Why Losing Control Feels Like Losing Yourself: The Survival Response That’s COSTING You Connection

If you’re the kind of mom who only feels okay when everything is under control (the house, your to-do list, the kids’ moods, even your own emotions), you can’t afford to miss this powerful interview with Dr. Hayden Finch on “control mode”: that subtle and often socially rewarded way high-achievers seek control to feel safe. Few, if any, moms realize their desire for control is actually a protective survival strategy your nervous system took on from a young age that’s now COSTING you connection. The more you need things “in order”, the more rigid, exhausted, and disconnected you become—especially in marriage and motherhood where control is basically impossible.

In this episode, we explore the real difference between healthy discipline and threat-driven control, how control sabotages connection with your kids and husband, how to start relaxing your grip without spiraling, and so much more. 

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• What “control mode” really is—yet why it actually doesn’t feel controlling at all
• Where control seeking comes from (hint: BOTH chaotic childhoods and perfectionistic childhoods can create the same compulsion)
• What really happens in your brain and nervous system when life feels out of control—and why rigidity increases under stress
• How trying to control or fix emotions (whether yours or others’) only blocks connection and authenticity
• How real change comes not from relinquishing the control mode mindset but from experiencing that you survive life without total control

AS MENTIONED:

Prior episode with Dr. Finch on procrastination and high functioning anxiety

Get more of Dr. Hayden Finch, a licensed clinical psychologist, behavior change expert, author, and founder of the Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety:

• Website
• Book: The Psychology of Procrastination

When you start healing at the level of your nervous system, your whole home feels the difference. Sign up for a free consult and/or join my new 6-week program, Moms Made NewTM, to learn the six most fundamental life coaching skills EVERY mom needs to flourish.  

HOMEWORK:

Reflect on which path led you to strive to control things: a messy, chaotic childhood? A rigid, super strict childhood? Or a different experience later in life? Observe how it feels in your body when things feel OUT of control

Loving this podcast? Please help it get found by more listeners by taking quick minute to leave a rating & review in Apple Podcasts. Take a screenshot of your text review before you submit it, then email that to help@solutionsforsimplicity.com and I'll send you my powerful Happy Mom Protocol™ (a $297 value) FOR FREE!

