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Allie Jayne Reed, LMHC, Seattle, WA (2025)

12/20/2025

It's not all your fault that you struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing, or emotion regulation. Your current patterns didn't come from a personal flaw. They came from adaptation, from millions of transactions overtime with an invalidating environment.

Children don’t randomly become hyper-aware of other people’s emotions. They learn it in environments where emotional safety was inconsistent & responsibility landed on them far too early. EIPs chronic invalidation teaches their kids that their reactions are bad, that their kids are responsible for the parents' emotions, and that they need to figure out how to self-regulate without actually teaching them how to regulate. The blame falls on the child.

But believing that it's just all your fault is adaptive. It actually once gave you a sense of control. If you were the problem, then maybe you could fix it. That belief felt safer than acknowledging the truth: the environment you grew up in required you to adjust in order to stay connected. Your parents, the very people responsible for your survival, are flawed & failed you.

But self-blame has a cost. It keeps your nervous system locked in old rules: Be easy. Don’t need too much. Don’t upset anyone.

The problem isn’t that you’re broken. The problem is that your nervous system is still following childhood rules that no longer apply.

Lasting change doesn’t come from trying harder or being more self-aware. It comes from understanding why these patterns formed & gently helping your system update.

Nothing is wrong with you. All behavior is caused. And when the causes are finally acknowledged, healing becomes possible.

✨ If you’re ready to heal the impact of & stop blaming yourself for adaptations you didn’t choose, tap the link in my bio to schedule an intro call with me 🤍

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12/18/2025

If healing feels harder than it 'should' or if you're hesitant to embark on your healing journey in targeted trauma therapy, it may not be because you’re resistant, unmotivated, or not ready. It may be because of subconscious loyalty.

Many adult children of emotionally immature parents carry an unspoken belief:
If I heal, I leave them behind.
If I grow, I betray my family.
If I stop carrying this, who am I without it?

So even when you want change, something inside hesitates. You minimize your pain, you delay support, you stay emotionally tethered out of 'loyalty', not choice.

This loyalty once kept you safe. As a child, attachment mattered more than authenticity. Staying connected, even at the cost of yourself & your needs, was survival. Of course that pattern didn't disappear with age.

But here’s the reframe that begins to loosen the block:
Healing is not betrayal.
You are not abandoning your family by choosing support, boundaries, or growth. You’re simply choosing to stop carrying what was never yours to hold.

You can honor where you came from without continuing to psychologically live inside it.

When this loyalty becomes conscious, guilt softens.
Choice returns.
Healing feels less dangerous—and more allowed.

✨ If you’re ready to heal the impact of & release the guilt that keeps you stuck, tap the link in my bio to schedule an intro call with me🤍

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12/16/2025

If someone is upset with you, do you immediately feel like it’s your job to fix it?

You replay the convo, feel guilty, feel pressure to apologize, explain, give the other person what they want, even when it means ignoring your own needs or crossing your own boundaries.

This pattern pulls you away from yourself. You lose touch with what YOU feel or want. Resentment quietly builds & relationships feel heavy instead of mutual.

You didn't choose this. If you were raised by emotionally immature parents in a dysfunctional system, you likely learned early that THEIR emotions were YOUR responsibility. That staying safe meant adjusting, soothing, or fixing. As a child, this was adaptive. It helped you survive. But now, it's costing you connection with yourself & building your Life Worth Living.

The truth is, you're not responsible for regulating other people's emotions. Feeling responsible doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, it means your nervous system learned that others' reactions were dangerous & your responsibility, because EIPs tend to put their emotions & reactions on other people. They tend to look to their environment to soothe them & fail to attune to their own children, because in the EIPs' world, their emotional needs are priority.

Healing relational trauma is what allows you to care without over-functioning. To hold boundaries without guilt. To stay grounded even when someone else is upset. To let your own needs matter again.

