In my case, the pregnancy wasn’t planned. Yet, I immediately knew I wanted this baby, that I loved this baby, and yet I also felt fear, sadness, and resistance emerge almost as quickly.

But I shoved those uncomfy feelings down and ran to show my husband that our lives were taking a surprise turn. He was thrilled! Hugs, kisses, and a million “oh my gods” followed in our tiny apartment bedroom as we gazed at each other in amazement.

Fast forward a few days later, we’d confirmed the news with the doctor, bought the prenatal vitamins, and started to make some plans. Despite the unplanned nature of this pregnancy, I’d been married to my best friend for 9 years, and we knew we wanted to have a kid; we were both employed, healthy, and relatively stable adults. So, why was I feeling a little dark, heavy, and lonely?

Mother Wounds

It hit me when I was alone in my car in the local Vons parking lot, of course. I suddenly understood what this strange feeling was: wanting a mother, but not my mother.

I hadn’t let myself want that in so long I’d forgotten it was something a person could want. To be held. To be soothed. To have someone brush the hair back from my face and tell me she’s got me, and mean it. To know that whatever this was, I wasn’t the only one carrying it. I was usually the one saying those things, not the one hearing them, and somewhere along the way I’d stopped noticing what I was missing out on. The wanting rose up slow, then all at once, a weight low in my chest, until my body couldn’t hold it quietly anymore and I was just sitting in my car crying, the kind of crying I hadn’t done in years.

My mother was a young woman when she had me. She carried things no one had ever taught her how to carry, and some days they weighed extra heavy. I remember being seven, eight, nine years old, watching the light in her go out and being replaced with something dark and untouchable.

I have countless memories of sitting on the couch with her as a little girl, patting a back that should have been patting mine. My mother often needed an emotional caretaker, so I unconsciously became one. At the time, I only understood what she needed, and that I was hers. I loved her. I still do. Kids especially will do anything to help the ones they love.

Understanding My Own Experience

I didn’t have a word for any of this until decades later, sitting in a training room learning how to hold other people’s pain for a living. My supervisor explained parentification: a child taking on a parent’s emotional needs even though it’s not developmentally appropriate for her to carry them, and something in me went still.

That’s me, I thought. That’s the eight-year-old patting a back and soothing her mother’s tears. I had spent my whole life being praised for the exact thing that cost me the most, and no one had ever once given it a name. A name doesn’t undo what happened. But it did tell me the ache wasn’t mine alone, that other daughters had sat in other cars in other parking lots, wanting the mother they never had.

Inner Child Work

Inner child healing isn’t just a trendy mental health or spirituality term for me; it’s a practice I continue to dedicate myself to year after year. I think about the little version of me who felt responsible for her parent, and I am flooded with the care and compassion every child deserves.

As I’ve shared across several posts here, my own childhood wounds have deeply influenced my work as a trauma therapist. It has truly been inspiring to witness other women do the work of sitting beside and tending to their own inner child. I’ve seen time and time again just how transformative that attunement can be.

For some it comes in the form of meditation, setting boundaries, or allowing themselves to be creative once again. There is no single “right” way to do inner child work. There’s no cheat code, fast pass, or cure-all therapy technique. It simply requires what any child would need: love, patience, and compassion.

As for myself, I am still learning to mother the girl who was never allowed to be just a kid. Now, I am getting ready to become a mother twice over: once to the child I’m carrying, and once to the girl I used to be.

I’d love to know what came up for you reading this. Is there a version of my story that relates to yours? How do you care for your inner child?

Ready to go deeper?

I created a digital workbook for you called Reclaiming You

Reclaiming You is a guide designed for parentified adults like you — a gentle, supportive workbook to help you:

✅ Identify how parentification shaped you
✅ Set boundaries without guilt
✅ Reconnect with your younger self

My therapist stopped me with this question in the middle of a rant about how I was failing at my business, failing as a writer, as a sister, as a friend, failing to be fit enough. I remember trying to understand what she meant, scrunching my brow so hard the botox beneath it was actually wrinkling a bit. Finally, I gave up.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. She gave a warm smile, leaned in a bit, and rephrased it for me.

“Can you remember the last time you felt like you didn’t need to do more or prove yourself to anyone?”

Then the answer boomed inside my brain so loud there was no way I could ignore it.

“No, I don’t,” I answered honestly. She nodded and sat back again.

“That’s actually pretty common with parentified kids, especially daughters, when they grow up.” She explained, and hearing that others were “messed up” like I was got me curious.

This conversation was about five years ago, and it’s a journey I’ve humbly been on ever since.

Eldest Daughter Roles

As the eldest daughter, you got praised for being mature, responsible, and easy. The one who didn’t add to the pile but was always willing to roll up her sleeves and help someone else with theirs. As a result, you stopped asking for help because it never quite came the way you needed it to. So you learned to handle things yourself. All the things. Always.

As eldest daughters, we take on so many roles: household manager, second parent, translator, mediator, protector, historian, reputation bearer, and even surrogate spouse. We are raised to over-function. Over-functioning is anxiety wearing a “competence” costume.

So, if the expectation is for us to be constantly competent in multiple roles, how can we not feel like we’re failing? There is no version of “enough” that exists inside a job description that vast.

Don’t Fix It

Now this is going to be hard, but I need you to witness this pattern in your own life without jumping in to fix it. Instead of fixing it, I want you to feel it. Feel the exhaustion, the resentment, the grief that you’ve been holding in out of fear. Why would I ask you to do something so uncomfortable? Because as cliché as this may sound, we have to feel it in order to move through it.

Eldest daughters need time to just feel every single day. This allows them to recalibrate to their own alignment vs the needs of others. What does this look like for you? Is it meditation, prayer, journaling, drawing, dance, or quiet time in nature? Then do that. Every single day. Do it because you need to tend to you before you tend to everyone else. I personally cycle between all of the above and found that over time I was able to start hearing that little intuitive voice again.

The Art of Discernment

My dream is to witness women, especially fellow eldest daughters, stop over-functioning and start stepping into their own power. I want to be able to ask these women, “Do you ever feel like you’re already doing enough?” and for a confident “yes, I do” to spread across their lips.

To do that, we need to learn the art of discernment. Stop saying “yes” to everyone else’s expectations and verbalize our “nos” with confidence.

We are rarely taught how to communicate boundaries and not feel guilty afterward. But it is possible. Many of us see boundaries as being “harsh” or “mean” when in reality boundaries are actually about telling the truth about what we can and cannot hold.

Don’t do what you normally do. Don’t beat yourself up for “failing” or “being broken.” Don’t try to overhaul your life and set all the boundaries with everyone at once. This time, start small. Start with what feels easiest. Start with saying “no” just one time more than you normally would.

Take home practices for eldest daughters who feel like they are failing:

• Witness all the roles you’ve taken on throughout your life.

• Tune into your feelings once a day, every day.

• Practice saying “no” and start small.

If you’re a fellow eldest, only, or parentified daughter, I want to hear from you!

What are you struggling with the most these days? What questions do you have about relationships, career, and purpose? Drop them in the comments below so we can grow and learn together.

Con mucho amor,

Steff

—

Ready to go deeper?

I created a digital workbook for you called Reclaiming You

Reclaiming You is a guide designed for parentified adults like you — a gentle, supportive workbook to help you:

✅ Identify how parentification shaped you
✅ Set boundaries without guilt
✅ Reconnect with your younger self

You’re good at achieving, whether that looks like degrees, jobs, creative projects, or even running a marathon. You know how to get the impressive thing done.

You’re good at looking outside of your own wants and needs and saying, “Okay, so what has to get done here?”

That is your gift, and it’s your curse. While you are able to nurture, impress, and understand others - can you honestly say you can do that for yourself? And taking things a step further, if you cannot nurture, impress, or even understand yourself, how can you trust her?

What is Self-Trust and Why Does it Matter?

In my work as a women’s trauma therapist, I’ve come to understand self-trust as the confidence that your own perceptions, emotions, and judgment are valid and reliable enough to guide your decisions and actions, instead of needing to look outside of yourself for validation or authority.

Based on what I’ve experienced and witnessed with my clients, when we don’t trust ourselves, we never truly feel confident or even at peace. Lack of self-trust leaves you feeling anxious, restless, and confused when you long to feel secure, steady, and aligned.

Self-trust matters because it's the foundation for our sense of self, which allows us to set boundaries and regulate our own emotions. Without it, people tend to chronically second-guess themselves, over-rely on others' opinions, or override their own needs to stay safe or accepted. Similarly, philosopher Dr. Trudy Govier argues it's a necessary condition for personal autonomy and self-respect.