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Transcript

0:00

I am safe. This is not an emergency. And safety doesn't have to come from predictability. It can come from me believing I can handle this. Even if I can't control it, I can handle it. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. If you're the kind of mom who only feels OK when everything is under control, the house, your to-do list, the kids' moods, even your own emotions, then this conversation is a must listen. I've got Dr. Hayden Finch back on the show to unpack what she calls control mode, that subtle and often socially rewarded way that high achievers tighten their grip on life to feel safe. The problem? The tighter we hold, the more rigid, exhausted, and disconnected we become, especially in motherhood where control is basically impossible. In case you didn't hear my first interview with Dr. Finch all about procrastination, high-functioning anxiety, and so much more, I will drop that link in the show notes. It's one of the most popular episodes to date. I introduced Dr. Finch more formally there, but for those who don't know, she is a licensed clinical psychologist, behavioral change expert, author, and founder of the Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety. In this new episode, we explore the real difference between healthy discipline and threat-driven control, how control sabotages connection with your kids and husband, and how to start relaxing your grip without spiraling. Here are a few of the biggest takeaways. You will learn what control mode really is and why it doesn't feel controlling at all, how to tell the difference between values-based discipline and fear-based control, why both chaotic childhoods and perfectionistic childhoods can create the same underlying compulsion for control? How trying to control or fix emotions, whether yours or someone else's, only blocks connection and authenticity? what really happens in your brain and nervous system when life feels out of control, and why rigidity increases so much under stress, and how real change comes not from thinking differently, but from believing that you can survive life without total control. Here's the whole interview. Enjoy. But I just want more women to know that whatever is going on in their minds, they're not the only one. And to get this language that can help them better understand themselves and choose whether there are things they want to change, not fix, but change about themselves. We've been talking about this idea of control and how a lot of high achievers really fixate on having control over their lives. You've explored this, and I know you have a lot of amazing thoughts to share. What do you consider to be control mode? Can you unpack that for us? And just what is that desire to control all about? I think this is so interesting. This is something that I've only been thinking about in the last couple of years. I've thought about anxiety for 15 years, but only been thinking about this control mode for the last couple of years. And so when I think about control mode, well, first of all, I don't think any of us want to think of ourselves as controlling, but I think a lot of us would relate to I like for things to be under control. I want the house to be under control. I want the schedule to be under control. I want to be under control. And so that's what I'm thinking about is like that desire to keep things under control, right? So we want our feelings to be under control, the environment, sometimes even other people. And there are a lot of strengths that come with that, right? So people who lean towards control, they're often disciplined, they're reliable, they're detail-oriented, they work well under pressure. But like anything, when it's overdone, that's when we start to see problems. We can get rigid instead of flexible. We can get perfectionistic. We can hold emotions in instead of letting them connect us with people. It can lead us to a place where we actually start to feel exhausted and disconnected and missing out on joy instead of like what we wanted it to be, which is just like happily everything under control. Yes. It's incredible how we aren't even consciously aware of this, but there is this desire to have things under control, which has the equal component of a subconscious fear of losing control or of what that means for us if we're not in control. It just, it really does dominate so many women's daily existence. Mine, for sure, as you were describing it. I could feel in my body the tension and the anxiety of, oh, if things aren't under control, then I'm not okay or I'm a failure. How does one differentiate between a good desire to be organized and disciplined and how helpful it can be to feel in control of your life with then this more negative or protective response desire to have everything under control, to be in control mode? How do we know the difference? Well, you're right. There isn't a firm line between being disciplined and organized versus being over-controlled. But I think about it this way. Discipline and organization are about values. They're moving us toward something that matters to us. They're going to feel good. They're going to feel positive. Whereas control mode, like you were talking about, is about threat. It's my nervous system saying, I can't relax until things are under control. So you feel the difference in your body where discipline feels steady, it feels intentional, but control feels tense and urgent, maybe almost brittle sometimes, right? Where it's this safety thing. Discipline feels safe. I feel like I can safely get to my goals if I'm disciplined about it. Whereas control, when things are out of control, you feel unsafe. Oh, that makes a lot of sense. And it really brings up for me the, you know, in the work that I do, and I know you really guide women through this as well, but are there early life experiences or childhood events or wounds that you think really make some women more prone to leaning on control than others? Well, yeah, I mean, to be clear, there are many destinations, many paths to the same destination, right? So there are many ways to get to this place where we feel like we need to have everything under control. And if I were going to make this kind of binary, I think about maybe two primary pathways. So one is growing up in an environment that is very chaotic and out of control. Maybe