✨ If you’re ready to heal your childhood wounds from & stop feeling guilty for setting boundaries, tap the link in my bio to schedule an intro call with me🤍

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12/13/2025

If you’ve done years of talk therapy but still feel anxious, hyper-independent, perfectionistic, guilty for setting boundaries, or emotionally tied to your parents… it’s not because you’re failing. & it’s not because your therapist didn’t do their job.

Traditional talk therapy can be incredibly supportive for validation, reflection, & emotional insight. But when it comes to trauma, especially relational trauma rooted in emotionally immature parenting, insight alone doesn’t create nervous system change.

Here’s why talk therapy hasn’t healed the trauma you carry:
• Trauma lives in your body, not just your thoughts. You can understand your patterns while your nervous system still reacts like the child who had to survive them.
• Talking about trauma isn’t the same as processing trauma. You may leave sessions feeling seen, but still stuck in the same triggers.
• Insight can become a form of avoidance. You can analyze (intellectualize) your childhood endlessly while never touching the sensations or emotions that actually need healing.
• Relational trauma reinforces survival responses. Talk therapy helps you recognize them; DBT-PE helps you resolve them.

DBT-PE works differently. It helps you safely approach the memories, emotions, & beliefs you had to avoid in order to survive. It interrupts patterns that keep you anxious, over-functioning, guilty, or small. And it transforms the internal world that talk therapy may have illuminated, but couldn’t shift on its own.

This isn’t about choosing the “better” therapy. It’s about choosing the effective therapy for the type of pain you carry.

If talk therapy gave you insight but not change, language but not relief, awareness but not transformation…

You’re not stuck. You simply haven’t used a method designed for deep relational trauma yet.

DBT-PE helps you finally feel grounded, guilt-free, & aligned with your authentic self- not the version your parents shaped through emotional immaturity.

Healing isn’t out of reach. You just need the approach that matches the depth of your story.

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12/11/2025

Relational trauma doesn’t just live in “bad memories.” It shows up in your nervous system, your relationships, your parenting, your boundaries, your self-trust. And when those old patterns keep looping, despite all the insight you already have, that’s when therapy grounded in DBT-PE becomes essential.

You may need DBT-PE when you notice things like:
• Avoiding emotions, conflict, or anything that could trigger the reactions you once got as a child.
• Your body reacting faster than your mind- panic, freeze, shutdown, appease- before you can make sense of what’s happening.
• Understanding your trauma intellectually, yet still feeling controlled by it emotionally.
• Outgrowing the coping strategies that once kept you safe but now keep you small, silent, or over-accommodating.
• Relationships feeling one-sided because youre still trying to be “easy,” “good,” or “predictable” to avoid rejection.
• Parenting bringing up fear, guilt, or overwhelm because your nervous system learned early that connection wasn’t safe.
• Feeling split- one part capable, another part still scared.

DBT-PE is the work you turn to when insight is no longer enough. When you’re ready to stop managing symptoms and start healing the root.

Relational trauma is maintained by avoidance- avoiding memories, sensations, and emotions you once had to numb out to survive. DBT-PE uses structured exposure, emotional processing, & belief repair to interrupt those survival patterns so you can finally experience a new internal reality.

This is the work that helps you rebuild trust in yourself. Respond instead of react. Hold boundaries without guilt. Experience connection without the old fear. Feel safe in your own body, maybe for the first time.

Not just coping- actual healing, nervous system change, trauma resolution.

DBT-PE is for the version of you who’s ready to stop carrying the emotional weight your parents handed you & step into a life that feels grounded, spacious, and truly yours.

If youre ready to heal your childhood wounds from & overcome anxiety, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

12/09/2025

You’re terrified of repeating your parents’ mistakes… & it’s making parenting feel like walking on a tightrope.

You want to be the safe, emotionally attuned mom you never had. Yet every decision feels loaded: Is this too harsh? Too lenient? Am I validating them… or over-validating them? What if I’m accidentally hurting them the way I was hurt?

So you second-guess yourself. You freeze around consequences. You apologize even when you didn’t do anything wrong. You try to be so unlike your parents that you lose sight of your own instincts. And inside, there’s a quiet panic: “What if I become them?”