The Woman Who Does Trust Herself

So, what does it look like when a woman actually trusts herself? Allow me to illustrate a snippet of what it feels like to be her:

The woman who trusts herself doesn't wait for certainty to confirm what she already knows. There's no scramble in her body when someone disagrees with her; disagreement lands as information, not danger. She can hold two things at once: I might be wrong, and I'm still allowed to act. When an old voice tells her she's too much, too selfish, too sure of herself, she recognizes it as a story, not a fact. She checks in with her body before she checks in with the room, and she can sit with a decision that disappoints someone and let that be their feeling to carry, not a judgment on her character. She knows that decisions don’t have to be unanimous; they just have to be hers.

Notice that the self-trusting woman is not perfect, but she is grounded in her own authenticity. Let us dive into three tools I use and recommend to the women I work with to help us better connect with this version of ourselves.

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Go Against Your Conditioning

Like many girls growing up, you were conditioned to be appeasing and appealing, maybe even to be a caretaker, before ever considering your own desires. This wasn't a personal failing. It was a script you were handed before you were old enough to question it, and you learned to perform it so well that it started to feel like personality instead of armor.

Going against that conditioning doesn't mean becoming cold or unkind. It means noticing the moment before you say yes automatically, the moment before you smooth things over or make yourself smaller to keep the peace, and asking yourself one honest question first: what do I actually want here?

You don't have to overhaul your whole life to start. You just have to catch the reflex once, then again, then again, until it's no longer running the show.

Cultivate Quiet Time Every Day

We cannot grow into trusting ourselves without first being able to hear ourselves. Most of us have spent years so attuned to everyone else's frequency that our own has gone quiet, not because it disappeared, but because we stopped listening for it.

Quiet time isn't about achieving stillness, emptying your mind, or checking it off a list of what you “should” do. It can be five minutes with your coffee before anyone needs anything from you, going for a walk without your phone, or brain-dumping your thoughts on a piece of paper until you get to what is actually there underneath the noise.

The goal isn't some arbitrary idea of perfection; it's reacquaintance. You're building a relationship with the parts of yourself you've been managing instead of meeting.

Befriend the Icky Feeling

You were likely also taught to suppress feelings like anger, jealousy, and resentment, but these emotions are providing you with information about yourself.

Jealousy in particular gets treated like something shameful to hide (especially in women) when really it's pointing directly at a desire you haven't given yourself permission to want yet. Resentment works the same way. It shows up exactly where you've been overgiving, oversacrificing, or saying yes when you meant no.

Instead of pushing these feelings away the moment they surface, I encourage you to get curious about the feelings. What is this jealousy telling me I want? Where has this resentment been trying to get my attention?

Remember that these feelings aren't character flaws. They're some of the most honest parts of you, and learning to listen to them is part of learning to trust yourself.

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Even if it feels foreign and far off for you, I promise that building self-trust is entirely possible. This is a topic I’m really passionate about, so don’t hesitate to share your questions!

Tell me - of the three steps here, deconditioning, quiet time, or the icky feelings, which one is hardest for you?

I'll go first: mine is quiet time. My brain is LOUD and is not naturally comfortable with stillness.

Getting Honest About the Money

Now, what was I going to do about the money? Here's the part no one talks about when you're a self-employed therapist: you don't get paid if you don't show up.

There's no HR department, no paid leave policy, no salary that keeps arriving while you're home with a newborn. Every week the practice is closed is a week of revenue that doesn't exist. That's not a complaint, it's just the math. (I do have a couple of "passive" income streams, but they contribute a small amount to my monthly income at the moment.)

Before we move forward, I want to name something here: being able to take open-ended leave at all is a privilege, one that most working parents in this country don't have. Therefore, I’m not sharing this process because I think it can work for everyone; I know it can’t in this country. I’m sharing how I came to this decision in the hopes that it gives you permission to work within your reality to prioritize your own needs as much as you can.

With all of this in mind, there was a crucial step I had to take before I could give myself permission to take open-ended leave: my husband and I had to have real conversations about money.

The kind of conversations where you look at actual numbers, talk through actual timelines, share your honest feelings, and figure out what's sustainable without pretending the finances aren't part of the decision. It wasn't romantic, but it was necessary. And doing that work together gave me the clarity and structure needed to take extended time off.

Then Came the Guilt

I want to be honest about this because I think therapists, especially those of us who became helpers because we learned early that other people's needs came first, carry a particular kind of guilt when we prioritize ourselves. It's uncomfortable in a way that feels almost like home.

I sat with a lot of discomfort about leaving clients without concrete answers as to when I'll be back. I didn't bypass those feelings. I processed them (alone, with my friends, with my therapist).

And what I came to is accepting what I actually need, not what I can white-knuckle through. For my clients. For my family. For the career I'm still building.

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Summary of What Helped Me

• Finding clarity on what I needed: therapy, journaling, mental health walks, chatting with trusted friends

• Crunching the numbers: partnering with my spouse to get into the nitty-gritty of our expenses, income, and a tiny bit of savings. We both agreed that this move has risks, but I can always resume work if I’m ready.

• Processing guilt: Back to my therapist for this one! She helped me distinguish between what I can tolerate and what I actually need to feel healthy.

  This season is going to be full of things I can't control - and that is okay! That’s normal, actually. But it also means that being able to trust myself is more important than ever.

If you're a therapist, social worker, or helping professional, how do you make decisions about your own needs when your livelihood depends on showing up for others?

But your nervous system didn’t get the memo that work is supposed to feel different.

Our work is still rooted in relationships. Therefore, the same patterns that shape how you love shape how you lead, collaborate, and cope under pressure.

The anxious attachment that has you reading tone in your partner’s texts is the same one scanning your manager’s Slack message for signs you’re in trouble.

The avoidant pull that makes closeness feel threatening in relationships is the same one that keeps you handling everything alone at work, long past the point of exhaustion.

Anxious attachment at work can look like:

• Over-preparing and over-functioning to feel “safe” (doing more than your role requires)

• Reading between the lines in emails/Slack and spiraling when you don’t get quick reassurance

• People-pleasing your boss/clients/coworkers, which tends to show up as difficulty saying no, then resentment + burnout.

Avoidant attachment at work can look like:

• Staying “hyper-independent” (not asking for help, delegating, or using support)

• Keeping relationships strictly transactional, you feel discomfort with feedback, praise, or emotional tone

• Pulling away when things get intense: going quiet, delaying responses, or “handling it alone.”

Disorganized attachment at work can look like:

• Swinging between over-sharing and suddenly shutting down or disappearing

• Craving approval and fearing closeness at the same time (giving your teammates mixed signals)

• High stress reactivity: freeze mode, panic productivity, or feeling unsafe with authority

Secure attachment at work can look like:

• Asking for clarity or support without shame in a direct, calm, and timely manner

• Handling feedback without spiraling or stonewalling

• Healthy boundaries + consistency: you collaborate, but you don’t overfunction

Remember: we are all capable of developing a secure attachment style!

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Our attachment patterns touch every part of our lives, which is why if you are struggling in this area, it’s important to learn more and work with a qualified psychotherapist you trust.

Want to go deeper?

I made a free guide called What To Say Instead for folks navigating anxious and avoidant attachment. This freebie a simple breakdown of anxious and avoidant attachment styles and therapist-created (that’s me!) communication scripts for difficult conversations. Sign up to get your free guide today!

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Have you noticed what it looks like when attachment habits come up in the workplace? Share your experience in the comments. I’d love to learn more!

Con mucho amor,

Steff

Dios mío, was I wrong! This one sentence, about such a specific type of grief, resonated with nearly 900 people. I could not stop wondering, why this note?

After reading through comments and reflecting more, I realized a couple of things.

1) The personal really is universal, hence why it’s the writing that connects with others.

2) This note touched on a pattern many of us have been experiencing in silence, and to see it reflected back lifts away some of the same associated with it.

This is the fawn response

If you also feel that you’ve unconsciously curated your personality to make other people comfortable, you may be engaging in a trauma response known as the fawn response.

We’ve all heard of fight or flight as a trauma response, but there’s also freeze and fawn.

According to Pete Walker's (LMFT) work, the fawn response is a survival strategy that becomes a personality structure. He describes it as developing primarily in response to a parent (or other primary caregiver) who punishes any expression of authentic selfhood, whether that is through rage, withdrawal, shaming, or emotional unavailability.

With these types of caretakers, the child learns that their safety lies entirely in the other person's comfort. Selfhood becomes dangerous. Attunement to others' needs becomes the survival skill that slowly displaces attunement to one's own.

This explanation resonates with me both personally and professionally. I’ve seen the same complex trauma responses in the women I work with as a psychotherapist. Many of my therapy clients start wanting to feel “less anxious.”

And what they end up finding is permission to disappoint people. Because up until this point, disappointing others feels like a real-life safety threat to their minds and bodies.