there's criticism or inconsistency that feels unsafe. And so children in that environment often learn that if I stay composed or competent, stay self-sufficient, fly under the radar, just keep everything contained, we won't have problems. So that's definitely one route. Another one is kind of the opposite family, where everything is kind of put together and restrained and perfectionistic, where that's modeled for us, but also reinforced as the behavioral expectations in that home. And you just learn, like, oh, this is the way I'm supposed to function. This is what being a good human is, is being restrained. OK, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And how fascinating that both scenarios could result in the same underlying tendency. In our prior interview, we unpacked high-functioning anxiety. To what extent does control mode co-present with high-functioning anxiety? Is it a sign or symptom of high-functioning anxiety? Is it its own thing? Where do we draw the line and what are the similarities and differences of those two? Well, I'll admit, this is something I'm still trying to understand myself. I think they're probably maybe more similar than different, and they definitely overlap quite a bit. So if we had a Venn diagram, I think there's a pretty significant overlap between these. But I think high-functioning anxiety, if I had to differentiate, I would say high-functioning anxiety is a lot more worry-driven, right? It's the like, what if I fail? What if something goes wrong? It thinks a lot about catastrophes. And it's trying to outrun the anxiety, right? It's trying to avoid anxiety by outrunning it, by getting ahead, by avoiding maybe. And mistakes feel shameful with fear judgment. So that's like the high-functioning anxiety piece. Whereas when I think about the control mode, which can coexist, right? You don't necessarily have to be one or the other. It's not so worry-driven, but it's like, I feel safest, or maybe even most like me, when things are under control. I love predictability itself, like life just makes more sense when everything is orderly. And if something doesn't go according to plan, It's not like a shaming experience, exactly. It's like an irritation. I'm mad about it. I feel viscerally uncomfortable, unsafe. So both are going to be people that do more, achieve more, manage more. But the engine is a little bit different. Is this worry-driven or is this like, I just feel like the world makes more sense this way? This is a little messy, I think, for me, conceptually, but those are some of the things I'm thinking about. Totally. I was just thinking about yesterday. I took some of my precious work time while my kids were at school, and I had plenty of work to do, but I thought, I'm just going to take half an hour, I'm going to clean up the house, I'm going to put things away, and that makes me feel better, right? And then my kids got home and instantly everything is coming back out. Things are getting broken, things are getting dirty, just everything is coming undone. And it's very hard for me not to get, well I am, I get triggered in those moments for all kinds of reasons, feeling like My time was in vain. No one appreciates me. I do all these things for nothing. I'm a horrible mom because I haven't taught my kids not to make this mess or whatever. Like all the random thoughts and things spiraling in my head. And I am really grateful to have acquired all of these tools and techniques to talk myself down off that ledge and especially not let it produce behavior in me or responses that I would somehow regret. But I do, I just notice how it is so difficult for me to control things after becoming a mother. And yet, I want more than anything to maintain close connection with my kids. And the discomfort for me is the real feeling in my body of perceived threat when things are out of control with that stronger desire to love and stay connected to my kids, no matter how out of control things feel. Long-winded way of asking, to what extent do you think control impedes connection or otherwise shows up in how we interact with our spouses or our kids or just other people in general? Oh, yeah, this is central to it, right? When we were in this control mode or when we're oriented this way in life in general, it's not only about controlling our environment or our schedule or ourselves, but it's a lot about controlling feelings. When you do this, when you are trying to control your feelings so that you can show up as patient, sometimes we have to dial back the anger so we can show up as patient. sometimes that's a good thing, right? Having some emotional restraint is a good thing. And overdone, it can squeeze out authenticity. Not only in ourselves, but in modeling that for our children. So for example, if we suppress feelings that seem messy, or we try to fix feelings in other people, then It keeps things running smoothly, right? We're not going to have like these emotional messes to clean up. But it's prioritizing this order over the openness. So we can't be real with people if we can't share our feelings. We connect through feelings. And if our feelings are dialed back to keep everything contained, then we don't have the information to give to someone to connect to. It's amazing to hear you say that. Makes me think of how so many of us internalize from an early age this belief that in order to be loved, we have to keep things a certain way for our caregivers or that our caregivers need things to be a certain way in order to show their love for us. We then come to think that love is conditional on us doing a good job or making the other person happy. And what I so badly want us moms to change and to parent from moving forward with our own children is that truth that real love is unconditional. We want our children to know how much we love them, how much we value them, apart from how good they make us feel or how out of control they make us feel. But that's hard. These are big, challenging things that we're all working on, for sure. Yeah, we do have to have a willingness to be a little bit messy, to emotionally connect with people and to let other people be messy too, especially our children. Often I think there is this implicit value, I don't think anybody would say this out loud, I mean some people definitely would, that we really like children to be quiet and happy. That's the way we like children