I heard a rumor that one of the moms in this news story reached out to you.

Well, yeah, Ashley. So I commented and she commented back to me that it was one of my posts that she saw that made her feel like she wasn't alone in this.

You're patient zero. You are the cause of this new story.

I was like, did I cause this?

Wait a second.

Hey, everybody, I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. And yeah, you just heard me talking to the Dr. Noelle Santarelli about the Ashley Tisdale French toxic mom group chat drama. So here's what happened. There was this essay where Tisdale French shared the experience of quietly being iced out of her mom group, which is rumored to be full of celebrities, Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, Meghan Trainor. And like, yeah, it's celebrity gossip. As in, I'm not even sure all those people were officially in the mom group. But, this is a real thing. Mom friends and mom friendships. It can be complicated, it can be difficult, and you know, you're vulnerable.

She is giving a name for something that a lot of women experienced and she is giving them permission to speak up and say I decided to leave this group it wasn't healthy for me.

Dr. Noëlle Santorelli is a clinical psychologist and a mom, and she's gonna break down to us exactly why the first viral story of the year is striking such a nerve. Stay with us.

All right, Dr. Santorell, you are a clinical psychologists. You focus on the whole world of like adult mean girl behavior. Thanks so much for coming on the Assignment.

Thank you for having me.

All right, I'm going to do my best to explain this story for people who don't care about moms, female celebrities, nostalgia, any of that. OK, for you, basically you have an actress from the aughts that people know quite well, Ashley Tisdale French. She goes by French now, and she has one of those sort of soft focus newsletters. That teaches you how to make vegan cinnamon rolls and what her life is like in Montecito or Malibu or whatever. But the thing that got everybody's attention was this describing at the start of the year, her decision to exit, I think a text chat, basically, which she called toxic. And the thrust of the essay makes a ton of sense to me. Which says like, you know, sometimes there's a relationship that's not working out. There's a friendship that's working out, there's something that doesn't really feel very good and you should leave that. You don't have to stick around for that. Now, I thought this was all extremely on brand for this generation, that nobody would have a problem with this. And instead it completely explodes. To your mind, what is the tipping point that turn this from random substack and article in The Cut into whatever this is.

I think because women are suffering and they've been suffering as mothers in mom groups.

Say more. Suffering is a strong word.

It is, it is. I think that they've really feeling forced into these relationships, into these groups of moms that are primarily based on proximity or maybe one or two shared overlap, a school, a sports team. And I think as our communities start to really sort of erode, we're trying to make our own village. We're trying make our groups. And so we feel forced into these groups, again, based on proximity, school, neighborhood. Now that always is what a community was, but our roles as mothers have also changed. And that's where the suffering part comes in. So I think in modern day motherhood or motherhood in 2026, 2025, 2024, We are no longer really served with the relational or connection component of motherhood, which is what used to build the communities, which is used to built that cohesion within a group. And we are now working on optimizing childhood.

Optimization!

Like everything else in this world. Why not?And so what I think is that these women, so most of the women in America, okay, so the women who are coming to me, not the celebrities, I think what Ashley Tisdale did touched on a real pain point that women in general are having, which is struggling within their mom group. Now, I don't know that her issues are the same as the regular moms who are come to me but it touched on real pain point that regular moms in our culture are having.

'These are women who we already laughed at the first time around when they were young stars, right? Some of the names that have come up, whether, and again, we don't know who's in the group chat, it's part of the speculation, but Mandy Moore or Ashley Tisdale or Hilary Duff, these are people who, in a way, weren't taken seriously by the culture, just by virtue of the kinds of things they made, which is shows for teens, shows for teen girls, and we kind of always... Crap on things that teenage girls like as a culture. So these same people coming back and also being that thing that culture likes to make fun of, which is the mommy, right? Nobody wants to be the mommy or have the mommy blog or talk about these things. They're somehow considered minor, unimportant, self-indulgent. Just the very, I feel like any time I ever talk about parenting even, there's a moment where I have to somehow convince the straight man or young woman who doesn't have a child yet in front of me why this thing is interesting. It's just a realm people make fun of.

Absolutely. I really think what Ashley did was hold a mirror up for a lot of the people that are resonating with this article are the people who enjoyed them as younger stars. They're about their age, right? They are those mothers now that are really resonating with this story. And I think there's something with that age group as well. Now this is a lifespan issue, right. We have in groups and out groups and, you know, covert bullying, relational aggression. We have that from childhood through, you know, people write into me from nursing homes that there's girl groups that they're struggling with, right? So this is a generation, this is across generations, but I think the moms that this is really resonating with are the moms who enjoyed them as young stars. Who were in that generation of Perez Hilton, of reading all those blogs, of reading All the Us Weekly. And so this is hitting that, it's almost also hitting like that nostalgia spot.

