parts work. Kara wrote the book Island Hopper because she experienced a high conflict divorce 13 years ago and there were no resources for young children when she looked for books for her own. She hoped to create a book that she wished her own kids had had at that time.
And if you're enjoying these episodes, make sure to leave us a review. And as always head on over to social media at Therapy Books Podcast to find out about our latest episodes and about the latest giveaway going on. And as always, the information shared in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
Welcome back listeners. Today we are speaking with Cara Fairfax, MSW, LCSW about her children's book, Island Hopper. Welcome Kara.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Good morning. Nice to be here.
Jessica Fowler: It is so wonderful to talk to you. We were just chatting before, um, that we're both UNH alumni. So that was really fun to find out that we both went to the university of New Hampshire. So ,I feel a little, you know, connected.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yes, absolutely. I haven't talked about UNH in a long time. That was fun.
Jessica Fowler: It was really fun. So, as I said before, I like to start the podcast with asking a question. What is a memory you have of reading and how it has impacted you?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Okay, that's, I love this question. Um, honestly, I'm not a big reader.
I'm a big listener. Um, and I love listening to my books. Um, I think I just got worn out in graduate school with all that reading. But my absolute best memory of being read to is when I was a little girl, my mother is a voracious reader, and she can't believe that her daughter doesn't love to read the way she does.
But we had Snuggle Club, and we read Little House on the Prairie, every single night, my brother and I would sit on the couch with her in the middle reading to us, and we called it Snuggle Club, and it was how we ended our day right before bed. And I just have incredible memories of having her arms around us and leaning into her and being read mostly Little House on the Prairie, the entire, the entire series. Um, And, but other books as well. So just an incredible memory of feeling loved and safe and the imagination of the little house. And it was on TV at the time too. So that was pretty cool.
Jessica Fowler: That is, I love that. And that you called it, you had like a special name for it.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah. Snuggle club. And then I did it with my children. Let's have snuggle club. So incredible memories. Yeah.
Jessica Fowler: That's amazing. That's amazing. So let's kind of jump in and talk about Island Hopper. Can you share about your book?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah, Island Hopper is about a little penguin. I'm going to start by saying that this book is gender neutral and I wrote it that way so that children and parents will the children can project onto the characters the gender that makes sense in their personal situation.
But for me, the characters do have I've projected onto the characters and gender as well so so if I say he or she, it's because that's what it means for me. Not necessarily that the characters are male or female in the book. So, Island Hopper is about a little penguin whose parents are divorced and live on separate islands. And, um, Hoppy, the main character has to go back and forth between these islands to see both parents. And with one parent, uh, there's a secure, very easy connection, attachment, and relationship. Yep. And with the other parent, there is a contingent relationship, and the other parent has qualities of narcissism or, um, just difficult. Um, my experience was narcissism. And so, I tried to weave those in. But, um, on that island. That Hoppy has learned that for me, it's a he, he has to accommodate his, his parent in order for that relationship to be comfortable. And so it's a story of how the penguin nav comes to feel and notice the difference in those relationships navigate those relationships. And then there's a best friend stitch in the book who is kind of like the alter ego or the adaptive information, um, who gives happy a lot of support and encouragement and validation and, um, helped Hoppy find a way to really claim. his own narrative at the end of the story.
So, I wanted to write this book for children who are living in that dynamic and, um, just to frame it or narrate it for them. And I want children, all children to eventually grow up and have their own narrative, not the narrative, not have to assume the narrative of their parents. Either parent and it's written through a trauma lens. I'm an EMDR therapist and I really wanted the story to have a trauma lens with adaptive information where the main character was successful and made progress.
Jessica Fowler: So can you explain adaptive information for those who don't know what that means?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah. Adaptive information is kind of like the positive opposite of the negative damaging belief or information that you're told. So, if you believe that I'm not good enough, the adaptive information is I am good enough. And in the process of doing trauma work, we want to help a person move from those core beliefs connected to their trauma experiences from the negative belief into a more positive belief about that situation, what happened.
