The Gift of Being Single (More Joy, Less Fear)

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” ~Michel de Montaigne

Some people fear spiders. Some fear public speaking.

My biggest fear? That my plus-one will always be my own reflection.

More and more people are finding themselves in the single life—not because they joyfully signed up for it, but because they’ve quietly resigned themselves to it. Being alone forever is one of the worst things most people can imagine. And yet, nobody’s talking about it.

I have no interest in bashing men—I love them. And I’m not here to shame relationships—I’d still love to experience conscious partnership or marriage one day. But what I am here for is giving a voice to the other side: the reality of singlehood. A reality that has been shamed, underrepresented, and spoken over for lifetimes.

Yes, humans of all kinds fear being single. I happen to live it in the skin of a woman, but the fear itself is cultural, primal, and deeply conditioned.

Not a Witch, Not a Spinster, Not a Divorcee

The stigma of singlehood is sticky and insidious. It convinces people to stay in relationships they’ve outgrown because it’s “better than the alternative.” It whispers that you’re not enough without a partner. And the biggest problem? We have so few role models of people living single, fulfilled lives.

I’m not a witch. I’m not a spinster. And I’m not divorced.

Funny story—when I was once applying for a work visa abroad, the form asked me to declare my relationship status. The options? Married. Divorced. Spinster. That was it. Guess which box I had to begrudgingly tick? I still laugh about it, but it says everything: if you’re not partnered, you must be a problem to categorize.

It’s in Our Bones

The roots of this run deep. For most of history, women’s survival was directly tied to men—financially, socially, legally. That dependency shaped generations of cultural messaging we all still carry in our bones, regardless of gender. We’ve been taught that wholeness comes from someone else.

For anyone who has spent long stretches of life single, there’s a peculiar kind of grief that shadows us, not for something lost, but for something never felt. We grieve the idea of intimacy we were promised, the mythical “other half” we were told to need. It’s less about absence and more about a haunting—mourning the story we’ve been handed rather than our own lived truth.

Maybe Disney messed us up. Maybe it was Jerry Maguire’s iconic “you complete me.” But the truth is, our obsession with relationships is far older than pop culture. It’s centuries old. And it’s led so many of us on a quest for “another” long before we’ve gone on the quest for ourselves.

And now? The dating industry has taken that centuries-old conditioning and turned it into a multi-million-dollar business model.

It shows up in quiet moments, like the friend fresh out of a twenty-year relationship who whispers, “What if I never find someone else?” as if that’s the worst fate imaginable.

Legacy, Good Girl, and the Seventh-Grade Soothsayer

We may have moved beyond needing a partner for a bank account or a roof over our heads, but inside many of us lives a whole cast of characters who haven’t gotten the memo.

In my case, they look like this:

• The legacy-burdened one—the part that still believes worth is sealed only once I’m chosen.
• The good girl, who doesn’t want to disappoint the family, who smiles politely when someone says, “You’ll find someone soon.”
• The people pleaser who wonders if they should tone themselves down to be “more dateable.”
• And the inner child who still remembers the sting of being told in seventh grade, “You’ll never have a boyfriend” and worries, even now, that maybe it was a prophecy.

Different faces. Same message: You’re not enough on your own.

Swiping Right on Your Insecurities

The modern dating industry has taken this centuries-old programming and turned it into a goldmine. Apps, relationship coaches, matchmaking services, and self-help books all thrive on making your relationship status yet another problem to be solved.

Not long ago, I was on a twenty-four-hour road trip listening to yet another relationship self-help book. This one at least was about “becoming the one,” but even then, the end goal was still to get the partner. Where are the books about deepening your relationship with yourself, not as a prelude to love, but simply to live your damn best life?

And can we please stop acting like every contrived meeting arranged on an app is a “date”? We used to meet organically in coffee shops or elevators; now we swipe because we’re too afraid to make eye contact in real life.

The funniest part? Friends in relationships often get more excited about my first meets than I do—as if I’m finally about to be rescued from the great tragedy of my singlehood.

Love, Yes; Panic, No

Biology matters. We are wired for connection. We crave intimacy and belonging. This is not about pretending otherwise.

What I’m talking about here is the fear of being single—the panic that drives bad decisions, keeps us in misaligned relationships, and has an entire industry profiting off our insecurities.

Rather than pouring all that longing into loving and being loved by one person, we could simply be… loving. Period. Creating a more compassionate relationship with ourselves. Spreading kindness. Offering to everyone the kind of love that heals the world. Because when we’re busy running from the fear that something is inherently wrong with us, we miss our greatest capacity—to love, in every direction.

The Gift of Being Unpartnered

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: I can literally do anything I want.

If there are socks on the floor, they’re mine.

If the yogurt is gone, I ate it.

I can book a trip on a whim, sleep diagonally, and never negotiate over the thermostat. Netflix isn’t infiltrated with someone else’s questionable taste, and no one wakes me up in my sleep—except my dog.

If I’m honest, my unfiltered fear about being single forever isn’t loneliness. It’s choking on a piece of toast and no one finding me. Or never experiencing the kind of deep intimacy and vulnerability I still hope for.

But here’s the freedom side: I’ve gotten to know myself in a way I never could have if I’d always been in a relationship. I’ve formed an identity that’s mine—unshaped by a partner’s wants or habits. And I want anyone living single to know this is not a consolation prize. This is one valid, powerful way to live. You haven’t failed. Your worth is not measured in anniversaries.

For me, soulmates show up in friendship as much as romance. My best friend and I joke we’ll probably live side by side when we’re old. Deep connection isn’t confined to coupledom, and that truth is liberating.

Single By Trust, Not Default

Seeing singlehood as a radical act of self-trust in a culture obsessed with coupling is… well, radical. And honestly, it’s 2025. We’ve accepted gender fluidity. Sexuality can be expressed on any spectrum you choose. So why are we still categorizing people by relationship status? Why is this still the metric we use to size up someone’s life?

And this isn’t about some performative empowerment—people determined to prove they’re so strong, so independent, so “I don’t need anyone.” That’s still a posture that defines itself in relation to others. What I’m talking about is living fully for yourself, without apology, without your relationship status being a headline of your life.

So maybe the real question isn’t “Will I end up alone?” but “Who can I be if I’m not waiting to be chosen?”

And if you need me, I’ll be training for my next big adventure: walking the Camino trail in Portugal next summer—a pilgrimage powered entirely by my own two feet, my own heart, and absolutely no plus-one required.

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About Andrea Tessier

Andrea Tessier is a master life coach and Level 2 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Practitioner who helps ambitious, growth-oriented women build self-trust, release perfectionism, and step into authentic leadership. With over six years of experience blending psychology and spirituality, she guides clients to reconnect with their true Self and live with clarity, peace, and wholeness. Download her free Self Trust Starter Kit.