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Grieving what you lost

Growing up with an emotionally immature parent means that the version of you who would have developed in an attuned environment gets set aside. What grows instead is a very competent, very other-focused person who has almost no idea what they actually want or feel.

Waking up to the conditioning that has driven your thoughts, feelings, and actions for most of your life can be a heartbreaking realization. Because of how I grew up, I believed my purpose was solely to care for others. Don’t get me wrong, caring for others is a beautiful purpose to have. But it should not be our only source of validation.

Grieving this looks different than other grief. There’s no funeral for the self you never got to be. No socially recognized loss. In fact, many people around you may not understand what you’re mourning at all, because from the outside, you look “fine.”

But the grief is real.

You are mourning the version of you who was allowed to be inconvenient. Who could have said no without her nervous system treating it like a threat. Who knew what she wanted before she checked whether it was okay with everyone else first.

You may grieve the loss of a childhood that was oriented around you, even just sometimes. The experience of being truly delighted in, not just needed.

This grief doesn’t mean your life or your relationships were without love. It means you deserved more attunement than you received.

Reflection for you

The good news is that what was learned can be unlearned. The self that got set aside is not gone; she still exists within you.

Healing this pattern isn't about becoming someone new. It's about finally meeting the person who was always there underneath the performance.

If any of this resonated, I encourage you to take intentional time to reflect on the following:

Where in your life are you still curating yourself for someone else's comfort? What would it feel like to stop, even just for a moment?

—

Con mucho amor,

Steff

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I'm done trying to be a “good” therapist.

This was my primary goal in life for the better part of a decade. And in trying to achieve this goal, I bent over backward and burned myself out.

What I Used To Do

Extending sessions because ending felt cruel.
Sliding my fee without setting expectations for the future.
Ignoring my late cancellation fee because I was "understanding."
Agreeing to meet at times I knew weren't sustainable for me.

To be clear: My clients didn't ask for any of this.

I told myself I was being a “good” therapist. It’s how I grew up. It’s how I was professionally trained. But in reality, I was just recreating unsustainable attachment patterns I had known my whole life.

Spotting My People-Pleasing Pattern as a Therapsit

What helped me finally see the pattern? I started taking on other therapists as clients. Unsurprisingly, many of them had also grown up parentified and were recovering people-pleasers.

That’s right, these intelligent, loving, emotionally burnt-out clients mirrored back the limiting beliefs I had refused to see driving my own decisions. These beliefs were:

1. The belief that my value was contingent on making others feel comfortable.

2. The belief that being liked and being good at my job were the same thing.

3. The belief that other peoples emotional wellbeing is my responsibility.

The Reframe Setting Me Free

To stop perpetuating these patterns, I had to reframe what I believed a “good” therapist actually was. I had to think about who I wanted to become.

For me, that reframe boiled down to:

A good therapist models boundaries.
A good therapist has healthy problem-solving conversations with their clients.
A good therapist shows up authentically.

And at the time, I wasn't doing any of that. I was a recovering people pleaser who couldn't tolerate the anticipation of disappointment. I was controlled by the worry that I'd seem rigid or unkind. I believed being "good" meant making things easier for everyone else, no matter the cost to myself.

Now, instead of chasing a mythical “good” therapist, I aim to be an authentic therapist. A healthy therapist. A good enough therapist.

That reframe is protecting my mental health. And in turn, it's protecting my clients.

Reflection for you:

Where in your work are you giving more than you agreed to, and telling yourself it's kindness?

Want to go deeper?

The answer comes before she even thinks about it.

“I’m cool with whatever. You decide.”

She’s not lying, exactly. She just genuinely cannot locate what she wants in that moment. The question lands, and there’s nothing there. So, he decides for her.

Three months later, this same woman’s manager pulls her aside to ask if she’d be interested in a new role. More responsibility. More visibility. A title she’s secretly wanted for two years.

“I’m flattered,” she says, “but I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. There are other people who’ve been here longer.”

She drives home thinking she made the “right” choice because others won’t be offended.

But one day she wakes up and doesn't recognize herself or the life that she’s built.

This is not because of indecisiveness. This is what it looks like when a woman has spent her whole life learning that having a want and saying it out loud is a risk not worth taking.

You Weren't Born This Way. You Were Trained.

I’ve been the woman described above. Passive, indecisive, endlessly “chill” performing easygoing, while quietly abandoning myself at every turn. I’ve been this woman at work, with friends, family, and in my own home.

Eventually, I’d grow resentful of my life and the people in it, even though I was the one saying “sure” and “no worries!” every step of the way. I used to think it meant I was weak. It doesn't.

After six years as a women's trauma therapist, watching the same pattern show up in client after client, I can tell you with certainty this isn't a character flaw; it’s a normal response to the training many little girls receive.

From the time you were small, you were taught not explicitly, but consistently, that being good meant making others comfortable. That was the way to stay loved, safe, and approved of: to manage how people felt around you. Not to be too much. To not want too much. To read the room before you took up any space in it.

It wasn’t a single conversation. It was a thousand tiny moments. The times your needs were inconvenient, and you learned to stop voicing them. The times you got praised for being “so mature” or “so easy,” which really meant you had learned to need less. The times you watched the women around you disappear into everyone else’s lives without anyone saying a word, that this was simply what women did.

Over time, your sense of what was right and wrong, what was okay to want, what was safe to say, what you were allowed to feel, stopped living inside you. It moved outside you. Into other people’s reactions. Into whether you were liked, needed, or chosen.

Psychologists call this relational morality, and women seem to experience it more than men. With relational morality, your worth is conditional on others’ approval. And somewhere in that process, your own wants stopped being important data to your brain. Now you ignore them without even realizing it.

So, How Do You Learn What You Want?

You don’t reclaim your wants by thinking harder about them. You reclaim them by learning to be present with yourself again, and that starts in the body, not the mind.

Here’s a simple somatic practice I use for myself and with clients who have spent so long reading other people’s signals that they’ve lost access to their own.

Step one

The next time you’re facing a decision, any decision, start small, before you think it through, before you ask anyone, before you open the group chat: pause. Take one grounding breath. Bring the question gently into your mind and notice your body’s first, uncensored response.

Step two

Now you are going to get curious with your body’s uncensored response. What is it trying to tell you? Some women notice expansion, which can feel like a lightness, an opening in the chest, a subtle lean forward. Some notice contraction, which is often felt as a tightening in the throat or stomach, a pulling back. Some feel activation, a flutter or quickening that lives right next to anxiety but isn’t quite fear. Others notice temperature changes, a buzzing sensation, a sudden heaviness, or a feeling of stillness.

There is no universal body language here. Your signals are yours.

Step three

Start tracking the patterns. One moment of noticing isn't enough data. But ten moments, twenty moments, those start to tell you something. What thoughts come with the tightening? What emotions show up alongside the warmth? What does your body consistently do when something is a genuine yes versus a fear-driven one? Keep a note in your phone if it helps. Nothing formal. Just: what did I notice, and what was I deciding?

Over time, you stop having to think so hard about what you want. You just know. Because you've learned to speak your own language again.

You Were Never Indecisive. You Were Just Never Taught to Put Your Desires First.

The woman in the kitchen with the fridge door open, she knows things. She has preferences, desires, opinions, and wants that are entirely her own. They didn’t disappear. They just went quiet because quiet was safer.

That’s not a personal failing. That’s a very logical response to a very specific kind of training.

Your body has been registering your wants this entire time. You just learned to stop listening.

One decision. One breath. One honest answer you don’t owe anyone else.

That’s enough to begin.

—

Want to go deeper?

Most of my life, I struggled with anxiety, depression, and likely at the root, low self-worth. I wanted to be seen as good so badly, but it felt like no matter how hard I tried, I’d never be “good enough” to everyone in my life. These struggles are what brought me into the therapy room for the first time in my early 20s. They also led me to pursue a career as a psychotherapist.

Now, I’m a women’s trauma therapist, and I work with the most brilliant, resilient, kind, caring, creative, and powerful women. But what strikes me is how little they see what I see.

When my clients look at themselves (which is usually challenging in the first place), they see a woman who is not good enough. A woman who is not worthy. A woman who is unlovable. I couldn’t help but dig into the question that kept me awake at night: why?

After hours upon hours of research in and out of the therapy room, I realized what many feminist psychologists have realized throughout the decades: Women are conditioned to derive their value primarily from these external sources: achievement, service, approval, and romance. I personally call this good girl conditioning.

The Four Good Girl Archetypes

Below you’ll find the different Good Girl Archetypes I’ve observed and identified in my 6+ years of practice as a women’s trauma therapist. You may deeply resonate with one of these archetypes, but it’s also likely you will feel connected to a couple of them at once. Yes, I’ve also seen myself in every single one of these archetypes, and it’s helped me make peace with these different parts of myself.