best. But like that's not real, right? And if you grow up to be an adult, that was trained that way, like, just be quiet and happy and everything will be fine, you end up with some prompt, right? It's like, right, if that's the only way that I can see value in myself or that I believe the world values me is if I'm quiet and happy, you're going to be miserable, right? You can look happy, but you're going to be disconnected. And, you know, no one can connect to someone who's just quiet and happy all the time. And this is where we arrive in midlife and start to realize that is what happened to us and how we have shown up up to this point and we're now dying to be heard and trying to figure out who we even are when we realize that our desire for control is that protective response from these early wounds or false beliefs. Wow. You've previously spoken about how people that are good at controlling things, they tend to be very stable, very reliable. But how do we hold on to the positive aspects of those things without drifting maybe too far to the negative and letting ourselves get into perfectionism or rigidity? The goal isn't to get rid of control. Control has benefits, right? We've talked about that. The goal is to make it a little bit more flexible, right? So the strengths of someone who kind of leans in the direction of control are really important when they're in the service of your values, not your fears, right? So the key here is like the intentionality behind it. So for you, for the example of like, I'm cleaning up this mess around the house and then like come back and it's all a mess again, When we're cleaning, it's like, instead of, I have to do this perfectly. I have to get my house looking perfect. They're on for just a few minutes. I have to get it looking perfect again. It's like, hey, I'm choosing to pick up the house and to do it well because it matters to me. Right? Slight difference there in the intention behind it. Cleaning is fine. Having a perfectly clean house is fine, too. But I have to do this perfectly, period, is different from, I'm choosing to do this well because it matters to me. There's a little bit of flexibility there. And what we're really looking for here is like the behavior is being guided by our choice rather than a compulsion. I feel compelled to clean or compelled to work rather than choosing to do it. It makes a big difference. That is so profound. Yes. And it takes a lot of conscious effort to be able to handle life's day-to-day challenges that way, especially when you're kind of pre-wired to seek control or to feel threatened when things are out of control. Do you have some other examples of how control mode might show up in motherhood or in our other close relationships and how it can really be sabotaging the things that we hold most dear? Think a lot about fixing. So people who like for things to be under control, they see a problem and they fix it, right? And that can be an asset. But some problems don't need fixing. For example, if your kid is frustrated with something, if you go in and fix the problem, then they don't learn those frustration tolerance skills, for example. Or they learn that frustration is bad, or all kinds of things. So if I go in and I fix my kid's feeling, for example, and maybe they're frustrated with a jigsaw puzzle, and I just go and figure it out for them. it kind of gets in the way of their development, but also like they're getting messages about my confidence and their ability to figure out the problem themselves and all kinds of messy messages there. Same thing with like our spouses, maybe they get upset with us over something and so we kind of compulsively fix it and we're over apologizing, over explaining, making it up somehow. Making things right is important, but overdoing it is too much. Or maybe we know that if we ask for help, our spouse is going to kind of grumble. And so we just avoid that. It's another way of controlling our feelings because it doesn't feel good to have someone kind of grumble when we ask for help. But it doesn't do anything for our connectedness with them. It doesn't do anything for our well-being if we kind of avoid that emotional experience. So I think a lot about trying to fix problems or avoid problems as being something that kind of keeps this whole thing going. Yes. One of the biggest lightbulb moments that I had when I was getting trained as a life coach was the obvious truth that we cannot control other people. But then learning to take radical responsibility for yourself and empowering others to do the same, even when you don't like what they're doing or you perceive what they're doing as a threat, really realizing that all we can control is ourselves and, simultaneously, how very much that is that we are always in control of our own thoughts and reactions. This is huge. It's so profound. It's so simple and perhaps obvious, but it really, day to day, comes up over and over again for me and many of the women I work with, of like, yes, okay, we know on the one hand, theoretically, we can't control other people, but darned if we don't still try, because we feel unsafe when things aren't going our way. It's just, it's a lot. Yeah, it's sort of this misguided way to control our own feelings by controlling the outside. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I think that we always have those two sides of us where we know we're a bit of a crazy person and we like being crazy because we feel good and safe being that way or because of the results that it gets us. But it starts to take more and more of a physical toll. Like you're saying, that tension, living in that constant state of tension. is only sustainable for so long. I've sure seen over the years that while it was easier to maintain control under certain circumstances, suddenly things shift, whether it's adding more kids to the mix. So motherhood, of course, was the biggest moment, but then adding more kids or switching jobs, moving, losing a parent, like these big, big life events. make me realize that I really am not in control. And that doesn't have to be a problem, but I have to come to terms with that because otherwise my default tendency is to dig in that much deeper and strive to control that much more. which really isn't helpful. And it blocks us, I think, from seeing the bigger range of opportunities and lessons available to us than then, of course, spills over into how we show up for those we love. Yeah. I'm also just thinking off the cuff about how we relax control when it feels like things are under control, if that makes sense. And then the more we feel things are slipping from our grasp, It's the dog that didn't bark kind of thing, where when things are under control, we don't even realize we are trying to control. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The more stressed we are, the more problematic behaviors we see, the more the behaviors that actually cause the problem, like we will double down on the problematic behavior. Yes, yes, yes. The more stress we get. So that's exactly when we need the flexibility, but we don't have access to it when we're stressed. Yeah. Yes, that's exactly, that's exactly what we have to learn is when I'm stressed, I have to do the things I was doing when I wasn't stressed, right? Having a little bit of flexibility, having a little bit of chill. I have to do that when I'm stressed too. Yes. Have you seen, there's a meme that I encounter periodically on Instagram that says, I am great at going with the flow as long as the flow is perfectly scheduled and everything goes according to plan. Are there any small, simple tools you would recommend to help women start to slowly unwind so that they're not as stressed out when they perceive things are slipping out of their control? The biggest one is just to remind ourselves, like, hey, this is not an emergency. We have to remind ourselves, like, I am safe. I am safe. Even when we're way off schedule, or even when the house is a disaster, or even when my kid is melting down, even when I'm melting down, I am safe. This is not an emergency. And safety doesn't have to come from predictability. It can come from me. It can come from me believing I can handle this. Even if I can't control it, I can handle it. I noticed as you were saying that how much self-judgment comes up and we don't give ourselves permission to feel out of control or to have those emotional expressions that just surface sometimes. And then if we do, if we get emotional or we don't handle things perfectly or we are not in full control of ourselves, It seems like we just berate ourselves and criticize ourselves all the more for being imperfect. Does that sound accurate to you in other people you've encountered like this? Absolutely. It's definitely part of the cycle. I feel unsafe and so I start making conclusions that I have done something wrong. or I can somehow prevent this in the future, that this is my fault, so I can and should control, prevent this in the future. There's definitely a lot going on psychologically that perpetuate that cycle. It's just a great muscle for all of us to keep working on. I know that we'll never fully arrive at this point where we don't feel automatically threatened when things are out of our control. If anything, I don't think that should be the goal. I want to remind women that The goal is not to always live in this perfectly happy, calm, peaceful state. It is to modulate between all these different emotions and be able to really feel each of them to the fullest and express them however they're coming up for us in our physical and emotional situation, but then kind of like re-regulate through that and not make it wrong. To me, I think that's a new type of control that we Or control is maybe not the right word there, but the skill is being able to let go of control so that we feel our feelings, we're not numbing, repressing, dissociating, or those other things, but we're okay being out of control to feel our feelings, and then we can come back to peace and calm and move on instead of feel like we have any shame or guilt that we need to carry forward because we weren't perfect. And I think it is about shifting from looking outside. to looking inside. So looking outside says, is my house clean enough for me to take a break? Are we on schedule enough to take a break? Is everything out there okay enough for me to settle down on the inside? Instead of doing that, that's all outside focused. It's looking inside and saying, how do I feel? What do I need? Can I handle this? What are my values? What direction do I want to move in? It's a lot more inside focused. How do I feel? What do I need? Where am I going? Powerful, really powerful. And it leads me right into asking what we can do to feel secure in our own safety and agency when the world feels so out of control. We are living in, I mean, doesn't every generation say this, but we are living in what feel like unprecedented times. And a lot of big hard things are happening nationally, internationally. It's just a lot. So it's hard, I think, to feel safe when everything outside of your control feels so uncontrollable, if that makes sense. What would you recommend women do to maybe put on blinders or be able to just be okay with the world being out of control? Yeah, well, I think it's important to recognize that there are things that are happening that are objectively unsafe. So people are in relationships, for example, that are objectively unsafe. But assuming that your life in the thousand square feet that you live in, assuming that that is actually safe and that you are safe and that your relationships are safe, that you're with people who do love you, then I think it's reminding ourselves of that. It's sort of like bifocals, right? It's like the world can have problems and I can be okay. I am safe. I am okay. I can do things about global problems if that's consistent with my values. I can take steps to volunteer or vote or however I want to contribute. I can do that. And also recognize that in my corner of the universe, in my community, in my home, I'm open, I'm safe, and my sense of safety comes from inside, not from outside. Love it. Such an important reminder. Are there any other thoughts or reframes or tools you would offer that we haven't yet talked about in terms of control or just being able to relax a little bit, right? Because I, again, always love to bring us back to how our feelings can overtake our physical experience in that moment. You know, there's the emotional safety that I think makes a lot of sense and we can cognitively recognize is good and important. We could maybe even think ourselves into safety, but we still have these physical bodies and the somatization of our subconscious thoughts and emotional feelings. So anyway, anything