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How Menopause Exposed the Hidden Trauma I Spent Years Ignoring

“There is no way to be whole without first embracing our brokenness. Wounds transform us, if we let them.” ~Sue Monk Kidd

Menopause flagged up everything unresolved, unmet, and unchallenged and asked me to meet it with grace.

I’m not saying it was an overnight thing—more like a ten-year process of discovery, rollercoaster style. One of those “strap yourself in, no brakes, no seatbelt, possibly no survival” rides.

If I’m honest, the process is still unfolding, but with less “aaaaggggghhhhh” and more “oh.”

Having mentally swapped Nemesis Inferno for It’s a Small World, I can now look back with deep compassion for that younger version of me at the start of perimenopause.  She was the one frantically Googling her way through a vortex of symptoms, never quite able to figure out whether it was a brain tumor or an underactive thyroid gland.

It all started when I was around thirty-five (for context, I’m now forty-nine). I’d just moved to Brighton from Cheshire to do a degree in songwriting at BIMM and threw myself into it with all the gusto of a twenty-four-year-old; after all, I had it…the gusto, that is.

That first year was wild, to say the least, but then, the ground beneath me started to fracture.

My mind would go blank on stage. The keyboard started looking like a fuzzy blob of jelly. My heart would pound through the night for no apparent reason. I gained a spare tire around my middle. I’d walk into town and have a panic attack, clutching the wall of a bank while strangers side-eyed me with pity or concern.

My libido shot through the roof like a horny teenager. The rage was volcanic, and my poor partner couldn’t even breathe next to me without triggering a tirade (I see the dichotomy too).

It was a maelstrom of symptoms that even Dr. Google couldn’t unpack, and yeah, neither could my actual doctor, but that’s for another time.

The real unraveling came when I went on tour with a band at age forty-two.

It was supposed to be fun-fun-fun, except it wasn’t. It was hell-hell-hell. Ten days, and I slept properly for only one of them. I came home wrecked, assuming that once I returned to my bed and the stability of my beloved, I’d be fine.

But I wasn’t. That’s when insomnia truly began. I’d ‘learned’ how not to sleep, and now my mind was sabotaging me on a loop.

In desperation, I booked in with a functional medicine practitioner who ran some lab tests. The results were “low everything,” and that was the first time I heard the word perimenopause.

I didn’t think much of it at the time—standard denial. But the word lodged itself somewhere.

Around the same time, I was running a speaker event in Brighton and immersing myself in therapeutic modalities as part of my own healing.

Music, my first (well, actually second) career, had started to feel more frightening than exhilarating. In my search for calm, I stumbled upon a modality called RTT, a kind of deep subconscious reset done under hypnosis, which changed everything for me and launched me into a new career pathway.

As I continued learning and applying what I was discovering, a huge lightbulb moment landed:

“Hang on… A lot of the stories I’m hearing from women in midlife involve more than just symptoms; they involve deep, relational wounds.  I wonder if there’s a link between menopause symptom severity and childhood experiences?”

So, I turned to Google Scholar to see if anyone else had spotted this link, and sure enough, there it was.

I came across a 2021 study in Maturitas that found women with higher ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) scores were up to 9.6 times more likely to experience severe menopausal symptoms, even when things like anxiety, depression, and HRT were factored in. That blew my mind.

Another 2023 study from Emory University showed that perimenopausal women with trauma histories demonstrated significantly higher levels of PTSD and depression than those in other hormonal phases. That explained so much of what I was feeling too. 

And then I found a 2017 paper in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry showing that women who experienced two or more ACEs were over 2.5 times more likely to have their first major depressive episode during menopause, even if they had no prior history of depression. 

Finally, a recent 2024 review framed early trauma as a key driver of hormonal sensitivity, especially during life transitions like perimenopause. It helped me see that my struggles weren’t random or my fault; there was something a lot deeper at play.

But I was still confused. What was the biological mechanism behind all of this?

Dun dun dah… I found a peer-reviewed paper in Frontiers in Medicine that helped me connect the dots. Take a breath.

In trauma-exposed women, our GABA receptors become altered. These receptors, which help calm the nervous system, rely on a metabolite of progesterone called allopregnanolone. But trauma can disrupt both our ability to break down progesterone into allopregnanolone and our ability to receive its effects at the cellular level (because the GABA receptors become dysfunctional).

So basically, that means even if we have enough progesterone, we might not be able to use it properly. The ensuing result is that we become more sensitive to hormonal fluctuations, and we can’t receive the soothing effects we should be getting from progesterone.

As I began to piece all this together, I was forced to confront something in my own history.

Because frankly, I thought I had a happy childhood.

That is, until I came across a concept that stopped me in my tracks. It felt so close to home, I literally clapped the book shut.

It’s called enmeshment trauma.

It’s a type of relational trauma that often leads to symptoms of CPTSD (which, just to remind you, tends to flare up during menopause). But the thing is, enmeshment hides in plain sight often under the guise of “closeness.” We prided ourselves on being a close family… too close, in fact.

I was an only child with nothing to buffer me from the scrutiny of my parents and the emotional load they placed on me. They’d confide in me about each other as if I were their best friend or therapist. I didn’t know it then, but their lack of emotional maturity meant they were leaning on me for unconditional emotional support. I was a good listener and a very tuned-in child.

I became parentified. Praised and validated for my precociousness, while being robbed of the ability to safely individuate. I was “allowed” to find myself, but the price I paid was emotional withdrawal from my father, equally painful as we’d been so close.

It was confusing and overwhelming, and I had no one to help me metabolize those feelings. It wired me for hyper-responsibility, anxiety, and guilt. Not exactly the best recipe for a smooth menopause transition, which requires slowness, ease, and softness.

As a textbook “daddy’s girl,” I unconsciously sought out older men, bosses, teachers, even married guys. Their energy felt familiar. Meanwhile, emotionally available prospects seemed boring, even if they were safer. That attachment chaos added more voltage to the CPTSD pot I had no idea was simmering under the surface of my somewhat narcissistic facade.

The final ingredient in this complex trauma marinade was a stunted ability to individuate financially. I was still clinging to my parents’ purse strings at age forty-four. The shame, frustration, and despair all came to a head when I dove into the biggest self-sabotaging episode of my life:

I decided to leave my long-term relationship.

He was my rock and my stability. But “daddy’s girl” wanted one last encore. And when he refused to take me back, despite my pleading, it was a mess. But, in a twist of grace, my father had taught me grit. How to get out of a hole. And that’s exactly what I did.