At the core, every single one of them has outsourced her sense of worth to something outside herself. Which means the shared wound underneath all four archetypes is the same: She was never taught that she was enough simply by existing.

The Gold Star Seeker

For the Gold Star Seeker, her worth lies in external achievement, titles, prestige, and any “gold stars” she can get. She may run marathons, get a graduate degree, work at a high-profile job - or even all three! The Gold Star Seeker learned early on from the caregivers in her life (parents, teachers, or even siblings) that she needs external proof to feel her worth and sense of safety. As an adult, the constant gold-star-seeking helps her temporarily believe “I am enough,” but inevitably that relief is brief.

The Caregiver

The Caregiver received the Good Girl Conditioning that told her that her worth lies in being needed. Growing up, she needed to be patient, nurturing, or emotionally attuned to support those around her. It’s also highly likely she was parentified as a child. But in the process of taking care of everyone else, she learned to disregard her own needs.

The Love Auditioner

For the Love Auditioner, worthiness lies in being romantically chosen by someone. Whether explicit or implied, this young woman was taught that being seen as good meant being in a romantic partnership. This keeps her either in a perpetual performance for selection or overfunctioning to maintain her relationship. The cost? Feeling safe and enough when she’s not in a relationship.

The Peacekeeper

The Peacekeeper’s main objective is to keep things calm, cool, and collected (or at least looking that way). Her sweetness and easygoing nature are lovely qualities, but in excess, they show up as passivity in her own life. It’s likely the peacekeeper grew up around either explosive, chaotic conflict or the opposite end of the spectrum: total avoidance of conflict altogether.

What To Do Next

The healing transformation for all four archetypes is the same: learning to locate worth internally rather than chasing it through an external system. I call the deconditioning “coming home to yourself.”

Coming home to yourself isn’t a destination; it’s an intention you can set and a lens that you can use to approach your life.

It starts with noticing. Not fixing, just noticing. Which archetype do you see yourself in? Where have you been outsourcing your worth? What has it cost you?

You don’t have to overhaul your entire life to begin. You just have to get curious about the conditioning you’ve been swimming in, most of it so familiar it’s invisible.

The women I work with don't come to me broken. They come to me exhausted from performing. That’s not a personal failure. That’s the system working exactly as designed.

And you can opt out. Not all at once, but one intentional step at a time.

You can begin to build a relationship with your own worth that no external source can take away.

That’s what this work is. That’s what coming home means.

🗝️ Drop a comment and tell me — which archetype(s) felt most like you?

—

Want to go deeper?

If you are located in CA or FL and are looking for a trauma therapist, my associate and I have openings. We specialize in supporting women who feel stuck in guilt, burnout, and perfectionism. Reach out to us here! (LCSW #116391)

And most of us have spent years believing this is simply who we are. That we are too sensitive. Too emotional. Too much. I speak not only from my experience as a woman’s trauma therapist but also as a parentified eldest daughter in an immigrant family turned psychotherapist. I know guilt.

What I’ve learned through my personal and professional experience is that many of us are unaware of the truth about where women’s guilt actually comes from. Here is that truth: You were not born destined to feel guilty. You were trained into it.

Relational Morality

Most women are not walking around with a major character flaw, chemical imbalance, or huge personal failing. They are dealing with the inevitable consequence of being raised inside a system of relational morality. In relational morality, your worth is conditional on others' comfort. Your sense of right and wrong lives outside of you. And goodness, real goodness, the kind that determines whether you are safe or loved, is measured entirely by others' approval.

Moral psychologists have begun studying how relationships shape our sense of right and wrong. But what they haven't fully named is what happens when girls are raised to make that relational measuring stick the only one that counts. Relational morality is not a woman's affliction. But the way it is installed — deliberately, systematically, through the very process of raising a good girl — makes women its most faithful carriers.

None of this means caring for others is a bad thing. Loving others, showing up for your community, and being someone people can count on are some of the most profound expressions of our humanity. The problem is not the caring. The problem is that caring for others becomes the primary way you measure your own worth. When that happens, care mutates into something else: exhaustion that never quite lifts, resentment bubbling beneath the surface, and a guilt that greets you no matter what you choose.

Women & Inner Authority

What relational morality steals from us is our inner authority. Psychologists define inner authority as the ability to trust your own judgment, values, and sense of self-worth independent of external validation. Think of it as an internal compass that allows you to navigate your life with confidence and clarity. Healthy inner authority is the capacity to trust that you know what is right for you.

When your moral compass is calibrated entirely by other people's reactions, you miss out on the benefits of inner authority. You are not leading your life. You are managing it. You are managing others' comfort, disappointment, and approval, and you falsely believe this makes you good.

Outsourcing your authority might feel like selflessness. But it is, in truth, a slow erosion of the self. And no amount of doing good for others can fill the place inside you that was meant to be occupied by your own voice.

What to Do with The Guilt

Here is what I want to leave you with.

Guilt, for women raised in relational morality, is not a character flaw, and it is not a life sentence. It is information. It is a signal worth getting curious about.

Do not judge yourself for feeling guilty, but ask: whose voice is this, really? Whose comfort am I protecting right now? And is that what I actually want to choose?

It may seem small, but that moment of pause, that half-second of honest inquiry before you automatically shrink or apologize or say yes when you mean no, is your inner authority waking up.

You do not have to overhaul your entire life to start reclaiming it. You just have to notice. Notice when guilt arrives, and instead of obeying it immediately, get curious about what it is protecting and what it is costing you. That noticing is not selfish. That noticing is, perhaps for the first time, the beginning of being honest with yourself about what you need.

You have spent a long time being fluent in everyone else’s feelings. It does not make you a bad person to start learning how to understand your own feelings.

—

Want to go deeper?

If you are located in CA or FL and are looking for a trauma therapist, my associate and I have openings. We specialize in supporting women who feel stuck in guilt, burnout, and perfectionism. Reach out to us here! (LCSW #116391)

If this resonates with you, you may be realizing that all that early caregiving came at a cost: chronic overfunctioning, difficulty trusting others with your needs, and guilt every time you rest. You may be the girl who grew up too fast. If so, it’s likely you experienced emotional parentification — a form of role reversal where a child becomes responsible for a parent’s emotional regulation.

In clinical terms, emotional parentification occurs when a child is expected to meet a parent's or caregiver's emotional or psychological needs. It’s often covert and unspoken, which makes it hard to name. Girls who grow up too fast and/or experience parentification often hear things like:

“You’re so mature for your age.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’ve always been the strong one.”

The Archetype of the Girl Who Grew Up Too Fast

Nani — Lilo & Stitch
Due to the tragic loss of their parents before the events of the movie, Nani is forced into a premature caregiver role. We witness her trying to hold together survival logistics (money, housing, school, stability) while also managing Lilo’s big emotions. She becomes the emotional container—expected to stay regulated no matter how overwhelmed she is. Her love is real, but the role reversal is clear: she’s parenting under impossible pressure, with little room to be a young person herself.

Jane — Jane the Virgin
Jane grew up in a family system where she often felt responsible for keeping the emotional peace and “being good,” rather than taking up messy space as a kid. With a teen mom who wants to make it as a singer and an immigrant abuela who disapproves of her daughter, Jane feels internal pressure to be the stable one—morally, emotionally, and practically. That dynamic mirrors emotional parentification: the child learns that love is safest when she is composed, competent, and caretaking.

Kate Sharma — Bridgerton
Kate takes on an adult-level responsibility for her family’s well-being, making sacrifices and decisions out of duty rather than desire. She becomes the emotional anchor, monitoring risks, managing outcomes, and carrying the weight of “what happens to us” on her shoulders. That is parentification competence as a survival mechanism, and self-erasure disguised as strength.

Matilda — Matilda (Roald Dahl)
Matilda is emotionally alone in her family and learns to self-parent—soothing herself, meeting her own needs, and becoming “wise beyond her years” because no one else will. Her adults are not emotionally available or protective, which pushes her into a role of internal adulthood far too early. Even when it looks like independence, it often reflects parentification: a child forced into strength because dependence isn’t safe.

Jeannette Walls — The Glass Castle (memoir) (disclaimer included)
Disclaimer: I haven’t read this one yet, but it comes highly recommended. From what’s widely shared about the memoir, Jeannette’s childhood is marked by instability that requires children to adapt quickly and carry adult burdens. In systems like that, kids often become the organizers, the stabilizers, or the emotional managers because chaos leaves no room for normal childhood needs.

Charlotte — Mermaids
Teenage Charlotte has a chaotic mom who frequently moves her kids to a new town after a breakup. Throughout the film, we see Charlotte wearing adult clothes, becoming interested in religion, and doing anything she can to create order, morality, and stability in a home where her mom isn’t. She becomes vigilant, managing herself and, often, the atmosphere, because someone has to hold the structure together. That’s a classic parentified adaptation: the child overfunctions to compensate for the adult’s inconsistency.