When you talk about generation, the thing that also strikes me, I think it was in her original substack, but she mentioned specifically COVID. Specifically the idea that there is a generation of moms who, and I'm technically in this because I had a kid around that time, but it was my second child. And so I knew what was coming in terms of the isolation or the identity issues, all of those things. They had that experience. In a kind of isolation. And she wrote about how this is a generation of moms that they didn't get the baby shower, they didn't get this event or that event, and then even when they have their child, the isolation of that was compounded by the pandemic quarantines. And so they really, in a way, it helped me immediately understand why something like who you're communicating with via text chain would feel so high stakes.

Absolutely.

Because... This is your literal lifeline or psychological lifeline to the person you used to be.

Absolutely. Absolutely. The high stakes is sort of why we start seeing all of these emotions exploding and coming out. I don't think any of this has to do with who's a mean girl or who's toxic. First of all, I hate the word toxic. I understand that it is catnip for Instagram or for, right? I get that. But toxic can mean so many things and that word is applied so carelessly. As a culture, right, we've really struggled to be able to communicate effectively. We are really struggling with the ability to rupture and repair. So in therapy, my goal is to teach people that you can have a rupture, you can have a rupture with me as your therapist, and my job is to you how to repair that.

'Which is hard for generation ghosting, right? Like if you came up in an era and I, I'm terrible at this. Like I actually have a hard time saying goodbye to people. And it is sometimes easier to just keep being a little more busy and a little bit more busy and not around than it is to say, hey guys, vibe in here is not good. I don't know if I'm feeling it anymore. I have to go. Like it feels somehow like that's an unnecessary interaction. And a lot of people who have seen this news story, "news story" have said, did she really need to write an essay about this? Like, is part of the problem, the sort of to-do she made about it? And I, yeah, I wondered about that as well.

So I, you know, I take, I stand on two sides of it, right? So as someone who's experienced or felt like I've experienced what I believe she's alluding to in her article, like I had that vibe, I felt that vibe.

Which is I'm being left out? Or...? Define it.

'I mean, I'm being iced out. People don't like me or there's something about me or my family or my child or there is something they don't about me. I really don't know what it is. I really am a very direct person. And so I really would prefer someone to tell me, hey, I don't that you did X, Y, or Z or you're too loud or we don't like your kid or whatever it is, right? But most people, most women, at least the ones that I have been around that aren't in my therapy room, have a really hard time, like you said, with sort of saying very directly, I don't like the vibe, I'm out of here. Or, I don't like what you did, can we talk about it? Most people now are much more comfortable using the covert behaviors to give you that message that they want you out. I am so thankful she gave them a word and a voice. I am thankful she used her influence to name something that many women are silently struggling with because they're embarrassed. I was embarrassed. I am a very independent. This was my first ever experience in my 40s of feeling the anguish of what happened. You're looking around like, what is this? I'm a pretty like, again, you can come to me, you can talk to me. I'm open-minded. I'm a therapist. I gave bids for what happened. Is something wrong? Can you tell me what's happening? Which just from the work that I do, I believe Ashley probably had one-on-one conversations with some of those people before she finally sent a message saying, I'm out of here.

I'm talking with clinical psychologist Dr. Noëlle Santorelli about toxic mom groups. Stay with us.

One of the things that also I think turned this into a larger conversation is one of the husbands in the alleged mom group weighed in. This was the husband of an actress, Hilary Duff. I think he said something like other women might want to turn to their actual toddlers rather than deal with you. That was sort of the implication of his post. And I remember thinking like, oh, that's also very millennial. That he like the partner instead of the era of men being like other women are chatting i'm not involved with that all of a sudden like he's the instagram boyfriend who has thoughts that no one asked for.

And from where I stand, of course he is. This is what I see every single day in my practice. Mom drama is family systems issues. The drama that's going on in these mom groups is expanding to entire family units.

In your practice, what do people say?

'So moms will be fighting from like book club or from school drop-off or from sports teams. Now you have to remember I have older kids and most of my clients who come to me with this drama have older kids. Most of this isn't starting until school aged I would say maybe even a little like older elementary. That's when it really the stakes get higher. We are living in a very it feels environment currently, and people are getting nervous about their kids' positions.

There's, I just had this the other day, oh my God, now that I'm thinking about it, where something irritated me. And I said, typically I would not care about this and I would tell this person to take a hike. However, there's a relationship with my kids that I have to maintain. There is something for my children I need to make sure is okay. And therefore, I am gonna do what it takes to make things better for them or to protect. As you said, whatever kind of resource it is, you want your kid to still have access to it.

And that's the stakes. That's the states.

Yeah. Okay. You got me.

