After years of verbal and emotional abuse - after years of constant criticism and control - this was her secret truth: "I'm waiting for my husband to die so I can begin to live." That's what a reader wrote to me years ago. It was a difficult truth, and it was brave of her to tell it. With her permission, I'm quoting it here as an excellent one-sentence emotional abuse test. Have you secretly wished that someone who was hurting you would die, so you could be free? If so, you've probably experienced emotional abuse, and perhaps physical abuse as...
Read More

Once upon a time, a beloved friend had a pattern that drove me crazy. She'd enter into high-stress situations: working a demanding job while planning a wedding, coordinating a cross-country move with small children, or traveling with her family in a space with zero privacy. She'd confess to feeling overwhelmed and unhappy. Then she'd say, "It's OK, because once [this current insanity] is over, I'll be so happy!" Alas, that never turned out to be true. She'd dive right into the next high-stress scenario, repeating the same pattern and delaying her happiness to the future. The psychological term for this...
Read More

Recently a dear friend sent me a sticker with a picture of a pelican on it, surrounded by these words: "Just because you PELiCAN, doesn't mean you PELiSHOULD." It made me laugh and it hit me hard, all at the same time. My friend has known me for decades; she's seen me fall into the trap of thinking that just because I'm capable of doing something, that means that I must do it. This is the snare of the insecure overachiever. What is an insecure overachiever? An insecure overachiever is someone who's accomplished and competent on the outside, all while...
Read More

Before I had two kids in two years, I thought I had my time pretty well dialed in. Before they arrived, I would have thought, "Sure, take back your time, yup, it's great, been there, done that." After the kids came, I saw how far I had left to go. The truth is that before I became a parent, I was pushing and forcing and overworking a lot. I used to have up to 75 calls a month on my calendar! Now, in a sense, this was a privileged problem to have, being self-employed and making six figures doing work...
Read More

Pretty much every coaching client I've ever worked with brings up the "lazy" judgment. They'll make comments such as, "I was so lazy, I just did nothing all day." Or, "What's wrong with me today, why am I so lazy? Why can't I just get things done?!" Sometimes they'll even ask me to make the judgment for them: "Caroline, am I lazy? What do YOU think?" Personally, I subscribe to the Devon Price theory of laziness, which is simple and counter-cultural: laziness does not exist. At least, not in the sense that we think it does. We talk about laziness...
Read More

The very first challenge in my book, You Don't Owe Anyone, is to do nothing for 15 minutes. To stop all effort and simply be still, regardless of what your busy mind tells you that you "must" do instead. It's hard, yes, but it's also the cure for much of what ails us. Doing nothing is a powerful antidote for the perfectionist poison we've been swallowing since childhood. (Plus, as Dr. Martha Beck has taught me, doing nothing is a profound act of resistance in a culture that expects us to live as machines, not human animals.) So nowadays when...
Read More

Can I get real with you right now? I did something crazy the day I had my first child. After the epic labor and birth of our baby - which I have compared to being in a street fight with my own body - I sustained a major injury and needed immediate surgery. Afterward, the nurse offered me a Motrin. The anesthetic was going to wear off, and it wasn't going to feel good. Without hesitating, I said, "No thanks!" Talk about limiting beliefs examples! On one level I knew that I was doing something foolish, yet on another level, refusing...
Read More

Imagine that you're alone in your big, beautiful house. But before you go to bed, you hear a noise that sends fear up your spine. You check the downstairs side door, and the lock is broken. As you realize this, someone clears their throat behind you. A group of people is already inside your house. It's pure terror; you're braced for a fight. But then, it gets weird. The intruders don't want to beat you. They just need your house for the party. What is covert abuse? This is covert abuse in action. It's not overt hostility; it's much less...
Read More

Can I tell you a story about a brilliant thing my two year old once did, if I promise to keep it short and make it relevant to reparenting yourself? OK great! Here we go. One day when I came upstairs for bedtime, our two year old joyfully called out, "Mommy!" I called out her name, and we smiled at each other from across the room. But instead of racing into my arms as usual, she looked at me and said, emphatically, "You can't do anything to me!" "What? What do you mean?" I said. But rather than trying to...
Read More

When I read your emails, I have full-body responses: I cheer, I shout, I wave my hands. Always, I feel fortunate that you trust me with your truths. This week, a reader email featured big traumas and losses. The writer struggled with feeling that everyone was mad at her. But it was the last line that made me gasp: "I will be free someday, not on this earth but hopefully in heaven." Those words were like a punch to the solar plexus, a hard-hitting example of emotional bypassing. When I caught my breath, I spoke out loud: "Oh, hell no." But...
Read More