When you see yourself in these characters, let it land gently: you weren’t “just mature for your age,” you grew up fast because your environment needed you to. You learned to earn safety through competence and closeness through caretaking.

If parentification shaped you, the work now isn’t to become stronger, it’s to become supported: to practice receiving, to tolerate rest without guilt, and to remember that love was never supposed to be something you proved.

Remember: You get to rewrite the role you were handed and build a life where you’re held, too.

-
Ready to Learn More?

I created a digital workbook for you called Reclaiming You

Reclaiming You is a guide designed for parentified adults like you — a gentle, supportive workbook to help you:

✅ Identify how parentification shaped you
✅ Set boundaries without guilt
✅ Reconnect with your younger self

You don’t have to keep earning your worth through emotional labor.
You don’t have to stay useful just to stay loved.

This is your invitation to come home to yourself.

Con mucho amor,

Steff

The problem is, we’ve been sold a counterfeit version of power, one that looks like excess, performance, and dominance. And ‘good’ people—especially women—are taught that wanting power makes them selfish, unspiritual, or unkind.

Who benefits from those beliefs, I wonder?

The most powerful person in the room, however, isn’t the one with the loudest voice, the most aggressive, or even the biggest. All of those qualities have their strengths, of course, but they don’t secure real power.

Before we dive into what the most powerful person in the room does have, let’s define power. Despite what we see reflected in the media, power isn’t just dominance or aggression. For the purposes of this newsletter, power is the ability to take up space without seeking validation and the ability to move people/decisions/dynamics.

To truly hold power is the opposite of what I call good-girl conditioning, which teaches young women to trade authenticity for approval. Good girl conditioning is all about performance and people-pleasing, which is, at its core, disempowering.

But real power doesn’t come from chasing the room. It comes from the person who can stand inside themselves so fully that the room subtly reorganizes around them.

The Power You Don’t Have to Prove

Imagine a party full of strangers, set the scene in your mind, and casually scan the room. Who is the person everyone else is gravitating to, not to fearfully “kiss the ring” but because they are magnetized by them?

How does that person carry themselves?

What expression is on their face?

How do you feel in their presence?

I bet if you were to chat with this powerful figure, you’d unconsciously recognize the qualities they possess—not because they’re trying to be impressive, but because they’re led by their intuition. They’re not scanning the room for permission. And when someone hears their intuition, they naturally possess the following:

1. They know exactly who they are (and who they are not).

2. They regulate their emotions masterfully.

3. They value their time and energy.

4. They are present.

5. They are discerning with their words and their trust.

They are the most powerful person in the room, not because they are performing or hustling to make others happy, but because they are guided by their intuition, taking up space, and, as a result, shaping social outcomes.

Knowing yourself, regulating your emotions, valuing your time and energy, staying present, and being discerning make you the hardest person to manipulate and the easiest one to trust.

Notice that you do not need to compromise on your values, preferences, or even your desires to hold to power. Instead, you need to be your own master and stop playing the roles that others want you to play.

Power is not dominance; it’s a connection with your intuition and using that to create outer impact.

Reflection for you

Where in your life are you still scanning the room before checking in with yourself? How would it feel different if you checked in with your intuition first?

So why do you spend so much time feeling so damn guilty? You feel guilty about not doing enough for your sibling. You feel guilty about being too much in social settings. You feel guilty for resting when you “should” be working. You feel guilty for working when you “should” be taking care of yourself.

If this level of chronic guilt resonates, chances are you grew up as a parentified daughter.

A parentified daughter is a girl who grows up carrying adult responsibilities. These responsibilities can be emotional, logistical, or both. She does this from a young age because her family system needs her to. She becomes the stabilizer: the one who anticipates needs, manages crises, soothes emotions, and prevents chaos.

Why parentified daughters feel so much guilt

Often, the parentified daughter is praised as “mature” or “the strong one,” but what she’s really learning is that being needed is safer than having needs. Over time, she may become highly capable and deeply empathetic—while also internalizing the belief that love must be earned through usefulness, and that rest, limits, and self-prioritization are forms of betrayal.

This is why saying no, resting, or naming your needs can trigger guilt in your nervous system. For parentified daughters, guilt is not only an emotion, but it’s also a conditioned alarm that goes off whenever they try to step outside the role they were trained for.

Limiting beliefs that keep parentified daughters controlled by guilt

Every one of these limiting beliefs is trying to keep you safe—safe from conflict, disappointment, abandonment, or chaos. But now, instead of keeping you safe, they are keeping you burned out because they are rooted in guilt. Remember, these beliefs are not evidence that you’re weak; they’re evidence that you adapted.

• If I don’t manage it, something bad will happen.

• My needs create problems.

• Distance means I’m cold, selfish, or disloyal.

• If they’re upset, I must have done something wrong.

• I have to be accessible to be loving.

• If I set limits, I’ll be punished with withdrawal, guilt, or chaos.

• Their lack of structure becomes my responsibility.

• Connection requires self-erasure.

• If I rest, I’m abandoning them.

• I’m safest when I’m useful.

• I’m their daughter/sister/granddaughter/partner. I have to do this; I don’t have a choice.

Notice how every one of these beliefs has the same hidden message: you are responsible for their well-being. But they are adults, and you cannot control the well-being of other adults. That’s the training. That’s the trap. The way out isn’t “try harder” or even“think positive.” The way out is by grounding yourself in the truth.

Adaptive beliefs that help parentified daughters find peace

Here’s the tricky part: the limiting beliefs will often feel more true than the adaptive ones. Not because they are true, but because they are familiar. But feelings are information, not facts. The adaptive beliefs we are planting aren’t just “positive thoughts.” They’re reality-based permissions that rewire how you view your role.

• I can love them without managing them.

• Their mistakes are opportunities for them to grow; they are not my responsibility to fix.

• I can stay connected without abandoning my needs

• Connection can be authentic, and it does not need to be constant

• Their lack of boundaries does not obligate me to be boundaryless.

• Their chaos is not a mandate for my self-abandonment

• Distance is not rejection; it is protection of my capacity to show up

These adaptive beliefs reflect healthy adult love: mutual responsibility, clear boundaries, and connection without self-erasure. As you practice them, guilt decreases, and your capacity for the life you want increases.

The guilt reframe practice

Here is a brief but powerful practice that will help you apply what you’ve learned about your beliefs and how they lead to guilt. When you notice guilt rising, this exercise can be done by thinking it, speaking it, or writing down:

1. Name the old belief: “My guilt is saying: __________.” (pick one limiting belief)

2. Swap in the new belief: “But the truth is: __________.” (pick one adaptive belief)

3. Take one tiny action: delay, decline, or rest for 5 minutes, no explaining.

Reflection prompt: What is my guilt trying to tell me? How can I make space for it without letting it control me?

—

Ready to Learn More?

I created a digital workbook for you called Reclaiming You

Reclaiming You is a guide designed for parentified adults like you — a gentle, supportive workbook to help you:

✅ Identify how parentification shaped you
✅ Set boundaries without guilt
✅ Reconnect with your younger self

You don’t have to keep earning your worth through emotional labor.
You don’t have to stay useful just to stay loved.

This is your invitation to come home to yourself.

Con mucho amor,

Steff

Because of our early life experiences, parentified women often mistake responsibility for intimacy. They don’t just love their partners; they manage them. They anticipate their needs. They monitor their moods. They push them to live up to their potential.

Parentified daughters unconsciously slip into the “parent” role in their romantic relationships because it’s what they are most familiar with.

Parentification happens when a child becomes a stabilizer in a system that can’t stabilize itself. The family system may not be able to stabilize itself for a myriad of reasons, such as emotionally immature parents, caretakers struggling with substance use disorder, single-parent overload, repeating intergenerational patterns, cultural norms, and a lack of structural community support.

Unsurprisingly, girls are at a higher risk of being emotionally parentified due to gender stereotypes that women and girls are better caretakers and helpers.

In short, if this sounds like your lived experience, it means that your family system didn’t have enough adult capacity, and you stepped up to fill in the gaps.

This means you learned early on how to help others emotionally regulate, manage conflict, and bring structure to chaos. Parentified daughters also grow up being praised for their “maturity,” which teaches them that love comes from being useful.

Signs you’re the parent in your dating life

• You’re the one who brings structure (plans, money, follow-through)

• You initiate every repair conversation

• You monitor their moods like the weather

• You translate their feelings for them

• You carry the future alone (“I can’t rely on them”)

• You find yourself cleaning up their messes (literal messes or social ones)

• You track the calendar, birthdays, bills, appointments, trips, and logistics.

• Plans don’t exist unless you make them.

• Sex starts to feel like another duty you do for them.