I learned to stand on my own two feet financially. I learned the power of committing to one person and treating them with respect. I learned to set boundaries and become deliciously self-preserving with my energy, because that’s what the menopause transition demanded of me.

And if it weren’t for those wild hormonal shifts, I’m not sure I’d have learned any of this.

Through my experience, I’ve come to see that menopause isn’t just a hormonal event. It’s a complete life transition, both inner and outer. A transition deeply influenced by the state of our nervous system and our capacity for resilience and emotional flexibility.

For those of us with trauma, this resilience and flexibility is often impaired. Hormone therapy can help, yes, but for sensitive systems, it’s only part of the puzzle. And sometimes, it can even make things worse, especially if not dosed correctly.

As sensitive, trauma-aware women navigating these hormonal shifts, there’s so much we can do to support ourselves outside of the medical model.

Slowing it all down is one of the most powerful ways we can create space for the ‘busy work’ our bodies are diligently undertaking during this transition. Gentle, nourishing movement. Yoga Nidra. Early nights. Simple, healthy meals. Earthing and grounding in nature. Magnesium baths. Dry body brushing. Castor oil packs. Vaginal steaming. Think: self-care on steroids.

But perhaps the most radical thing I ever did was to carve out more space in my diary just to S.L.O.W.  D.O.W.N.

Now, eighteen months post-menopause, I find myself reflecting.

What did she teach me?

She flagged up everything unresolved, unmet, and unchallenged.

She showed me where I was still saying yes to others and no to myself.

She taught me that I need more space than society finds comfortable.

She helped me let go of beauty standards and gave me time for rest.

She absolved me of guilt for not living according to others’ expectations.

She reframed my symptoms as love letters from my inner child, calling me home to myself.

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About Sally Garozzo

Sally Garozzo is a clinical hypnotherapist and curious explorer of the midlife and menopause transition inside her podcast The Menopause Mindset. After a winding journey through music, anxiety, and unexpected hormone chaos, she now helps others navigate their own transitions through hypnotherapy. Her passion is helping others reclaim agency over their lives during menopause and beyond. Visit her at sallygarozzo.com and on Instagram and Facebook.

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Learning to Be Seen After a Childhood Spent Disappearing

“The habits you created to survive will no longer serve you when it’s time to thrive.” ~Eboni Davis

I learned early how to measure the danger in a room. With a narcissistic mother, the air could shift in an instant—her tone slicing through me, reminding me that my feelings had no place.

With an alcoholic stepfather, the threat was louder, heavier, and more unpredictable. I still remember the slam of bottles on the counter, the crack of his voice turning to fists, the way I would hold my breath in the dark, hoping the storm would pass without landing on me.

In that house, love wasn’t safe. Love was survival. And survival meant disappearing—making myself small, silent, and invisible so I wouldn’t take up too much space in a world already drowning in chaos.

In a home like that, there was no space to simply be a child. My mother’s moods came first—her pain, her need for control. With her, I learned to hide the parts of myself that were “too much” because nothing I did was ever enough. With my stepfather, I learned to walk carefully, always scanning for danger, always bracing for the next eruption.

So I became the quiet one. The peacekeeper. The invisible daughter who tried to keep the house from falling apart, even when it already was. I carried a weight far too heavy for my small shoulders, believing it was my job to make things okay, even though deep down, I knew I couldn’t.

Those patterns didn’t stay in the walls of my childhood home; they followed me into adulthood. I carried silence like a second skin, disappearing in relationships whenever love began to feel unsafe. I learned to give until I was empty, to lose myself in caring for others, to believe that if I stayed quiet enough, small enough, I might finally be loved.

But love that required me to vanish was never love at all. It was survival all over again. I found myself repeating the same patterns, choosing partners who mirrored the chaos I had grown up with, shutting down whenever I felt too much. I confused pain for love, silence for safety, and in doing so, I abandoned myself again and again.

The cost was heavy: years of feeling invisible, unworthy, and unseen. Years of believing my voice didn’t matter, my needs were too much, and my story was something to hide.

For a long time, I believed this was just who I was—invisible, unworthy, built to carry pain. But there came a night when even survival felt too heavy. I was sitting in the cold, in a tent I was calling home, with nothing but silence pressing in around me. The air was damp, my body shivering beneath thin blankets, every sound outside reminding me how unsafe and alone I felt.

And for the first time, instead of disappearing into that silence, I whispered, “I can’t keep living like this.” The words were shaky, but they felt like a lifeline—the first honest thing I had said to myself in years.

It wasn’t a dramatic transformation. Nothing changed overnight. But something inside me cracked open, a small ember of truth I hadn’t let myself feel before: I deserved more than this. I was worthy of more than surviving.

That whisper became a seed. I started writing again, pouring the words I could never say onto paper. Slowly, those words became a lifeline—a way of reclaiming the voice I had silenced for so long. Every page reminded me that my story mattered, even if no one else had ever said it. And piece by piece, I began to believe it.

Survival patterns protect us, but they don’t have to define us. For years, disappearing kept me safe. Staying quiet shielded me from conflict I couldn’t control. But surviving isn’t the same as living, and the patterns that once protected me no longer have to shape who I am becoming.

Writing can be a way of reclaiming your voice. When I couldn’t speak, I wrote. Every sentence became proof that I existed, that my story was real, that I had something worth saying. Sometimes healing begins with a pen and a page—the simple act of letting your truth take shape outside of you.

It is not selfish to take up space. Growing up, I believed my needs were too much, my presence a burden. But the truth is that we all deserve to be seen, to be heard, to take up space in the world without apology.

We don’t have to heal alone. So much of my pain came from carrying everything in silence. Healing has taught me that there is strength in being witnessed, in letting others hold us when the weight is too much to carry by ourselves.

I still carry the echoes of that house—the silence, the chaos, the parts of me that once believed I wasn’t worthy of love. But today, I hold them differently. They no longer define me; they remind me of how far I’ve come.

I cannot change the family I was born into or the pain that shaped me. But I can choose how I grow from it. And that choice—to soften instead of harden, to speak instead of disappear, to heal instead of carry it all in silence—has changed everything.

I am still learning, still growing, still coming home to myself. But I no longer disappear. I know now that my story matters—and so does yours.

So I invite you to pause and ask yourself: Where have you mistaken survival for love? What parts of you have learned to stay silent, and what might happen if you gave them a voice?

Even the smallest whisper of truth can be the beginning of a new life. Your story matters too. May you find the courage to stop surviving and begin truly living.

May we all learn to take up space without apology, to speak our truths without fear, and to find safety not in silence, but in love.

