Breaking Free of Being Your Family's Emotional Cheerleader - And Finding Joy!

You can be capable, loving, and “on top of things” and still feel like you cannot get out of your own way. We go straight into the pattern that quietly drains so many women, especially moms: becoming the emotional manager for the whole house. If you’re constantly scanning, smoothing, fixing, and trying to keep the mood steady, that is not just a personality trait. It is often a nervous system strategy that once meant safety and now looks like burnout.

We unpack how this shows up through eldest daughter roles, family dynamics, and the invisible pressure to hold it all together. The surprising shift is that the exhaustion is not only about busyness, calendars, or the mental load. It is also about resistance: the story that says if you stop controlling, everything will collapse. When you can name that story, your body can soften, your shoulders can drop, and you can finally practice receiving support, setting boundaries, and letting other people have their feelings without making them your job.

You’ll leave with a simple way to identify your personal resistance loop: imagine getting what you want, then listen for the fear or belief that immediately pops up. That is the doorway to rewriting the pattern with more self-trust, emotional regulation, and real self-care that actually restores energy. If this hits home, subscribe for more, share it with a friend who carries the emotional weight, and leave a review so more listeners can find the support.

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Transcript

When You Cannot Get Out

SPEAKER_00 1:23

If you feel like you just cannot get out of your own freaking way, if you feel like you cannot figure out how to show up for yourself, how to show up and take the action that you need to take to achieve the very things that you want to achieve, this episode is for you. And this is something that I have become so insanely passionate about sharing because it is the very thing after years of healing work, of mindset work, of emotional work, of breath work, of inner child work, right? All of these things that finally flipped the switch for me. And then it felt like overnight everything just opened up and got so much easier. And I have been resistant to sharing this message because it is so important to me that I feel like I just want to get it right and I want to articulate it so perfectly so that you can you can really get it and sink your own teeth into it and make sense of it for yourself. Um and and that feels really tricky for me to do. But I've tried to record this three times already, and now I'm just like, you know what? We're just we're just diving right in. And it's just gonna come and flow exactly as it is meant to. And this story starts about six months or so ago last fall, when I found myself sobbing on my bed, feeling so exhausted, so depleted by being the emotional cheerleader for my family. Okay. I am the eldest daughter of divorced parents. And as a child, I took on the responsibility to make sure everyone else was always okay. Right. This role was not assigned to me. This is something that I took on because it made me feel safe to do so. It made me feel in control. If I could constantly be vigilant and make sure everyone was okay, make sure the emotional temperature of the room, of the situation was okay, and I got really good at noticing tiny little flickers that I could again feel safe because I felt like I was somehow

The Eldest Daughter Survival Role

SPEAKER_00 4:24

in control. This is an exhausting task, especially as a child, and especially when you've done it your entire life now, and you're a 43-year-old mom and you're now doing it for your kids and your husband. Okay. So if that starts to resonate with any of you, welcome. Because what I realized is I wasn't allowing anyone the space to have the feelings that they needed to have. And this was wild to me and like completely mind-blowing because I'm a coach. I support people by holding space for them. I believe that you are allowed to have big feelings. And I didn't even see, right? Like I couldn't even see. It was so unconscious that I was operating from this story, operating from this pattern that had been created 35 years ago, that I was just living this in my own life. And it was exhausting me because I felt like I was like the emotional gatekeeper in our house. And if it my husband was in a grumpy mood, I had to like jump to the occasion to fix that. If my kids were upset about something, I had to jump to to fix them. I was always fixing. And again, that is for one, just an impossible feat. It's it's impossible. And for two, it's it's so harmful. And I can say that now with with like lightness, because again, it was so innocent. But we all need to process emotion, right? Like our kids need to process. We do not need to fix everything. Okay. And not only do we not need to do that, it is so exhausting. And if you're still listening, I imagine that this resonates with you and speaks to you. And you're probably like, yeah, it is completely exhausting. And maybe you didn't even know that you were doing this the way that I didn't know that I was doing this. And I'm again sending like so much just like grace to whoever this um is speaking to and whoever needs to hear this message, because again, it's it's super innocent. It is, it is so unconscious that you're doing this. But once you see it, and once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it. And when I was up in my room and sobbing about this, I wasn't even mad anymore. And you know, what had kind of set me off, and I was reflecting on this a bit as I was sitting down to record, where when you know that you've healed from a story and you know that you've healed from a pattern, or at least one way, is when the story, it, it, it feels almost like so long ago that you can't even access it. Like it's almost like I've lost, I've lost so much of the plot because I've I've just I've let go of the story. So it's almost hard to like take myself back there. And that's like such a beautiful, a beautiful place to be in. But I do remember that my husband was in a bad mood about something. And I'm again, I was trying to like fix that, or I was trying