If the above signs resonate, it means that without you even realizing it, your brain is thinking the following:

• “If I’m needed, I’m safe.”

• “If I’m easy, I won’t be abandoned.”

• “If I manage it, it won’t fall apart.”

• “I can’t relax unless everything is taken care of.”

• “I’m responsible for their happiness.”

The cost of parenting your partner is that resentment grows when caretaking is one-way. This can also lead to erotic desire drying up because your body thinks you’re the only adult in the room. Your identity collapses into that of a helper rather than a lover. Without meaning to, your relationship has recreated the pattern you grew up with, where you hold everything but don’t know what it’s like to be held.

How to shift from parentified to romantic partner

If this resonates, I want you to pause before you jump into parentified daughter “fixing” mode. Place a hand on your stomach. Breathe. Sit with this information for a moment and notice how it feels.

Moving forward, healing will require presence, time, and compassion. With all of this in mind, here are some patterns I encourage you to change one by one:

• Prioritize clear communication. This means asking your significant other to be clear and direct about their feelings and needs, and you are also responsible for vocalizing your own.

• Stop ignoring your needs to prioritize theirs.

• Stop reminding them to fulfill their responsibilities; let reality teach the consequences of forgetting.

• Ask your significant other to initiate more often, because it helps you feel supported (plans, deep conversations, etc.).

• Choose partners who are emotionally mature (e.g., someone who can regulate their own emotions and initiate repair after a disagreement).

• Choose friends who are also emotionally mature so that your nervous system begins to see that it is surrounded by fellow adults.

Please remember that if you see yourself in this parentified daughter dating pattern, this doesn’t mean that you are failing. This means you were forced to grow up too fast because of circumstances out of. your control. This means little you learned to equate labor with love. This means the role that once helped you survive is no longer helpful.

You have already done so much; now it’s time to slow down and let yourself be.

—

Reflection prompt to get started:

Where in your relationship are you doing adult labor that should belong to the other adult?

Subscribe now

Ready to Learn More?

I created a digital workbook for you called Reclaiming You

Reclaiming You is a guide designed for parentified adults like you — a gentle, supportive workbook to help you:

✅ Identify how parentification shaped you
✅ Set boundaries without guilt
✅ Reconnect with your younger self

You don’t have to keep earning your worth through emotional labor.
You don’t have to stay useful just to stay loved.

This is your invitation to come home to yourself.

Con mucho amor,

Steff

“I don’t know how to choose.”

“I get analysis paralysis.”

“I’m stuck and don’t know what to do next…”

I’ve said all of these before. I’ve heard my therapy clients say almost the exact same phrases dozens of times.

But why do so many women hate making decisions?

Because good girls don’t trust themselves.

Many of us are raised to be “good girls,” meaning we are taught not to have needs or desires and to always, always, always be of service to others, no matter what it may cost us. Some women become good girls because they recognize it is the smartest way to get love, safety, or stability in the environment they are in.

Either way, the result is the same - good girls don’t trust themselves.

🗝️ Good girl conditioning inherently teaches us to second-guess our perceptions and prioritize keeping the peace over inner authority. This leaves us caught between what we want to do and what we think we should do.

If this resonates at all, let’s break down why it’s so painfully hard for far too many of us to trust ourselves.

🕯️You were trained to outsource your instincts

For young women taught to chase goodness, approval becomes their compass. We’re told to ask our friends, mothers, teachers, or even strangers online before making a move. If they approve, then we’re good to go. If they don’t approve, we don’t take another step forward. Approval from others has been placed on a pedestal.

For many of us, the approval of our friends and family matters so much that it physically hurts when we know that they don’t approve. Even perceived disapproval feels like a stab to our self-worth.

Cue thoughts such as: What do you mean, my hypercritical aunt didn’t like the wedding dress I chose? I thought it looked great! But maybe it didn’t, maybe she’s right.

Let me be clear: asking for help and connecting with your community are extremely healthy practices. That is not what I’m referring to here.

What I’m referring to is the feeling of dread you get inside your gut when it’s time to make a choice, because you falsely believe you cannot make the right decision for yourself. Often, you may know what you want to do, but you need to check in with someone else to confirm it’s okay first.

🗝️Here’s how to tell the difference: asking for help is when you stay in the driver’s seat. You consult a map or ask for directions, but ultimately you are the one driving and calling the shots. Lack of self-trust is when you hand the keys over and jump into the passenger seat. The other person must know better, right?

In essence, you don’t trust yourself because you were trained to believe that other people’s approval of what you’re doing is more important than living authentically.

🕯️You have a competence wound

This one is especially true for high-achieving women or perfectionist women. When you grow up rewarded for your competence (as a student, the family therapist, the responsible child, etc.), you learn early on that your worth comes from your competence.

This may sound like a good thing in a capitalist society, but in reality, it turns you into a performance-led human instead of an inner authority-led one.

You learn to trust what gets results and praise more than what feels true to you. Your instincts get drowned out by what sounds “smart,” “impressive,” “responsible,” or “successful.” This is a competence wound.

Contrary to what society may have us believe, a competence wound is just that - a wound. It is not confidence. It is not fulfillment. It is conditional safety and belonging. This sounds like, “I’m okay as long as I’m useful/impressive/helpful” not “I’m okay because I’m me.”

The key to self-trust 🗝️

Here’s the good news: Self-trust is a muscle you can train.

You don’t need more data.

You don’t need more questions.

You don’t need more guidance.

You need to train yourself to trust yourself.

If you are ready to get started, here’s a six-step framework to help you start building that self-trust muscle.

Lastly, I encourage you to make the time to thank your past self for trying her best to be safe, accepted, and seen. The more you learn to trust yourself, the more she will rest.

—

🗝️ Let’s learn and grow together: What questions do you have about self-trust? Drop them down below, and I’ll respond to each one.

Your questions help me make more newsletters like this one!

—

Con cariño,

Steff Sorady Arias

As a little girl, adults always complimented me for being sweet, polite, and quiet.
And because I wanted to be loved, I doubled down. Those qualities became my strategy. My safety plan. My mask. Hell - they became my whole identity.

Sweet. Polite. Quiet. Nurturing.
I dutifully wore them into adulthood like a uniform.

But now—as I just turned 33—I realize that the best thing I can give that little girl isn’t more perfection.

It’s permission.
It’s protection.
It’s the strength to be honest, assertive, and loud. Not because being sweet, quiet, or nurturing is bad, but because these adjectives only capture a tiny snapshot of who I am as a woman.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls this part of us the Wild Woman—the instinctual self, the part that knows, the part that won’t abandon her own life. The term comes from Women Who Run with the Wolves, and it’s one of the most liberating archetypes I’ve ever met.

Not “wild” as in chaotic or reckless. Wild as in natural, unbroken, alive.

So let’s make a proclamation together:

Let’s start a movement where women stop abandoning themselves to please others, and instead return to their wildness.

Here’s how you become a wild woman in 2026, without burning your life down (unless it truly needs burning).

Reframe always being “good” as what it really was: a survival strategy

If you’ve been the easy one, the agreeable one, the no-drama one, I want you to remember: Being easygoing and always “good” was a survival strategy, not your personality.

Many of us learned early that love arrived fastest when we were:

• low-maintenance

• self-sufficient

• “mature for our age”

• emotionally convenient

The Wild Woman doesn’t shame the Good Girl. She thanks her.
And then she says: We don’t need that strategy anymore.

Practice: Write this somewhere you’ll see it:

“I honor what kept me safe. I choose what keeps me free.”

Befriend Your Anger

Your anger isn’t bad. Trying to swallow your anger is bad.

Anger is a messenger. It’s often the part of you that says:

• That crossed a line.

• That wasn’t fair.

• I’m overextended.

• I’ve been quiet for too long.

When women are trained to be “good,” anger can feel like danger—like you’ll lose love if you tell the truth.

But the Wild Woman knows this:

Anger isn’t the problem. It’s the signal that something must change.

Stop shrinking to fit places you’ve already outgrown

Far too many women shrink themselves to fit jobs, relationships, and roles they’ve already outgrown.

Not because they’re weak, but because they’re loyal. Because they were taught to make it work. But whether it’s your job or your relationship, if you have to become smaller to stay, it’s not loyalty. It’s self-abandonment.

Becoming the Wild Woman doesn’t mean you need to leave.
But she stops contorting. She stops editing. She stops playing small to preserve an outdated version of the story.

Practice: Choose one area where you’ve been trying to “make yourself fit” and visualize what it would look like to be 10% more wild woman.

Expect the truth to feel uncomfortable

If you’re wired to keep the peace, honesty can feel like: I did something bad—even when you did something good.

It’s normal to feel shaky after telling the truth. The truth brings discomfort because it changes the old power dynamics. It interrupts the patterns that were so familiar and attached to.