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About Tracy Lynn

Tracy Lynn is the founder of From Darkness We Grow, a healing space for those who carry emotional pain in silence. Through journals, courses, and her online community, The Healing Circle, she helps others reclaim their voice and remember their worth. Connect with Tracy at fromdarknesswegrow.com. You can also find support in The Healing Circle.

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The Power of Imperfect Work in an AI-Driven, Perfection-Obsessed World

“Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.” ~Salvador Dalí

We live in a world that worships polish.

Perfect photos on Instagram. Seamless podcasts with no awkward pauses. Articles that read like they’ve passed through a dozen editors.

And now, with AI tools that can produce mistake-free writing in seconds, the bar feels even higher. Machines can generate flawless sentences, perfect grammar, and shiny ideas on demand. Meanwhile, I’m over here second-guessing a paragraph, rewriting the same sentence six different ways, and still wondering if “Best” or “Warmly” is the less awkward email sign-off.

It’s easy to feel like our messy, human work doesn’t measure up.

I’ve fallen into that trap plenty of times. I’ve delayed publishing because “it’s not ready.” I’ve rerecorded podcasts because I stumbled on a word. I’ve tweaked and reformatted things no one else would even notice.

Perfectionism whispers: If it isn’t flawless, don’t share it.

But over time, I’ve learned something else: imperfection is not a liability. It’s the whole point.

A Table Full of Flaws

One of the best lessons I’ve ever learned about imperfection came not from writing or technology, but from woodworking.

About a decade ago, I decided to build a dining table. I spent hours measuring, cutting, sanding, and staining. I wanted it to be perfect.

But here’s the truth about woodworking: nothing ever turns out perfect. Ever.

That table looks solid from across the room. But if you step closer, you’ll notice the flaws. The board I mismeasured by a quarter inch. The corner I over-sanded. The stain that didn’t set evenly.

At first, I saw those flaws as failures. Proof that I wasn’t skilled enough, patient enough, or careful enough.

But then something surprising happened. My wife walked into the room, saw the finished table, and said she loved it. She didn’t see the mistakes. She saw something that had been made with love and care.

And slowly, I began to see it that way, too.

That table isn’t just furniture. It’s proof of effort, process, and patience. It carries my fingerprints, my sweat, and my imperfect humanity.

And here’s the kicker: it’s way more fulfilling than anything mass-produced or manufactured as machine-perfect.

Why Imperfection Connects Us

That table taught me something AI never could: flaws tell a story.

Machines can produce flawless outputs, but they can’t create meaning. They can’t replicate the pride of sanding wood with your own hands or the laughter around a table that wobbled for the first month.

Imperfections are what make something ours. They carry our fingerprints, quirks, and lived experiences.

In contrast, perfection is sterile. It might be impressive, but it rarely feels alive.

Think about the things that move us most—a friend’s vulnerable story, a laugh that turns into a snort, a talk where the speaker loses their train of thought but recovers with honesty. When was the last time you felt closest to someone? Chances are, it wasn’t when they were polished, it was when they were real. Those moments connect us precisely because they are imperfect.

They remind us we’re not alone in our flaws.

The AI Contrast

AI dazzles us because it never stutters. It never doubts. It never sends an awkward text or spills coffee on its keyboard. AI can do flawless. But flawless isn’t the same as meaningful.

But here’s what it doesn’t do:

• It doesn’t feel the mix of pride and embarrassment in showing someone your wobbly table.
• It doesn’t understand the joy of cooking a meal that didn’t go exactly to plan.
• It doesn’t know what it’s like to hit “publish” while your stomach churns with nerves, only to get a message later that says, “This made me feel less alone.”

Flawlessness might be a machine’s strength. But humanity is ours.

The very things I used to try to hide—the quirks, the rough edges, the imperfections—are the things that make my work worth sharing.

A Different Kind of Readiness

I used to think I needed to wait until something was “ready.” The blog post polished just right. The podcast that’s perfectly edited. The message refined until it couldn’t possibly be criticized.

But I’ve learned that readiness is a mirage. It’s often just perfectionism in disguise.

The truth is, most of the things that resonated most with people—my most-downloaded podcast episode, the articles that readers emailed me about months later—were the ones I almost didn’t share. The ones that felt too messy, too vulnerable, too real.

And yet, those are the ones people said, “This is exactly what I needed to hear.”

Not the flawless ones. The human ones.

How We Can Embrace Imperfection

I’m not saying it’s easy. Perfectionism is sneaky. It wears the disguise of “high standards” or “being thorough.”

Here’s what I’ve found helps me. Not rules, but reminders I keep returning to:

Share before you feel ready.If it feels 80% good enough, release it. The last 20% is often just endless polishing.

Reframe mistakes as stories.My table’s flaws? Now they’re conversation starters. What mistakes of yours might carry meaning, too?

Notice where imperfection builds connection.The things that make people feel closer to you usually aren’t the shiny parts. They’re the honest ones.

The Bigger Picture

We live in a culture obsessed with speed, optimization, and polish. AI accelerates that pressure. It tempts us to compete on machine terms: flawless, instant, infinite.

But that’s not the game we’re meant to play.

Our advantage—our only real advantage—is that we’re human. We bring nuance, empathy, humor, vulnerability, and lived experience.

Robots don’t laugh until they snort. They don’t ugly cry during Pixar movies. They don’t mismeasure wood or forget to use the wood glue and build a table that their partner loves anyway.

You do. I do. That’s the point.

So maybe we don’t need to sand down every rough edge. Perhaps we don’t need to hide every flaw.

Because when the world is flooded with flawless, machine-polished work, the imperfect, human things will stand out.

And those are the things people will remember.

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About Chris Cage

Chris Cage is the author of Still Human: Staying Sane, Productive, and Fully You in the Age of AI. He is a product manager, writer, and mental health advocate. He writes at The Mental Lens blog and hosts the podcast Through the Mental Lens, where he explores the intersection of productivity, mental well-being, and technology. Learn more and subscribe to the newsletter at TheMentalLens.com. You can also follow Chris on Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon.

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How to Stay Kind Without Losing Yourself to Toxic Behavior

“The strongest people are the ones who are still kind after the world tore them apart.” ~Raven Emotion

A few months ago, I stopped being friends with my best friend from childhood, whom I had always considered like my brother.

It was a tough decision, but I had to make it.

In the past five years, my friend (let’s call him Andy) had become increasingly rude and dismissive toward my feelings.

Not a single week went by without him criticizing me for being optimistic and for never giving up despite being a “failure.”

Still, I tried to be understanding. I really did.

I knew he was always stressed because he was going to graduate from college two years later than his peers.

And I knew he felt insecure about not being as rich and successful as “everyone else.”

But one can only take so much, and after so many years, I just couldn’t anymore.