When you stay in this pattern, parenting continues to feel like a test you could fail at any moment. Boundaries stay blurry. Emotional responsibility stays heavy. And the exhaustion builds, because hypervigilance is not sustainable.

But none of this means you’re “doing it wrong.” It means you were parentified. You learned early that adult emotions were your responsibility, that one misstep could trigger an inappropriate reaction, and that safety depended on never upsetting the person in power. Of course your nervous system is cautious now. Of course you overcorrect. This makes sense.

Your fear of becoming your parents is evidence of your cycle breaking, not a sign you’re destined to repeat the past. Parents who harm their children aren’t agonizing over whether they’re being too controlling or too validating. Your awareness is the doorway to change. What helps you move forward is learning to trust your internal cues again, differentiate past danger from present reality, and build boundaries from groundedness, not fear.

On the other side of this work,
parenting starts to feel steadier. You’re able to hold limits with clarity instead of panic. You respond to your kids without collapsing into guilt. You feel yourself becoming the mother your children need- connected, confident, attuned- without swinging into overaccommodation. You get to enjoy your kids rather than brace around them.

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12/06/2025

If you grew up with emotionally immature parents, this may feel painfully familiar. It’s like no matter how hard you try to build a life that feels aligned, peaceful, or genuinely joyful… there’s always an undertone of guilt. As if your happiness somehow costs them something. As if your freedom is a threat. As if your job, even as an adult, is to keep them comfortable, reassured, or proud, even at the expense of your own wellbeing.

So you shrink. You soften your voice. You hide the parts of your life they won’t approve of. You perform 'happy' to keep the peace, even when you’re exhausted, numb, down or anxious inside. You trade authenticity in an effort to feel connected to people who barely know you.

But here’s the truth: you didn’t learn this because you’re weak or incapable of choosing yourself. You learned it because you grew up in an environment where your emotional needs didn’t matter unless they aligned with your parent’s needs. Where their comfort was the priority. Where keeping them regulated meant sacrificing your own sense of self.

Of course a part of you still feels obligated to make them feel okay. Of course choosing your joy feels scary. Of course your nervous system tenses when you imagine disappointing them.

Your truth & happiness aren't betrayals. Your freedom is not disloyal. Your authenticity does not harm anyone. It simply reveals the emotional limitations they never learned to overcome.

And when you slowly, gently begin choosing yourself… everything shifts. You feel lighter. Your relationships become more honest. You stop performing & start living. You build a life that feels like yours, not an identity you inherited out of guilt.

You deserve a life where your joy is allowed.
You deserve to be free.

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12/04/2025

Breaking the patterns that keep trauma alive doesn’t happen by willpower alone.

If you grew up being the responsible one, the 'mature' child who carried the weight of the family, your nervous system learned to survive through hyper-vigilance, people-pleasing, & pushing down your needs. Even now, as a capable, high-achieving woman, anxiety, perfectionism, & hyper-independence can still show up in ways that feel automatic.

Therapy grounded in DBT-PE (Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Prolonged Exposure) helps break these patterns. It combines:
• DBT skills to regulate emotions, set boundaries, increase connection to the present moment & tolerate painful emotions.
• Prolonged exposure to gently approach the memories and situations you’ve been avoiding - because avoidance, while protective in childhood, actually keeps trauma symptoms alive.

Through different forms of exposure & processing, DBT-PE interrupts survival patterns formed from trauma, helping clear your trauma so your body & mind learn: 'I’m safe now. These feelings won’t overwhelm me. I don’t have to carry it alone anymore.'

The result? The distressing memories & situations dissipates, your fear, guilt & shame come down, & you can finally grieve. You learn new information about your experiences & form more adaptive responses. Less anxiety, less hyper-independence, & more space to be your true self - resilient, strong, & tender.

You don’t have to keep living in survival mode. Healing isn’t about losing your strength- it’s about reclaiming it for the life you actually want.