The Hidden Cost Of Fixing

SPEAKER_00 8:13

to like just deal with it. And I I was just like pissed off because I was just again seeing that like, oh my gosh, why am I doing this? Why should I be doing this? And when I was upstairs and I was so upset, it was like I could finally see that I didn't need to be mad at my husband. He was simply the person and the situation, whatever it was, even whatever even sparked this, was the exact situation that needed to happen. It needed to come to light so that I could have this realization, so that I could have this epiphany, so that I could heal this freaking story once and for all. Okay, so that this again, this conversation is so layered and so deep. And I'm gonna try to like articulate as best as I can because really and truly it has like saved me in so in a million ways. And I and I want that for you. And also I'm also being like trying to be conscious of not falling into that pattern of needing to fix this for you, right? Because like it's it's all divine and the timing and and what we need to see and when we need to see it and how it evolves and shapes. It it's all perfectly orchestrated, right? So again, it was like the when we think of it in that way, like, oh, my husband, it's it's not my like my husband's fault, right? He is just the catalyst, he is the person, the situation that is a gift, literally to show me what I need to see, what I need to release, what I need to surrender to in order to allow myself to open up to whatever is next, right? Like that next version. And there's always next versions of ourselves, right? It's never like that person then and this person now and that person in the future. Like there's always, even after that future person, there's always going to be these new iterations as we have new desires, as we want to grow and evolve and expand and all of that good stuff, right? Like it takes, you know, being really brave to meet the person that you want to become. And that is the trickiest part, right? And I couldn't become that person without first seeing how I was so stuck in this pattern of trying to hold it all together, right? Again, and it's it's so innocent. And I think it's such a very natural motherly thing to do, even if you weren't, you know, an eldest daughter, even if you weren't a child of divorce, right? Like I think it's just kind of in us, right, to want to fix and solve and make sure that everyone's okay. But what I realized is I wasn't letting anyone do that for me. And I wasn't even doing that for myself. I wasn't nurturing myself the way that I needed to. I wasn't mothering myself the way that I needed to. And the second I saw this, I realized the importance of putting myself first in order to hold the capacity to hold the space for everybody else, right? It it didn't mean that I needed to fix anything anymore or I needed to fix my kids' problems or my husband's stress or all the things, right? But in nurturing myself, in nourishing myself, in pouring into myself and learning what that looked like for me specifically, because it does look a little different