Jessica Fowler: And so, this really is a children's book that I noticed that you did the gender neutral, that you really can sort of have your own story with it in the sense of how it relates to you, which I think is really helpful when you're talking about these themes, um, when you have two households. But one of the things I told you before when we were chatting that I really loved about this book in the back was, I don't know if you would call it a resource guide, I guess, whoever is reading this book to explain some of the themes and what they are and how to,
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: yeah. Yeah. There are.
Jessica Fowler: Can you explain?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for asking. There's a, like a glossary of terms to describing some of the key things like narcissism, narcissistic object, attached, secure and insecure attachment. Um, what is a pathological relationship? So, there's a bunch of, like a glossary of terms that are, that are in the tone of the book. And then there's a description. There are four different scenarios that Hoppy has to navigate. They are, I have to look at them so that I say them succinctly. One is, how do you navigate unwritten rules at one of your parent's islands? How do you navigate boundaries with affection and demonstrations of love? So, the, the less functional parent wants to hug Hoppy, or sit with Hoppy, share a nest with Hoppy, or read to Hoppy, and how does Hoppy say no to those things without upsetting the parent? Because in that dynamic where there's person out cluster B personality traits, we really have a parent who needs to have their needs met first. And then there's secure versus insecure attachments. And at the end, changing the narrative where Hoppy gets to claim um, or start to, uh, define the narrative for, for himself. And so, each of those different examples is teased out from a psychological perspective to help the adult reader understand what's going on from Hoppy's point of view and what's going on from the parent's point of view.
Jessica Fowler: Yeah. I just thought it was really useful because like I said, it's a children's book, but there are these themes that. You know what it feels like from Hoppy's perspective.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah
Jessica Fowler: and the things that happy kind of goes through. But it's written in a way for children, but it's such a useful guide for parents to just understand what's happening and how to maybe talk about it.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yeah, thank you for saying that it was important to me. I am very passionate about supporting families, young children who are in this situation and both parents, but the healthier parent who is able to recognize the dynamics and seek out support and change for themselves and their children, which is a very tricky when you're co-parenting, whether divorced or not. When you're co-parenting with somebody with cluster B personality traits, very challenging.
Jessica Fowler: So what made you decide to write this book.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: I, um, was married and had two very little children, and my ex-husband, I came to realize, um, was emotionally abusive towards me, and, um, but when I was leaving, my daughter was 10 months old, and my son was 4, and I was trying to leave, and there was nothing out there. I went Googling, you know, books for kids, when with narcissistic parent or personality disordered parent, there was absolutely nothing. Everything out there was for the adult parent who is discovering that, oh, I grew up with a narcissistic parent or borderline parent. And so that was really disappointing because I had no clue. I had no idea how to support my children without, and we were in the court system as well. And so in the court system, the judges tell you, don't talk to your kids about this, which I think is. There's an appropriate way to talk to your kids about this. You have to talk about it. You have to name it. So, um, I figured it out along the way and I think I did a pretty good job. My kids are amazing. And they ultimately came to name these qualities themselves. But I wanted to write the book that my kids and I didn't have. And, um, it took a long time because I was a single parent of very young kids. But when I finally came up for air, um, I thought I'll do it and I left my full time job at the beginning of the pandemic to start private practice full time. I thought it might take a little while to wrap up with a client clientele. So, I said, I'll write a, I'll write the book now. So, I'm not just sitting around watching TV. And, um, so I wrote the book during the first year of the pandemic and, and, uh, that's the story. It was, it's my story. Hoppy is my son, and, um, of course the, the parents are myself and my ex and then Stitch is the, Stitch is Hoppy's best friend in the book, but Stitch is really that positive ego strength that every child needs and needs, not only needs the support, but needs to develop into for themselves.
Jessica Fowler: Nice. Thank you for sharing that.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: You're welcome.
Jessica Fowler: What are one or two takeaways you would like your readers to walk away with?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Oh, I think the biggest takeaway that I want. I want children to read or hear the story and say, that's like me. And, um, a few of my clients I have, I work with some clients. I have a small niche working with high conflict divorcing parents or co-parenting parents.