And again, this is just what I'm seeing and this is part of what I started experiencing. When I was in this mom group, I have friends from high school still, I have from college still, like pretty sociable. And I'm a little bit take it or leave it. Like if a group doesn't like me, I promise you, I am not typically the type who would be like, please keep me. Like, no, I would walk. I was not walking because of my kid. Because if I walked the implications that would trickle down to my kid would have limited his access to things that I felt were really important in his life and he felt were important in this life. And so you feel trapped...

I heard a rumor that one of the moms in this news story reached out to you.

Yeah, well, yeah, Ashley.

Bury the lead, Dr. Santorelli!! Bury the lead!

She didn't reach out to me, but when she posted her article, I commented and she commented back to me that it was one of my posts that she saw that made her feel like she wasn't alone in this.

You, you are the cause of this news story.

I was like, did I cause this?

Wait a second. The butterfly effect. Are you serious?

I might be patient zero in this entire...

'Oh my goodness. Wait, so when you were watching it unfold, were you like, this feels familiar, some of the language in this subs- Literally.

Someone sent me the article, I read her blog, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's what I... Well, she also talked about the cycle because I talk a lot about how it cycles in some of these unhealthy mom groups. And I was like... That sounds really familiar. So hey, she learned something, but she said it made her feel not alone and like this can be happening. Now her kids are younger. Obviously I don't know the details of their exact mom group, if the kids were friends, not friends, but from the people I see in my practice, a lot of moms are stuck because of the children and the infrastructure and the high stakes that they feel.

Okay, so let me get down to business and be professional then, because you obviously, you don't just talk about this, you have some ways to think about it. And first, it's that it's a cycle, the mean girl mom cycle, and I'll run through some of the levels for people, love bombing, so you being welcomed with open arms, and then exclusion, without warning, the shift begins. This actually sounds like a few relationships I've been in, actually. And then it goes to gossip and smear campaigns. Which this gets to why we even use the term mean girl, right? Like this part of it, how women, heterosexual women in particular, but I think this spans, sexual identities, maintain control and power in a relationship that it is done through a series of things that are like honestly pretty passive aggressive or sometimes aggressive aggressive. And then it says the worst word on this cycle, repeat.

Yeah, the Hoover stage. Like a vacuum.

Now, when this happened with a man, I finally broke away. It was like, but we just identified this problem of this connection of your infrastructure, your family, your husband, the neighborhood, whatever. So what do you actually tell people about breaking sets?

So I tell people, and this is going to sound very psychology speak, and every psychologist says it, but you have to name it to tame it. We have to know that it's not about, okay, every mother or every person has to take accountability. If you're in multiple groups and you're consistently the person who's struggling, you absolutely have to look at your own behaviors and why you can't seem to fit in any group. Maybe you're not a group person or maybe you're bringing something to the table that other people don't like. But let's say this is a new experience for you. And there is one specific group now as a mom that you're just really struggling to fit in. If you recognize that it's not necessarily about you, it's actually not even about the group. Because most of the people individually, they're not these like monsters. They're not actually mean girls. They're also a product of a system that is creating this pressure and these feelings of high stakes. And it's about the dynamic, not any of the individual people. So if you can recognize it, that can dial down the intensity a little bit of that feeling of like I'm drowning, I'm suffering, I'm trapped. And you can start to open your eyes a little bit broader to say I'm part of a bigger system and I'm gonna choose to step out and my infrastructure, I can create it in other ways.

People grow, people change, relationships end. You know, I'm sure a wise person once said that you have a text group for a reason or a season. And so, like, do we also need to kind of, I don't know, get over ourselves?

I think two things from a psychological standpoint. I think we have to get better at tolerating distress and teaching our kids how to tolerate distress. You will not be invited to everything. There's not room for everyone all the time. And that doesn't mean people are purposefully hurting you. Sometimes it does mean that. We also have to better with nuance. Not everything is. Black or white, in or out, right? Like there's nuance. And so we have to get better at tolerating distress and teaching our kids how to tolerate distress without, you know, cutting someone off or leaving it's back to that rupture and repair. We have to better at that. And we have get better at conflict resolution and communication. We just have to learn the skills so we don't act it out. So I have to be able to say, I didn't like when you did that to me, Audie, and you have to be able to tolerate the distress of being told something negative and say, let me think about that, I'm sorry. I'm Sorry about that. And then I have to learn how to tolerate the distress or to give grace and say thank you. And then maybe we can move on.

You don't have an answer right now, but...

Okay, let's just agree to disagree in part ways. So those things I think have to happen in this world.

Alright, so before I let you go, tell everyone where they can find you.

Sure, so I am mostly on Instagram. It's just my Dr. Noëlle Santorelli. If you want access to me, it's gonna mostly be via my Instagram content.

Dr. Santorelli, thanks so much.

Thank you.

All right, thanks everyone for listening and be back here with us next week.