It’s hard to keep showing up with warmth and patience when the other person not only doesn’t appreciate you but even attacks you for being “naive in the face of reality.”

(Yeah, he’d somehow convinced himself that I was in denial about my lack of success—as if the only way to react to failure were to get angry and frustrated.)

If you’ve always tried your best to be kind and gentle, you too might have been in a similar situation and wondered at least once, “Why bother?”

Because even though we don’t expect trophies or medals, a complete lack of appreciation can become difficult to accept after a while, and a simple “thank you” can start to matter more than we wish it did.

I’ll admit that, because of Andy, I almost gave up on being a kind person multiple times.

Luckily, I didn’t, and in the months that led to my difficult decision, I learned some important lessons on how to stay kind even when it starts to feel like there’s no point to it.

I hope these lessons will help you stay true to yourself, too.

1. Make sure you’re not using kindness as a bargaining chip.

Just as positivity can become toxic, there is such a thing as a harmful way of sharing kindness.

Here’s what I mean.

In my teenage years, I used to be what some would call a “nice guy.”

You know, the type of guy who prides himself on being nice, except he’s really not.

In typical “nice guy” fashion, I treated kindness as a transaction. (”I’m doing all these things for them, so they should do the same for me” was a typical thought always floating in my mind.)

I would be nice and generous to others, but I would always compare what they did for me to what I had done for them.

Then, if they didn’t reciprocate in a way that I found satisfactory, I would secretly start to resent them.

It’s not my proudest memory, but it shows how even something positive like kindness can be weaponized.

And it’s not just “nice guys” who do that, either.

Many parents make the same mistake: they try to guilt their children into showing gratitude or obedience by bringing up all the sacrifices they’ve made for them.

Of course, all this does is make the kids feel bad and even distrustful, as they may start to wonder whether their parents’ sacrifices were made out of love or selfish motives.

Because when kindness is given conditionally, it stops being about helping—it becomes about satisfying one’s desperate need for appreciation.

Needless to say, this is unhealthy for all parties involved.

That’s why it’s best to…

2. View kindness as an expression of who you are.

It’s easy to forget—especially when it goes underappreciated for too long—that kindness should be, fundamentally, an expression of yourself.

You are kind because it’s who you are, not because you want someone else’s approval.

When I look back on my friendship with Andy, I’m obviously not happy about all the times he attacked my self-esteem, dismissed my feelings, and put cracks in our relationship without a second thought. However, I can at least be proud that I didn’t let that break me and instead stayed strong.

Because that’s what this is about.

Being kind, even in the absence of thanks, is an act of self-respect.

It’s not about wanting others to notice.

It’s about staying true to yourself, regardless of how unappreciative others might be.

3. Remember you’re allowed to withdraw your kindness.

Kind people always struggle with this.

We worry that if we quit going above and beyond for someone, it might mean that we’re not good people anymore.

This is why it took me so many years to finally stop being best friends with Andy: I was afraid of being told I wasn’t really kind after all.

I didn’t want that to happen, so I kept being as generous as possible, despite how often he hurt me.

For years, I kept cooking, doing the dishes, vacuuming, mopping, and doing all sorts of chores that normally would be divided equally among roommates.

I wanted to do my best to give him as much time and space to focus on his studies (although I was in his same situation and had my own studying to do).

I refused to see that he didn’t plan on treating me any better.

In fact, years before, he’d already made it clear he didn’t believe I deserved to be repaid for all the things I did.

Yet, I just let him disrespect me and hurt me and kept being kind to him. Because kindness shouldn’t be conditional, right? Because it should just be an expression of yourself, right?

But here’s what I now understand: just because you shouldn’t expect people to treat you well in exchange for your kindness, it doesn’t mean you should accept being treated badly.

There’s a limit to how much thanklessness you can tolerate before it starts eating you up inside.

You have every right to pause or withdraw your kindness when you’re being treated poorly. This is about setting healthy boundaries. You’re not being selfish or arrogant.

I can’t believe how long it took me to realize that unconditional doesn’t mean boundaryless.

Kindness with zero boundaries isn’t kindness at all but self-abandonment.

There’s nothing noble about completely neglecting yourself just to be as generous as possible to someone else.

Be kind because that’s who you are, but don’t let yourself be taken for granted.

4. Don’t let negative people convince you to quit.

We all know people who are never content with feeling miserable by themselves, so they try to make others feel just as miserable.

And when they keep criticizing you for being a “goody two-shoes” just because you have a positive attitude, it’s hard to stay unperturbed.

You may even start to question yourself and if you should maybe stop being a positive person.

But let me assure you: letting negative people decide what kind of person you should be and what kind of life you should live is NEVER a good idea.

Because, again, some people just want to tear others down.

You could change your whole personality and become exactly like them, and they would still criticize you and judge you.

Why? Because the reason they hurt others in the first place is that they’re (unsuccessfully) wrestling with their own problems.

It’s not about you being “too nice” or “fake.” It’s about them not being able to find it in themselves to be patient and generous and always choosing to just lash out instead.

Good people are never going to criticize you for being kind.

Even if they believed that your brand of kindness might not be pleasant in some instances, they’d just tell you. They wouldn’t try to make you feel bad.

Stay True to Yourself

When kindness feels thankless, it’s easy to wonder if it’s even worth it—especially if the thanklessness comes from someone we care about.

I’ve been there more times than I can count, and yes, it always feels awful.

But kindness isn’t merely a way to please others—it’s how we respect ourselves.

You have the right to press PAUSE or STOP when someone disrespects you too much.

You don’t have to let others take you for granted just because you’re worried they might have something to say about your genuineness.

Because, honestly, what if they did?

You don’t need their approval.

You’re kind because you’re kind. It’s that simple.

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About Paulo Wang

Paolo writes about habits, happiness, self-esteem, and anything that can improve one’s life. He believes that failure is not an insurmountable obstacle to success but an integral part of it and that most failures are really just “successes in progress.” You can read more about his work at betterfailures.com.

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What Finally Helped Me Break Free from Constant Food Noise

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~Viktor Frankl

For years, I thought something was wrong with me.

No matter what I was doing—sitting in a meeting, walking the dog, or watching TV—my brain was busy debating food.

Should I eat? Shouldn’t I? I could just have one more bite, couldn’t I? What should I eat next? I’ve blown it today, haven’t I? I’ve failed again. Shall I just eat whatever I want and start again tomorrow?

The chatter was constant. It left me exhausted, ashamed, and convinced that I was weak.

I told myself it was a lack of willpower. If I just tried harder, surely I could silence it. But the harder I fought, the louder it became.

The Night Everything Changed

One night, after a long and stressful day, I stood in the kitchen with the fridge door open.

