Hey friend,
So…the questions you submitted for this month’s Q&A showed me something I see regularly in my therapy practice: how patterns that once served you well can become the very thing holding you back.
Questions about managing the anxiety that comes from having a mother with borderline personality disorder. About the exhausting cycle of solving one problem only to have another surface. About the shame of being known as “the strong one” while feeling empty inside.
Your questions weren’t asking for quick fixes. They were asking something deeper: How do I change patterns that feel automatic? How do I stop abandoning myself to appear capable?
In this month’s Q&A, I address these questions directly—because sustainable change doesn’t come from willpower or “trying harder.” It comes from understanding how your nervous system developed these responses, and what actually shifts them.
Here’s part of my response to the question about breaking free from seeking external validation and control:
“Your body isn’t a math problem to solve. Health doesn’t live in a spreadsheet—it lives in relationship. With your body, with your stress, with how you handle uncertainty.
What you encountered wasn’t just blood sugar. It was a deeper pattern: When things feel unsteady, I reach for control. When control doesn’t work, I panic. That’s not bad behavior. That’s survival.
Many of us learned early to mistrust our bodies—especially if we were praised for achievement, composure, having the right answer. Self-trust didn’t get built. Control did…”
The complete Q&A goes deeper into specific frameworks for building self-trust, including practical steps for learning to ask for help when you’ve managed everything alone. I also address maintaining relationships with emotionally unpredictable parents, and what my own return to clinical work looked like after recognizing I needed to change my relationship with being everyone’s support system.
Looking for more?
You're reading part of a larger body of work now housed inside Strong and Stable—a space for ambitious women who wake up at 3 AM with racing hearts, who can handle everyone else's crises but don't know who to call when you're falling apart, who've built impressive lives that somehow feel exhausting to live inside.
All new writing—essays that name what's been invisible, workbooks that actually shift what feels stuck, and honest letters about the real work beneath the work, and Q&As where you can ask your burning questions (anonymously, always)—lives there now, within a curated curriculum designed to move you from insight to action.
If you're tired of holding it all up alone, you're invited to step into a space where your nervous system can finally start to settle, surrounded by women doing this foundation work alongside you.
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