This emotional “shakiness” is the adrenaline drop after you stop performing. Your nervous system is recalibrating. This is physiological evidence of your growth.

Practice: After you tell the truth, don’t beat yourself up. Be compassionate with yourself. Try this practice:

• hand on heart

• one deep breath

• and say: “Discomfort doesn’t mean I was wrong. Discomfort means I’m doing something new.

Honor your body

As women, we are shamed about our bodies from an incredibly young age. In the eyes of the patriarchal capitalist system, our bodies are never good enough.

But despite what the brainwashing taught you, your body is truly beautiful. It is the vessel that allows you to experience being alive.

A wild woman honors her body every single day. To honor means to hold in high esteem and to fulfill an agreement.

In 2026, I invite you to create rituals to honor the ancient agreement between your soul, psyche, and body.

Especially for those of us who have disconnected from our bodies long ago, rituals give your nervous system that proof on a schedule. Most “good girl” conditioning teaches the body to override itself: push through, be polite, don’t feel too much. Rituals are a counter-spell: they teach you to keep a living connection with yourself.

Think of it as a small but sacred boundary: this is where I stop abandoning myself.

Practice: choose a “closing ritual” after work: wash hands slowly, shake out arms/legs, and take one long exhale. Signal to your body: the labor is over.

Let intuition lead (the key to the Wild Woman)

Intuition is your inner compass. It’s the subtle knowing that lives beneath your thoughts.

One of the coolest things about intuition is that it’s your brain and body working together behind the scenes, using stored emotional memories, sensory data, and social context to give you a felt sense of what’s true. It does this so fast you don’t even consciously notice it.

If you’ve spent years people-pleasing, your intuition might be buried under a thick layer of shoulds. But your intuition is never truly gone. Intuition is how you remember yourself. If you want to learn more, here’s an article on how to hear your intuition!

Become the wild woman you were born to be

You don’t become a wild woman by becoming harder.

You become a wild woman by becoming truer.

Truer in your yes.
Truer in your no.
Truer in your anger.
Truer in your desire.
Truer in your knowing.

And slowly, steadily, you stop abandoning yourself. That’s the movement I want us to participate in in 2026.

Reflection for you 🗝️

Where in your life are you still being “sweet, polite, and quiet” to earn love, when what you actually need is honesty, assertiveness, and volume?

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Every time I think I’ve mastered it, life invites me to relearn it. It’s written all over my journals, I've done my best to etch it into my brain; I’ve even considered getting it tattooed.

The lesson is this: I don’t have to abandon myself to be lovable.

As a parentified eldest daughter, I’ve seen this lesson creep into every meaningful relationship I’ve ever had. As a women’s trauma therapist, I see the same lesson appearing and reappearing in the lives of my clients.

You might recognize yourself if:

• You apologize the second someone’s mood shifts

• You feel physically ill when a text bubble disappears without a response.

• You’d rather over-give than risk someone thinking you’re “selfish.”

• You isolate when you need help, but always show up to help others

• You’re more focused on what the other person is doing (or not doing) in the relationship than how you feel about the relationship

Sometimes this lesson looks like:

• When someone takes longer to text back → Can I stay with myself instead of chasing, over-explaining, or spiraling?

• When there’s conflict→ Can I let them have their feelings without rushing in to fix or fawn?

• When a partner isn’t putting effort into the relationship → Can I voice my needs and give myself the love and effort I’m craving?

• When a relationship ends → Can I grieve without deciding it means I’m unlovable or broken?

Personally, I know where this wound comes from, but I’m not sure it will ever entirely disappear. What has changed after years of “doing the work” is my relationship to this part of me.

Instead of fighting it or feeling ashamed of it, I’ve started to accept it. That acceptance has softened something in me, given me a new sense of self-compassion, and reconnected me to my intuition.

I’m no longer rushing to “fix” it. I am making space for it.

If any of this resonates with you, I invite you to do the same: Honor your lived experience and be loyal to the woman you are becoming.

Honor Where You’re At

The next time you feel yourself about to abandon your needs, pause and ask:

“What would I do right now if I believed I was already lovable, even if they’re disappointed/angry/sad?”

You don’t have to get it “right.” Just asking the question starts to rewire the pattern.

I’m curious:

Where are you most tempted to abandon yourself right now—in dating, in friendship, in family, or at work?

Comment your response and any questions so we can heal and grow together!

Con mucho amor,

Steff

Looking for support?

If you are located in CA or FL and are looking for a virtual trauma therapist, my associate and I have openings. Reach out to us here!

Did you somehow become the family “therapist” as a kid?

Does your family call you “bossy” while also constantly needing your help?

Are you the “responsible one” in your friend group?

Does doing nothing make you feel so guilty you can’t sit still?

Girl, you have eldest daughter syndrome.

As the eldest daughter of an immigrant mom, with siblings 12 and 15 years younger than me, I was basically born as everyone’s built-in third parent. And because I didn’t slow down to assess this part of my identity, I also grew up to become a therapist—which, let’s be honest, was probably just a very elaborate trauma response.

All that to say: I deeply understand the unique pressure, invisible burdens, and intense strength that come with being the eldest daughter. If this sounds like you, keep reading so we can break down the good, the ugly, and the healing possible for eldest daughters everywhere.

Eldest daughter syndrome in a nutshell

It’s important to remember that “eldest daughter syndrome” isn’t a medical diagnosis; it’s a phrase people started using online to describe a noticeable pattern many firstborn (or first-acting) daughters live out.

In this pattern, being the eldest daughter means you were the kid who picked up the slack, whether that was logistically, emotionally, or both. You learned to be the responsible one, the fixer, the peacekeeper. Adults praised you for being helpful and mature, so you kept doing it, even when it cost you. Eldest daughter syndrome is basically a gendered subtype of parentification. Both are survival strategies you developed as a kid that continue to shape your reality as an adult.

Now, as an adult, that can look like carrying too much at work, feeling guilty when you rest, overthinking how others think, stepping into a mom role in your friendships/dating, and putting your needs last because “someone has to handle it.”

Many, but not all, eldest daughters may also fall into the good-girl trap, which can limit their sense of self and overall life satisfaction. Why? Because if you are constantly striving to meet other people’s expectations of “good,” then you never get to be fully you.

In my experience, eldest daughter syndrome is most prevalent in immigrant families and/or families where an adult had untreated mental health issues. This is because we live within a man-made system that does not offer support for families that fall into these categories, not because these families are inherently deficient.

Who “counts” as an eldest daughter?

You don’t need to be the firstborn, literally, and a biological female, for this syndrome to apply to you. A lot of women who aren’t technically the oldest girl still 100% resonate with eldest daughter syndrome because families don’t organize by birth certificates, they organize by who is most useful. Here are some examples:

• The actual oldest is a boy (so the nurturing/emotional labor gets handed to the girl).

• Only child, a daughter, so all caretaking falls on her.

• Any daughter who had to function like the eldest (this can happen if the literal eldest daughter is absent or struggles with health / mental health).

So maybe you weren’t born the eldest, but for whatever reason, it’s the role you had to play in your family.

Typical traits

Because we all have a unique combination of genes and experiences, eldest daughter syndrome isn’t a one-size-fits-all. There are, however, specific traits we tend to see in high rates for eldest daughters, such as:

• A sense of hyper-responsibility (at work, in relation to siblings, with parents, etc.)

• Compulsive people-pleasing behaviors

• Coping through chasing perfectionism and/or overachieving

• High empathy with low self-permission

• Difficulty asking others for help

• Guilt when taking time for yourself

• Chronic anxiety centered on the idea of disappointing others

• Difficulty identifying her own desires

• Self-worth is tied to being helpful, perfect, or low-maintenance

• Performing well in times of crisis, but struggling to manage “small stuff”

• Body symptoms from long-term stress (headaches, GI issues, fatigue)

Strengths of eldest daughters

• Leadership energy
  You’re used to organizing chaos, reading the room, and getting people moving. You naturally take charge when things fall apart.

• Emotional intelligence
  Years of managing mood shifts at home = highly tuned intuition. You can sense tension, subtext, and shifts in energy before anyone says a word.

• Mature AF
  You’ve seen a lot. You tend to be insightful, reflective, and able to see multiple angles in a situation. Many of us grow up hearing how mature we are, and it’s true!

• Advocacy instincts
  You’re used to speaking up for siblings, calming conflicts, or mediating between people. That can translate into being a powerful advocate and boundary-setter (once you turn it inward, too). We need this in the world right now!!!

• Resourcefulness
  Girl, we both know you will always figure it out, whether it comes to money, schedules, feelings, or whatever. You’re good at finding options, tools, and workarounds.

• 

Healing for eldest daughters

Eldest daughters start to heal when they stop treating their survival traits as part of their personality and start seeing them as strategies they’re allowed to disengage from.