I wasn’t hungry. My stomach was full from dinner, but my mind was shouting at me to grab something, anything.

The noise in my head felt unbearable. It was as if I couldn’t relax until I gave in.

In that moment, for the first time, I paused. I asked myself a simple question: What am I really hungry for right now?

The answer wasn’t food. It was comfort. Distraction. Relief from stress I hadn’t dealt with.

It hit me that food wasn’t the real problem. The problem was the mental chatter about food, what many people now call food noise.

What I Discovered About Food Noise

Food noise isn’t hunger. Hunger is physical: your stomach growling, your energy dipping, your body asking for fuel.

Food noise is mental: urgent, repetitive, often specific. It pushes you toward food even when you’re not hungry, convincing you that you need it to cope or to feel better.

Learning this was a turning point. For years I had labeled myself a failure. But food noise wasn’t about failing at all. It was about how the brain works.

Every time I ate in response to boredom, stress, or fatigue, my brain logged it as a “reward.” The next time I felt the same cue, the noise grew louder. The loop repeated itself until it became automatic.

Understanding this gave me something I’d been missing: compassion for myself. I wasn’t broken. I was human. And if my brain could be trained into these loops, maybe it could be retrained out of them too.

How I Began to Quiet the Noise

I didn’t wake up one morning free of food chatter. It quieted slowly, through small practices that I repeated again and again.

Naming it

When the thoughts started, I said to myself, “That’s food noise, not hunger.” It may sound simple, but naming it gave me distance. It reminded me I wasn’t my thoughts.

Pausing before reacting

At first, I felt powerless against the urges. But I began experimenting with a short pause. Just two minutes. During that pause, I’d sip water, stretch, or step outside. Sometimes the craving was still there afterward, but often it had already passed. That pause gave me back a sense of choice.

Refuting the chatter

The hardest part wasn’t the food itself. It was the voice in my head.

It would say, “You’ve already ruined the day; you may as well keep going.” Or, “One more won’t matter.” I believed it every time, and each binge ended with guilt and shame.

I finally found help with a cognitive behavioral tool I’d never heard of before: the refutation.

A refutation is simply answering back to the thought—calmly, clearly, without judgment. It’s like shining a light on a lie.

The first time I tried it, I wrote my food noise down on paper: “You’ve ruined today, so you may as well give up.” Then I wrote my response underneath: “One moment doesn’t ruin a whole day. If I stop now, I’ll feel better tonight. If I keep going, I’ll feel worse.”

It felt strange at first, almost like arguing with myself. But slowly, those written words became a voice I could access in real time.

Now, when the chatter starts, I can hear both sides: the urge and the refutation. And with practice, the refutation has grown stronger.

Some of the ones I use often are:

Food noise says: “One bite won’t hurt.”
Refutation: “One bite keeps the loop alive. Every time I resist, I weaken it.”

Food noise says: “You can just start again tomorrow.”
Refutation: “If I wait until tomorrow, I make waiting a habit. The best time to start is now.”

Food noise says: “You’ve earned this.”
Refutation: “I’ve earned peace of mind, not more noise.”

At first, I had to write them down. Over time, they became automatic.

Self-kindness

For years, slipping up meant spiraling into guilt and shame. Now, when I give in, I remind myself, “This is hard, and I’m learning.” That kindness keeps me moving forward instead of sinking deeper.

Each of these practices was like a mental rep in the gym. The more I repeated them, the stronger I became.

What Quiet Feels Like

The first time I realized I had gone an entire morning without obsessing about food, I almost cried.

The silence in my head felt like a gift.

Quiet doesn’t mean I never think about food. It means food has stopped being the background soundtrack of my life.

I can work without constant distraction.

I can sit with my family without guilt.

I can enjoy a meal without a running commentary in my mind.

Most importantly, I’ve started to trust myself again.

The Bigger Lesson

What I learned from food noise applies far beyond eating.

Our minds are noisy places, full of chatter about success, relationships, fears, and the future.

If we treat every thought as urgent and true, we end up exhausted. But if we learn to pause, to name the chatter, and to choose differently, we create space for peace.

The greatest gift wasn’t just a quieter relationship with food. It was discovering that not every thought in my head deserves a reaction.

That lesson has changed more than my eating. It has changed how I live.

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About Johanna Handley

Johanna Handley is an overeating recovery coach and Head of Coaching at The Last Food Fight. She co-created Food Noise Shield, a free tool that helps people quiet cravings and rebuild self-trust.

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5 Surefire Signs You Grew Up with an Emotionally Immature Parent

“There’s no such thing as a ‘bad kid’—just angry, hurt, tired, scared, confused, impulsive ones expressing their feelings and needs the only way they know how. We owe it to every single one of them to always remember that.” ~Dr. Jessica Stephens 

All children look up to their parents from the moment they enter this world. They have this beautiful, pure, unconditional love pouring out of them. Parents are on a pedestal. They are the ones who know what’s best! They are the grownups showing us how to do life!

We don’t think for one moment that they could be showing us the wrong way.

I, like many others, adored both my mum and dad. I could not see their flaws, their pains, or their trauma. I just loved them and wanted to spend time with them. If they shouted at me and told me I was wrong, I trusted that they were right, no question.

When I had non-existent self-esteem, anxiety, and suicidal ideation because I believed I was not good enough, I blamed that 100% on myself. I had unconsciously recorded all those moments when their behavior had made me feel not good enough as my own fault for being ‘bad,’ not considering they could have had something going on themselves.

When I struggled in romantic relationships, always chasing unavailable men, I held myself responsible and never for one minute thought that this pattern of behavior stemmed from my relationship with my parents. I believed what they had told me in different ways—that I was the problem!

The reason I struggled in relationships, I later discovered, was that my parents were not actually okay when they were parenting me because of their own traumas and were emotionally immature.

Here are five signs you had emotionally immature parents and how may it impact you.

1. Their feelings and needs were more important than yours.

Emotionally immature parents can be incredibly self-absorbed and distracted by their own feelings and emotions, and they want their child, you, to regulate them.

For example, when my mum was upset, I would be affectionate toward her and soothe her. As I got older, she would be angry with me if I was not there to soothe her when she needed it, saying I was selfish and she had no one. I believed her.

I was off playing with my friends and being a child, but this was not allowed if it meant I couldn’t meet her needs and calm her emotions. As a result, I learned it was not safe to choose my needs over hers, as she would withdraw her love from me, which felt so scary. My heart would race, and I would feel terror take over my body.

As an adult, this meant I believed I was responsible for other people’s emotions, and if they were angry or upset, it was my fault. So I would always walk around on eggshells just in case someone might attack me for upsetting them. Because I believed everyone’s pain was my fault, I attracted more relationships like the one with my mum. These relationships made me feel powerless.

