Tag: acceptance

We all grow up in a family system. What we might not always realize is that each of us assume a role in that system to make it “work.” This can be based on birth order, needs to manage specific relationships in the family or simply occur without much thought or attention. However, the role we assume in the family often leads to issues as we navigate life outside the system.

For example, let’s say that you have taken on a responsibility role in the family. You are often the one the family expects to fix whatever problems arise. Maybe it was as small as helping your siblings with their homework or as large as helping a family member manage an addiction. Either way, the message was that it was up to you to take care of the family. As you fill that role, it becomes ingrained within you. Without realizing it becomes one of your core drives. As you grow older and step out into the world, you do so with this drive firmly entrenched and ...

For years I often heard people say that you have to go through grief and pain, you can’t go around it, you can’t go above it, you have to go through it. For years I didn’t understand what that meant. We live in an incredibly emotionally avoidant culture which then leads to chronic mental emotional health struggles, high addiction and disconnection from self and others among other symptoms. 

In order to move through grief or pain a person must create a safe space for emotions to build. Like a wave on a beach, emotions need to be able to build and crash safely on the shore before they can recede out and become calm again. Instead of allowing the natural flow, we often dam up the water as high as we can to keep it from crashing, but then when it inevitably breaks the dam, and the lifetime of suppressed emotions can come cascading and flooding ...

There are very few roles in the world with the expectation to be and do it all, quite like the role of a mother. There are also many contradicting messages about what exactly all of the IT we are meant to be doing is. So often, instead of challenging this ridiculous expectation, mothers succumb to the overwhelm of it all and just end up feeling like failures. The reality is, when you are expected to be and do it all, and you push yourself to achieve it, you are never really going to be doing any of it particularly well. How could you? This sets moms up for burnout in the one job you can not give up.

I recognize this phenomenon in every mom that sits across from me in therapy and I look upon their faces with so much empathy because years ago, that was me! What changed the game for my motherhood a few years ago, is that I came across the podcast, The Lazy Genius, and felt like this woman was throwing me a lifeline! She encouraged her listen ...