Pressure, Control, And Nervous System Safety

SPEAKER_00 12:07

for each and every one of us, that that expanded my emotional and energetic capacity to give, right? To be the mom that I want to be, to be the partner that I want to be to my husband. Okay. And what I realized is the depleted feelings, the feelings of just exhaustion and overwhelm. It, you know, it had nothing to do with busyness of life. It had nothing to do with, you know, like the 15 different sports apps downloaded on my phone that as I'm trying to manage everyone's activities. It didn't have anything to do with all the emails and figuring out what to have for dinner and the mental overload, right? Like we hear so much of that noise specifically targeted to women, but I think I think it's detrimental. And I think that that's really why I want to share this message because what I realized once I got out of my own resistance to wanting to like control everything and keep everything together for everyone else, I had greater capacity to show up and do all the things. I'm not saying I'm running around like an energizer bunny and I don't believe anyone should, but I feel a thousand times better with how I show up and my ability to just feel more at ease, be more in the flow, and have more energy to do all the things that need to get done, right? As a mom, as a woman growing a business, right? As a human just trying to get things done every day. And simply talking about the language around moms carrying the mental load and moms carrying all of this other stuff. Yes, I get that, right? I'm not discounting that. I'm not discounting that there shouldn't be more equal partnerships in marriage, etc. Okay, that is that is not the point of this conversation. However, I think that we are missing a deeper point. And that is what I really want to try to articulate. And that deeper point is that there is this root pressure that we are putting on ourselves. And whatever the cause of that root pressure is, again, is going to be different for all of us. We all have our own stories, we all have our own like karmic stuff that we come in with, we all have our own family history, right? So the root of that looks different, but I believe that when you can simply meet whatever that pressure is that you, for whatever reason, have put on yourself, and you see it simply for what it is, which is a story, and you realize that you no longer have to operate from that story, it's like the pressure starts to release, right? And like I kind of exaggerated that movement. If you happen to be watching this on YouTube, but like I exaggerated that movement with my shoulders, but it was like a very natural, like that's a breath. That is an opening, it's a softening, right? So when we're we're talking about language of you know, softening and receiving and kind of like this, this very feminine aspect to women, again, even though it's not, you know, we all have feminine and masculine within us, but we think when we think about this idea of what the feminine is, we cannot fully allow that. We cannot fully open to that until we understand what we are doing to block that. And that block is again, it's super innocent, but it is caused by your own resistance to something, right? Whatever to kind of bring it back around, just to understand this idea of resistance, right? Like my resistance or my blocking was this need to control. And if I didn't control, it was like, what would happen, right? And I it was scary to kind of look at that, and not only to look at that, it was like I needed something to happen so I could see it because it it centered around again, this story that I had created around my own safety, right? And when I use the word safety, I'm talking about like nervous system safety, like what feels safe in our own bodies, what makes us feel like we can just breathe, like we can just relax, like we can just be. Okay. And the second you understand what that story is, where you're putting the pressure on yourself, where you are creating resistance, and you realize that it is just a story. And and it is. Sometimes we are so caught up in the story that we can't see that it is a story. But I promise, I promise you, it is just a story. Even if that story created a reality, right? And the reality that we're living obviously feels very real to us, it doesn't mean that you don't get to change power in changing that story, in deciding that you don't have to settle anymore for that story. Okay. So how do you go about like, if you're like, yes, I know that I'm putting so much pressure on myself, I know that there is something that just feels so heavy. I know that I'm trying to control. I know, right? Like you know all of these things, or maybe, and you maybe, maybe you don't know exactly what that's caused by, but what you do know and what the body always knows,

Permission To Want Something Different

SPEAKER_00 18:48

because I have women that come to me and they're like, I don't know what I want. I I don't know what brings me joy. I don't, right? And and that's okay. You do know that you don't feel the way you want to feel right now, right? Like plain and simple. If that is the only place that you can get to right now, you know that there is another way that you want to feel, a better way, right? A happier way, a peaceful way, a freer way, whatever that adjective is for you. And if you're like, how do I even start to understand what my own resistance is? So I can break free of this loop, so I can let go of this pattern. And it's as simple as starting to kind of give yourself permission, as you know, hard as that may be for some of you, giving yourself permission to think about, even dream if because sometimes even thinking or like it feels easy to like daydream because it doesn't feel as real, right? It's it's amazing how deeply we we self-sabotage ourselves. And it starts with even just giving ourselves permission to say that we want something, to admit that we want something different. So if you can just start to like slowly, and I'm chuckling because the faster you can meet your resistance, like the faster your life will change. So again, go at your own pace because there can be resistance that comes up around that. But if you can just start to think of what you want for yourself, what you want to change, okay, as you're kind of getting into that story and you're like, okay, now what if I have everything that I ever wanted? There is going to be something that comes up: a fear, a worry, a belief, right? Once you understand what that belief is, that's where you like see the full, the full resistance loop. And once you're like, oh my gosh, I have been sabotaging myself for so long because I thought that if I didn't completely control the situation, everything would fall apart. My marriage would fall apart. I wouldn't be the mom. I right like and it's so unconscious. And it and sometimes like when you say certain things out loud, they almost sound so silly that you're like, that can't be it. But but it is right. Like, and so it's a matter of getting to the deeper root of what those fears are, of what's going on, so that you can just see it for what it is. And there used to be, you know, I believe that just like the way that we heal and with the shift in consciousness and everything going on, I think things are speeding up and you don't need to spend now like a year doing all this inner child work, breaking free of it. It's simply seeing the story, seeing the pattern, recognizing it for what it is, which is simply a story and a pattern. But again, you get to rewrite the story, you get to change that