That looks like letting “I’ve got it” become “I need help.” That looks like noticing when you’re over-functioning and choosing to do less on purpose. That looks like practicing tiny, uncomfortable boundaries instead of automatically saying yes.

It also means grieving the childhood you didn’t really get, while learning how to offer yourself the care, protection, and validation you gave everyone else.

Over time, the hyper-responsibility softens into reliability, and people-pleasing transforms into self-empowerment so that you can feel like a whole person, not just the strong one."

Reflection for you ✨

Where am I still proving I’m “good” instead of choosing what’s true?

It’s a painful realization that from the ages of six to my early twenties, I was hemorrhaging self-esteem. My body was too big. I needed glasses. Math was impossibly hard for me. I had undiagnosed ADHD in school. Painful cystic acne entered the equation at about thirteen.

In the background of my personal struggles, I watched women’s bodies go through a series of trends that felt impossible to keep up with. From extremely thin to perfectly proportioned curves, women everywhere have long been strapped into a losing battle. Because insecurity is easy for corporations to profit from, we will never be told we are good enough until they stop ruling society.

And all of this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complex dynamics of female self-esteem.

As a women’s trauma therapist, I get to bear witness to my clients sharing both familiar and distinct stories of how they slowly but surely stopped loving themselves. Stopped believing they were worthy of love.

Through my work with clients and my own therapy, I’ve come to realize that healing often looks like a combination of deep trauma-informed work, community healing, and small, consistent habits that make us feel good.

This newsletter is dedicated to those small but mighty feel-good habits. Why? Because you deserve to start feeling good about yourself today. All I ask is that you try each practice with an open heart; if it works for you, great! Add it to your life. If it doesn’t feel good for you, leave it behind.

1. Create a Confidence Folder

One of the easiest but most impactful things I’ve done to help myself feel less like shit and more like a star is creating a photo album on my phone titled “confidence boost.” In this album, I store evidence that, despite what my inner critic is constantly shouting at me, I am, in fact, a badass.

In this folder, there’s a mix of things like screenshots of friends giving me compliments, pictures of my diplomas, photos of me when I’ve felt beautiful, positive feedback from therapy clients, and pictures of other accomplishments, big and small.

My confidence boost folder is a hodgepodge of personal and professional, but you can also get as niche as you want with your confidence folder.

Are you navigating imposter syndrome at work? Then store all evidence of finished projects, affirming email messages, and professional achievements in your confidence folder.

Worried that your personal style sucks? Snap a quick mirror selfie whenever you feel cute in an outfit, and make that the theme of your confidence folder.

Do what works best for you: be broad or get granular. The important thing is you have a dedicated visual archive of what is going right in your life.

2. Stop the Scroll (Without Any Willpower)

You already know this, but it’s worth repeating: Being chronically online is messing with your mental health. It’s making you sad, angry, and triggered, and lowering your self-esteem with the constant comparisons. Therefore, a key step in transforming from insecure and in your head to confident and present is getting off your phone.

Smartphones and social media are designed to be addictive; therefore, thinking you can rely on willpower to stop scrolling at any time is unrealistic. As someone who has ADHD, I already struggle with anxiety, addictive patterns, and impulse control, which is why I outsourced my willpower.

I’ve started using the Brick device, and it’s kept me off social media more than I have since before 2020. What I love about this device is that I have to get up physically, go to the brick, and request to “unbrick” my device. This minor inconvenience stops me from unbricking my device at least twice a day.

Habit research supports this, showing that even the slightest shift in how convenient or inconvenient something is can determine our habits. I actually wrote about it in my book The Better Habits Workbook if you’d like to learn more.

A quick note: Brick does not sponsor this, but I love it so much I signed up for an affiliate link! If the Brick does not suit your needs, other options that will help reduce the convenience of going on socials include a minimalist phone like the LightPhone or a timed lockbox.

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3. Wear Your Personal Power Colors

You’ve probably seen reels/TikToks on seasonal color analysis, which is basically a way of figuring out which colors make you look most alive and harmonious by comparing your natural hair, skin, and eye tones to “seasons” (spring, summer, autumn, winter) so you can pick clothes and makeup that really flatter you.

This system is so popular because once you know which colors genuinely light you up, it gets way easier to feel put-together, beautiful, and like yourself. This means you spend less time second-guessing and more time feeling confident in your own skin.

If the whole seasonal color system feels overwhelming (or you don’t want to pay someone to do it), there’s a total cheat code: wear colors that echo your natural hair, the tones in your eyes, and the natural color of your lips. These shades, found in your natural features, are your personal power colors. If you incorporate them into your top, makeup, or accessories for the day, you will look and feel more vibrant and confident.

To find these shades—your personal power colors—take a couple of no-makeup photos of yourself in natural window light, then drop them into a free online hex code analyzer to pull the exact tones (and names) of your hair, eyes, and lips. Et voilà!

4. Use the Power of Silence

If you’re a recovering good girl/people pleaser, this may be a tough one, but it’s one of the most impactful ways to increase your confidence. Silence is one of the most underrated power moves you have. Instead of rushing to fill every pause, try letting a beat of quiet sit between their words and your response. Notice the urge to speak and replace it with the practice of slowing your breathing instead.

Because so many of us are afraid of silence, being comfortable with it is a major indicator of confidence. At first, it will feel uncomfortable, but the more you practice it, the more your own mind and body will internalize the message: I don’t have to chase, explain, or prove. I’m allowed to take up space, even in the quiet.

In conflict, silence can look like taking a sip of water, or simply saying, “give me a moment to think about that.” This shows the other person that you’re not scrambling for approval or defending yourself. You’re grounded, thoughtful, and in charge of your energy.

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Reflection for you ✨

What’s one practice that you could experiment with this week? How can you record or document this confidence experiment?

Xo,

Steff Sorady Arias

But this week, I didn’t have it in me. Not because anything was “wrong” but because I needed the mental rest. So, I gave myself a pass to skip a week and just be.

And, of course, that’s when inspiration struck. I immediately knew what I wanted to share with you all - ten new truths to live by for the recovering good girl. So this is coming out on a Monday instead of Sunday because I permitted myself to rest, and that rest actually gave me the energy to create. Shocking, right?

As a recovering good girl and therapist to fellow recovering good girls, I identified these ten truths for us. For the girl who grew up needing to read the room for safety and believed they would one day finally achieve enough to earn the love that they longed for. For the woman who is ready to break free from old conditioning, trust her intuition, and give herself the love that she always deserved.

This is a living set of declarations for recovering ‘good girls’ who are ready to stop people pleasing and start living life on their terms.

For Recovering “Good Girls”

1. You were never “too much”.
   You were just taught to be less. Less sensitive. Less emotional. Less curious. But recovering is not about being less like yourself, it’s about being more like yourself. We’re no longer shrinking to make others feel comfortable.

2. Your worth isn’t earned through performance.
   You don’t have to prove, please, or produce to be lovable. You already are.

3. Being “good” is no longer the goal.
   We’ve been socially conditioned to be “good” above everything else. This conditioning can cost us our truth and our peace. We are letting go of “good" and instead we are striving to be true to ourselves. No matter how hard, scary, or complicated life gets, we will always find peace in being our true selves.

4. Self-sacrifice is not loving.
   Despite what little girls are told, chronic self-sacrifice isn’t holy. It can stoke the flames of resentment and isolation. Instead, we are learning to give from a place of abundance, desire, and joy so that we are more loving and connected.

5. Anger isn’t dangerous. Silence is.
   Silence keeps us trapped. Anger promotes action. We use anger to rise, not destroy, but disrupt.

6. Having needs isn’t selfish. It’s adult.
   All humans have them, and when you honor yours, you stop over-functioning for others. That’s how we create safer, more loving relationships rooted in authenticity, not obligation.

7. Your intuition is sacred.
   Your intuition is the calm inner knowing that guided your ancestors. We were taught to tune it out and second-guess ourselves. Now we choose to listen and trust.

8. Ease is not a luxury. It’s your birthright.

   You were not born to prove that you are worthy of rest. Ease, rest, and sleep are integral parts of being alive. Because of this, we are inviting more ease, rest, and sleep as an act of gratitude for being alive.

9. Your body is not the problem. It’s the portal.
   Corporations and media profit off your insecurities, which is why you’ve disconnected from your body. But your body was never the problem; it is the portal to true self-love.

10. Healing happens when we return to the present.

    Not the past. Not the performance. Right here. Right now.

    This is where we begin again.

Join the Movement 🗝️

If this resonates, add your name in the comments so that we can make these declarations together.

Do you think I left something out? Please share your ideas in the comments as well.

This living document belongs to us, the women who were raised to be good but are now choosing to be true.

Con mucho amor,

Steff