we haven't touched on that you think listeners should know? I think it's helpful to recognize that we often feel the urge to tighten up when life feels out of control, when our feelings feel out of control or anything else, we feel this urge to tighten up. And we believe, I think, that tightening up will keep it contained. But there's a lesson there that I think we have to learn the hard way, right? We can't just like intellectualize ourselves into believing this. We have to learn it the hard way. Is that actually like, instead of holding everything together tightly, if we like let go, loosen up, try to be more flexible, rest more, connect more, be a little messier, we might actually make more progress. Like I said, that's not something that we can talk ourselves into, we really have to behave our way into seeing that that's true. Yes. That reminds me of something I regularly tell my clients, which is that every time we find ourselves having these default tendencies or repeated thoughts, right, that we don't even question, we just are so sure that they're true because it's what we've always thought or what we've always done. The goal is not to snap your fingers and instantly override those thoughts or choose to believe something different. It's, I think, to question whether that is always and everywhere true and work to build evidence for your brain that it might not be. Because then the more we build this bank of evidence that I am safe, even when big, hard things happen, or I am safe when my house is a mess, I am safe when my kid is having a tantrum. I am safe when there's some big, horrible thing that happens in my hometown. I am safe even when it feels like the world is falling apart. Then we cultivate that skill that really does, I think, take some time. It sounds so good. It's what we want, but it's a practice. Right, and it's like even when the bad things we're afraid of happen, it's like someone stops by and they're like, oh, this place is kind of messy. Or we actually are late to something. Or, you know, a friend sort of like invalidates us when we share about our feelings. When those things do happen, it's like, oh, like that was unpleasant and I can handle it. Like, someone saw that my house was messy. That didn't feel good, and that's okay. Like, that's survivable. It's kind of normal, even. Yes, and loving ourselves through that, not making it mean anything about us, or our worth, or our future success. I really find a lot of women We just reached our late 30s, early 40s or beyond. And again, everything that we used to be able to do and the ways we used to be able to push through the physical feelings, it just doesn't work for us. It backfires and takes that much more of a toll. So we don't really have a choice. We have to confront this. We have to make changes. We have to let go of control. And I think sometimes it turns into, oh my goodness, she's gone off the deep end. She's having like this crisis. But on the other hand, it is just also a gentle invitation to see that things don't fall apart, even if they're not the way that we wanted them. And that doesn't make anything wrong with us. It's important work for sure. The hardest part really is the behavioral bit, right? It's like living with a little bit less control. and allowing things to not be as controlled, allowing some balls to drop. That's the hardest part because we can't believe it if we don't see it. Our brain is really an experiential learner, so it has to experience the possibility of catastrophe for it to come around and say, oh yeah, maybe I don't have to be quite as rigid as I thought. Maybe I don't have to hold quite as tightly as I thought I had to. Yes. Wow. I love it. Thank you so, so much. I'm always so, so grateful for your time. So just thrilled that other people can learn of you and reach out to you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I'm so happy to think through this more and, you know, to try to help other people think through it too. And, you know, like we were talking about earlier, just put language on what they're experiencing so then they can understand it themselves better. For sure. And we didn't elaborate on this as much in this episode, but I think we really did in our prior one. This is so important, not just for us as individuals, but because it affects how we show up for our kids, what we model for them and how they will grow up to think they should be. So I really encourage. everyone to do this deep exploration and be open to not letting go of control, but relaxing control a little bit. I love it. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Finch. Your homework for this episode is to reflect on which path led you to strive to control things so tightly. Was it the messy, chaotic childhood that left you grasping for something safe and predictable? Was it the rigid, super strict childhood where you felt you had to be perfect in order to earn love and belonging? Or was it a different experience later in life? Spend some time pondering how it feels in your body when things feel out of control. What is your brain making things mean in those moments? Are those things true? How can you gently practice more flexibility and resilience to build up a bank of evidence that you are safe and you do survive even when things are quote-unquote out of control? As always, if you want personalized help with that, you are so invited to book a free call with me through the link in the show notes. Note that in addition to my one-on-one private coaching, I also have a brand new group coaching program starting mid-January of 2026 that will guide you through the six most powerful skills every mom needs to know so both you and your family can flourish. More details in the description and at MomsMadeNew.com. Join me back next episode to delve into Eldest Daughter Syndrome, where we will break apart the classic stereotype of being a firstborn daughter, what all that does to your nervous system, how it's likely affecting your current life, and more. Until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day. I know more than anyone how precious your time is so the fact that you spent it listening to this podcast means the world. Make sure to subscribe and if you got value out of this show, I would be so honored if you'd leave a review and share this episode with another busy mama who needs to hear it. We've got this.