Rewrite The Story, Change The Pattern

SPEAKER_00 22:12

pattern, you get to see, okay, I've made all of that up. However, I've also been operating from that. So if I simply made that up and I've been operating from that, let me just make something new up that I want and let me operate from that. And that is really where the work begins. So again, use this conversation to see what opens up within you. Maybe even as I'm speaking, you you know it right away, right? Like the patterns coming to you, the stories coming to you, the trigger is coming to you. Life will always show you exactly what you need to see, right? This happens most often through our relationships, not just romantic relationships, but family relationships, friend relationships, work relationships. Because that that is how we relate to ourselves is through other people, right? Everyone is mirroring things back to us projections, fears, whatever it may be. So know. Right, slow down. This is where it's like slow down to go faster. When you slow down and you allow yourself to not get caught up into the moment, into the energy of the situation, into the reactions, into the trigger, right? And you are able to kind of step back and see it for what it is. You're like, oh my gosh, this is what this situation is bringing up within me, right? So it never had anything to do with the other person. And it always has everything to what we need, everything to do with what we need to see within ourselves to break free of it, right? And it and it could be anything around where we're not holding boundaries, um, where we're not prioritizing our needs, where we're not choosing ourselves, where we're not giving ourselves permission, you know, a million different things, right? And I could probably do an episode about each and every single one, because again, I think as moms especially, it runs, it runs the gamut because we have our kids mirroring things back to us and our partner mirroring things back to us and life mirroring things back to us. But again, the second you can kind of see and just allow for life to like bring these things up within you and don't resist letting them come up. Because that is the next way that we sabotage ourselves is by not wanting to face what life is showing us, by avoiding it, by being really resistant to what is just right in front of us. But the second we can just allow it and be in whatever we're being shown, it's the second we break free from it. And again, the second you break free, it doesn't weigh on you. It doesn't exhaust you the way that it

Relationships As Mirrors And Boundaries

SPEAKER_00 25:21

did. It doesn't deplete you, right? And that is where everything shifts because now you have the energy to show up for yourself. You have the motivation to show up for yourself. You have clarity with what you want because now you realize why you weren't giving yourself permission. And now you just start giving yourself permission because you realize like you weren't doing it because of some silly story, and now you get to rewrite it. Okay. So do some journaling around this. Notice what life is is um, I don't know, winding up for you, showing for you, right? Be in it, right? Dance with life, surrender to it all and just let it come up and let it be and let it move through you. So I hope that this supports you in so many ways. And I'm going to do some more episodes around this because again, it's like it's very layered. And I have some, you know, it was kind of like I had this epiphany, and then I hadn't like totally, I hadn't totally worked through it yet, right? So there were some other really beautiful things that came up that allowed me to finally get to the bottom of all this pressure and the bottom of all of my own resistance. And I want to keep sharing those stories again. Hopefully, they will help like nudge something loose within you so that you can finally break free and really start to show up for yourself in a way that feels really good. So I'd love to hear from you as always. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you.