2. Expressing your feelings or needs was not safe.

When you expressed a feeling and it was met with a negative reaction from your parent, it created a world of panic inside your body. For example, sharing how you were struggling could have been met with a comment about how their lives were so much worse and you should stop being so dramatic.

Expressing a need, like asking for a ride somewhere, could have launched an attack about how selfish you were—and didn’t you realize how hard your parents were working!

So what happened? You stopped expressing your feelings and needs and buried them deep. (For me, I topped them with ice cream and sugar for comfort.) As an adult, you may now be so cut off from your own emotions and needs that you act as if you don’t have any.

3. They did not take responsibility for their actions.

They’d say or do something that really hurt you, but they wouldn’t acknowledge it, nor apologize. In fact, they may have just carried on as normal.

Your relationship with them was not repaired as a result. You may have tried to resolve the situation, but you were the only one trying, and you may even have found yourself blamed for something you didn’t even do. The whole situation would leave you feeling crazy and like you didn’t know what’s true. You may even have started thinking it was your own fault.

As an adult, you might repeat this dynamic in other relationships, feeling powerless to repair and resolve issues that arise. This leads to resentment and staying in unhappy relationships because you don’t know it can be any other way.

4. They have no idea how to regulate their emotions.

They walked around triggered by their emotions all day. They had no idea how to bring themselves back into balance. They’d come home exhausted from work, but rather than doing something to discharge from the day, they’d get stuck in their chores and then take out their emotions on others due to resentment over being so tired.

They also might have had no idea what they were feeling. Maybe they were constantly angry because they lacked the self-awareness to recognize they were really feeling sad or anxious or overwhelmed. And because they didn’t know what they were feeling, they had no idea what they needed to do to feel better.

5. You were forced to grow up before your time.

It wasn’t okay for you to be a child. They found it way too stressful, so you were encouraged to be a little adult. Maybe even a little adult that parented them. It was also not safe for you to be a child. You couldn’t be loud or silly, as they could have lost their temper, so you walked around on high alert waiting for this. You may have learned to be the calm one because your parents weren’t.

I found myself getting involved in their very grown-up arguments as a child just to try and keep the peace in the house. This is not the role of a child. If you had the same experience, you may find yourself attracting similarly codependent relationships as an adult.

—

If this childhood sounds like yours, you are not alone. There are many of us. There is an inner child within you that missed out on so much love, nurturing, encouragement, and balance, which could be the reason you are struggling now as an adult.

It is not because you are not good enough or because you are to blame for everything. It is because you were raised by emotionally immature parents. Effectively, you were raised by children in adult bodies.

You could still be dealing with these patterns as an adult with your parents, as they could be children in even older bodies now!

Learning how to be emotionally mature yourself so you don’t repeat the patterns with your own children is a wonderful gift to be able to give them, but also it means you can have healthy relationships and find peace within. Healing and reparenting your inner child means you will be able to express your emotions and have boundaries so others don’t think it is okay to do the same to you.

I used to feel powerless when people treated me like this, not just with my parents but in other relationships too. I would try to be whatever they wanted me to be, but they would still react in the same ways no matter what I did. Stepping back from them and focusing on healing my inner child, understanding her feelings and needs, and holding space for her has changed my life. I was able to become the parent I always longed for.

I understand now that my parents were emotionally immature, as they were raised by emotionally immature parents too. They were mature with money and jobs, but with emotions, they were out of their depth because no one showed them how to manage them, and unfortunately, they never learned.

But we can be the generation that breaks this pattern by being the emotionally mature parent we needed. We can be the example of healthy relationship dynamics that we never had.

**This post was originally published in 2022.

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About Manpreet Johal Bernie

Manpreet is the creator of the podcast Heart’s Happiness, where she talks about intergenerational trauma, and is also a coach who helps people make peace with their past and rewrite their story by learning how to love themselves and their inner child. Check out her FREE MASTERCLASS, Freedom from Anxiety, where she shares her proprietary technique to help with anxiety. Follow her on Instagram here.

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Work Is Not Family: A Lesson I Never Wanted but Need to Share

“The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.” ~Peter Levine

I was sitting in the conference room at work with the CEO and my abusive male boss.

The same boss who had been love-bombing and manipulating me since I started nine months earlier, slowly pushing my nervous system into a constant state of fight-or-flight.

When I was four months into the job, this boss went on a three-day bender during an overnight work conference at a fancy hotel in Boston.

He skipped client meetings or showed up smelling like alcohol, wearing yesterday’s clothes.

When I texted him to ask where he was, he replied, “I f**king hate you.”

When my CEO found out and called me five minutes after I got home, I told him I trusted him to handle it however he saw fit.

I really believed he would. But over the next five months, the abuse didn’t stop. I just didn’t know it was abuse yet.

He was over-the-top obsessed with me. He regularly told me:

• “You’re going to make so much money here.”
• “You have the ‘it’ factor.”
• “You know how I feel about you.”
• “I’m going to fast-track you.”
• “You’re such a good culture fit.”
• “This has been your home all along.”

He told me everything I wanted to hear.

I had spent the prior fifteen years in corporate America, wondering where I belonged. Wondering where my work family was.

At first, I felt like I had finally found it.

Then the attention escalated. What started as friendly check-ins became constant interruptions. The group Teams chats turned into direct messages. The work texts turned into personal texts—at night and on the weekends.

He asked to go to dinner with me and my husband. He offered to buy me lunch while ignoring my coworkers. He brought in cookies for the office but made sure I knew they were for me. He singled me out in meetings and asked how I was doing while ignoring everyone else.

I told myself, “There are worse things than your boss liking you.” But over time…I started to feel unsafe.

My body started to send signals. I was having panic attacks on Sunday nights. I couldn’t sleep. I found myself using PTO just to get away from him. My fight-or-flight response was fully activated, and I finally had to admit I wasn’t in control anymore.

Eventually, a coworker reported it to the CEO. Which brings me back to the conference room.

I sat across from the CEO, body tense, heart racing, but filled with hope. I was ready for resolution. Support. Justice.

That’s not what happened.

Whatever the CEO said that day affected me in a way I didn’t expect. I felt minimized. Judged. Dismissed.

Then my body reacted.

The pressure in my chest started to build until I couldn’t control it anymore. I started shaking—full-body, uncontrollable shaking. I tried to sit still, tried to pretend nothing was happening, but it was too late.

There was no hiding it. No escaping it.

Just a forty-two-year-old corporate woman, uncontrollably shaking in a conference room across from the CEO.

I excused myself and ran to the restroom.