I work with the children. And when kids have read this book, they have said, that's like me. This is about me. And that to me is the greatest compliment, because I want them to see, that's what books are for children, it's a, it's a reflection of their own experience. And I want children to be able to see that they are not alone, that other people, other children are going through this, but also to see Hoppy as a survivor, and that Hoppy, um, even though Hoppy is limited by some, um, challenging, dynamics with one of the parents that Hoppy can still figure out ways to be stand true in his own shoes, are his own flippers, I guess. And, um, so I want children to see themselves in it, but I also want parents to have a resource. You feel so powerless when you're parenting with a difficult, um, person. And, um, especially when the court is involved. And so, I want parents to have a resource for their children, and I want parents to understand that narcissism, people throw that word around so much, but from a clinical perspective, it's a very serious and sad thing. Condition and it's rooted in attachment trauma. So, I feel like when we can build in some compassion and empathy for that difficult person who their difficult stuff comes from a very sad history. And when we can build in some compassion for that younger child. Um, and their wounds, who then grew up to develop these difficult qualities. That can help us in how we take a deep breath and, um, regulate ourselves so that we continue to love our children, regulate, co-regulate with our own children so that we're not, um, bad mouthing the other parent, even though you really want to.
Jessica Fowler: Um, that's such a good message, right? Just having that compassion and understanding where it comes from. And when you can have some of that compassion, right, it can help regulate you, which is what will benefit the children.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: It helps me a lot. I, two of the things that were really helpful for me. And I tell other parents, this is when your difficult co parent is, is, um, berating you with you, this, you know, you're anxious, you're making it worse. You're destroying our family. You're ruining everything. Turn it around because people with cluster B personality disorders or qualities of them are very projective and transparent. So, it's really about, I'm messing it up. I'm ruining our family. I'm causing difficulty. I'm anxious. And when I would listen to my co parent with the you, you, you, you, and turn it into I, I, I, I, that helped me have compassion for him too. So, I'm like, when he's problem, when he's especially problematic, it's because he's feeling especially bad about himself. Um, and then the other thing is just cause they say it doesn't mean it's true. And so those are two things, just because they say they're going to take you to court doesn't mean it's true. Just because they say they're going to get more custody doesn't mean it's true, nor does it mean it's true when you say it. But, um, just kind of remembering just cause they say it doesn't mean that it's true and that it's happening.
Jessica Fowler: Absolutely. Who would you say this book is for?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Oh, this book is for parents and young children, kind of that three to seven age, although I think older kids can, can appreciate too, who are navigating a difficult conflictual co-parenting relationship, or for the child who has one parent where they feel very securely attached and at ease and the other parent where the other parents needs come first. I like to ask children whose needs are getting here and whose needs are more important, right? The child's needs are always more important. And so, if the child's needs are more important, but the parents needs are getting met first. Does that make sense? And, um, no, it doesn't. And the child knows that. So when the, then you're not saying your dad or your mom, it's the child is not being led, but being allowed to come up. They already know that they need the structure and the language to express it.
Jessica Fowler: And I would, I would add therapists. I think this is a great tool to use.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. Actually. I'm so glad you said that because that's just like, I assume that. Yes, absolutely. I wish that every therapist had this, every therapist who works with children or parents who are in this situation, have this in your, in your library and, um, and pull it out. I love bibliotherapy with kids and adults, and this has been useful in my practice as my, as some of my little kid clients have seen themselves. So yeah, therapists.
Jessica Fowler: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Thank you for the invitation. It was really fun. I was so honored to be here with you.
Jessica Fowler: What is one way that our listeners can connect with you?
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Um, my website through my website, I, I am, I don't, I've got Twitter. I don't even know if it's called Twitter anymore. I've got Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff, but I don't use it very often. So, my website, which is babiesandkidz.com, kids is. It's spelled with a Z. The name of my company is Babies, Kids, and Families. You can Google my name. The book is available on Amazon. Just type in the whole title and, um, please go buy it and enjoy it and share it with, if you know any kids, clients or otherwise who are struggling with these tricky dynamics. It's a great gift.
Jessica Fowler: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much.
Cara Fairfax, LCSW: Thank you very much, Jessica.
Jessica Fowler: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of What Your Therapist Is Reading. Make sure you head on over to the website or social media to find out about the latest giveaway. The information provided in this program is for educational and informational purposes only, and although I'm a social worker licensed in the state of New York, this program is not intended to provide mental health treatment and does not constitute a patient therapist relationship.