I lay on the floor of the public bathroom and cried harder than I ever had. My body was forcing the energy out of me. There was nothing I could do but let it come out.

Once the tears slowed, I left the building as fast as I could.

What had just happened to me?
Why did it feel like a gaping wound had opened in my chest?
Why did I feel physically damaged?

It would take almost a year before I understood: that was trauma. That was new trauma layered on top of old trauma.

Almost exactly twenty years earlier, I had been sexually assaulted by a coworker.

I reported it to the police, and they didn’t even take a statement. I was sent away. Dismissed. Minimized.

My brain had filed this memory away. But my body remembered.

That moment in the conference room—being in a position of vulnerability, being ignored, unheard, unprotected—triggered a trauma response that had been waiting quietly inside of me for decades.

My brain couldn’t tell the difference between past and present. It just knew I wasn’t safe. So it mobilized. It tried to protect me. And it left me raw, shut down, and checked out from the world—including my own kids—for a long time afterward.

It was the worst time of my life.

Several months after the conference room incident, I got a new job.

It wasn’t easy to leave despite everything that had happened. I liked my job. I was good at it. My coworkers were my friends, and we had been through so much together. But I had become a shell of myself, and leaving seemed like the only way to get myself back.

Even so, the first six months at my new job were not easy. I remained hypervigilant and emotionally reactive. Standard feedback and performance reviews brought me right back to that conference room, no matter what was said.

That’s when I learned: trauma doesn’t stay with the toxic job. It comes with you. And this was trauma.

What I Learned About Trauma

I needed to learn everything I could, so I enrolled in a trauma-informed coaching program and studied my experience through that lens.

From a trauma perspective, I learned:

• The brain constantly scans the environment for safety and danger, a process called neuroception.
• My brain perceived danger in countless ways during my employment and alerted me through my nervous system.
• I rationalized those signals away, telling myself I could handle it.
• But the signals—racing heart, insomnia, panic, emotional reactivity—only got louder until they could no longer be ignored.

It felt like my body was attacking me. In reality, it was trying to save me.

Trauma is what happens when your system struggles to cope with overwhelming distress, leaving a wound behind. Those wounds don’t need your permission to exist; they only need a trigger.

That day in the conference room, multiple unhealed wounds surfaced all at once—sexual trauma, financial trauma, friendship trauma, life purpose trauma, and institutional betrayal trauma.

The new trauma stacked on the old was simply too much for my system to manage. So my body did what it was designed to do: protect me.

Learning this allowed me to release the shame I was carrying. It allowed me to have compassion for myself and others.

It made me stop looking backward and start looking forward.

What I Learned About Work

While I was learning about trauma, I started asking bigger questions in my new role as an HR consultant.

I had never worked in HR before, so I studied every conversation, policy, and process to understand how the system works behind the scenes and to view my own experience through the employer’s lens.

Who really has the power?
What rights do employees have?
What responsibilities do employers have to protect them?

Here’s what I learned:

• The employment agreement is simple—employees agree to perform the duties on their job description, and employers agree to compensate them for performing those duties.
• Both parties can end the agreement at any time.
• HR and employment attorneys are paid to protect the company from risk. Period.

That’s it. Anything beyond that is optional, unless required by law.

Work is a contract. It is not a family. It is a system built for labor, not love.

And this system is not immune to abuse. It is not immune to trauma.

Just because it’s a professional setting doesn’t mean it’s a safe one. And just because you’re a high performer doesn’t mean you’re not vulnerable to harm.

The idea that work is a family, that it should provide belonging, meaning, and loyalty, didn’t come from nowhere—it reflects how work itself has changed over time.

In the past, belonging came from many places at once: tight-knit communities, extended families, faith traditions, and work that was often woven into local or family life.

When industrialization pulled people into factories, corporations, and offices, many of those community anchors began to lose influence. To fill the void, workplaces leaned into family language—promising connection and loyalty in exchange for more of people’s time, energy, and devotion.

For a time, many companies did try to live up to that promise with pensions, long-term employment, and mutual loyalty between employer and employee.

But as work has become more globalized and transactional, that loyalty has faded. Today, organizations still borrow the language of family, but the commitment is one-sided. When it serves them, they lean on employees’ devotion; when it doesn’t, the illusion disappears.

That’s how we know work is not family—because families don’t withdraw love, belonging, or loyalty the moment it no longer serves them.

What Helped Me Heal

The good news is healing is possible.

For me, healing meant more than just learning about trauma in a classroom and HR policies in an office. It meant implementing daily practices into my life that rebuilt my sense of safety and helped me trust myself again. This included:

Monitoring my nervous system and honoring my body’s responses to triggers.

I started noticing the small cues—a clenched jaw, a racing heart, a stomach that wouldn’t settle. Instead of pushing through, I learned to pause, breathe, and respond with care. These moments of noticing became the foundation of feeling safe in my own body again.

Exploring my past experiences with compassion instead of judgment.

For years, I believed I had compassion for myself, but it was shallow—more like telling myself to “let it go” than honoring what I had lived through. It wasn’t until I became aware of the experiences that shaped my patterns and behaviors that I finally understood real self-compassion.

Recognizing the subconscious behaviors that put me at risk.

Perfectionism, rationalizing red flags, unhealthy coping strategies—these were patterns I had carried for decades. Becoming aware of them gave me the power to make different choices, rather than repeating the same painful cycles.

Setting boundaries at work to protect my energy and healing.

I learned how to say no without guilt, how to step away from people who drain me, and how to handle the frustrations of work without getting emotionally activated. Boundaries have become an act of self-love.

Honoring the complexity of the human body and lived experience.

This was the hardest lesson of all. I carry a body, brain, and nervous system that remember everything I’ve been through, even the parts I’ve tried to forget. My responsibility now is to honor that complexity in every environment I step into—including work.

That doesn’t mean molding myself to whatever the workplace demands. It means protecting my well-being first and remembering that I am more than a role, a paycheck, or the approval of others.

It took time, but these practices slowly closed the wound that had once left me gasping for air on the floor of that bathroom. The open wound in my chest has now been closed for over a year and has been replaced with peace.

That day in the conference room broke me. But it also cracked me open. I put myself back together, stronger than ever.

And you can, too.

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About Katie Hadiaris

Katie Hadiaris is the founder of Work Is Not Family, a movement that challenges workplace norms and helps professionals restore self-trust, rebuild confidence, and step into their power so they can protect their time, energy, and peace—no matter where they work. An ICF-certified somatic trauma-informed coach with a background in HR and corporate leadership, Katie combines personal insight with professional expertise to share practical tools for nervous system regulation and self-protection. Learn more at workisnotfamily.com or join her free Facebook group.

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