If you're ready to heal your childhood wounds from & overcome anxiety, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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12/02/2025

You know that sinking feeling when your emotionally immature or narcissistic parent inserts conflict where there was none - stirring up drama, triangulating between you, your partner, other family members... or projecting all of the family’s dysfunction onto the person you love. You’re left trying to calm everyone else’s emotions while your own anxiety spikes. You feel torn, guilty, and oddly responsible for 'fixing' a mess you didn’t create. & if this keeps playing out, it can slowly chip away at your marriage, leaving you more isolated, overwhelmed, and unsure of what’s actually yours to carry.

If you’re here, I want you to know this: none of this is happening because you’re weak, just 'too loyal' (or disloyal for that matter), or incapable of setting boundaries. You were conditioned through years of parentification, emotional neglect, inconsistent caregiving & abuse to prioritize harmony at any cost. Of course conflict from your parents sends your nervous system into overdrive. Of course part of you still hopes that if you just explain yourself clearly enough… they’ll finally stop.

But this isn’t a communication issue.

It’s a relational trauma pattern. The solution isn’t to get them to change. It’s to accept who they are, reclaim your right to protect your peace, prioritize your marriage, and focus on healing the parts of you that were taught love must come with chaos. This is how you loosen the guilt & soften the anxiety.

It's a classic case of 'you cant think your way into different ways of feeling or acting, you can act your way into different ways of thinking & feeling'.

When you do this work, your life begins to shift. You stop feeling pulled in 2 directions. You & your partner become a stable, united front instead of a battleground. Holidays feel calmer. Decisions feel clearer. You trust yourself more. You choose connection over chaos. You finally get to experience what its like to build a marriage & a life rooted in emotional safety & connection rather than emotional survival & isolation or enmeshment.

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11/29/2025

Many high-achieving, self-aware women shrug off their anxiety with: “Everyone is anxious. It’s not a big deal.” I want you to notice something gently & truthfully: that sentence is often a form of self-invalidation learned from emotionally immature parents, & it isn’t necessarily true.

Daughters of EIPs know all too well what it’s like to have a problem or need help & be ignored, brushed off, or told 'that’s life.'

If you grew up with caregivers who dismissed, minimized, or overlooked your feelings, you internalized the message: “My emotions aren’t real unless someone else validates them.” So of course you’d assume your anxiety is “normal.” Of course you’d compare it to what you *think* everyone else feels. Of course you’d downplay it just like they did.

Here’s the reality: yes, everyone can feel anxious & anxiety is part of being human… but not everyone has a nervous system shaped by relational trauma, unpredictability, & untrustworthy caregivers.

Your anxiety didn’t just come from “being too sensitive.” It came from growing up in a home where:
• emotional needs were unmet
• stability was inconsistent
• you had to be mature, calm, responsible
• reactions were unpredictable
• you couldn’t rely on the people meant to protect you
• emotions & individuality were rejected

This wires your body to scan for danger even in adulthood. To equate perfection with safety. To anticipate conflict before it happens. To over-function so nothing explodes.

This isn’t the same anxiety people feel before a meeting or date. This is the chronic, protective anxiety of a child who learned, 'If I’m not perfect, things might fall apart'.

So when you tell yourself “everyone is anxious,” you’re not doing something bad or wrong, you’re repeating an old script. One that kept you safe once, but now keeps you from acknowledging the depth of your pain.

Your anxiety deserves understanding, not minimization. It isn’t evidence that you’re broken either, it’s evidence that your younger self grew up without the safety, consistency, & emotional attunement she needed. Naming that truth is a step toward healing.

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11/27/2025

Why you need to know the difference between your Role Self & your Authentic Self

If you’ve ever wondered why it feels so hard to know what you want, speak up, or even feel your own needs… there’s a reason. & it isn’t because you’re lost, broken, or confused. It’s because your Role Self was shaped in a family system where your individuality wasn’t safe.

Your Role Self grew out of shame (“I’m too much”), guilt (“If I need something, I’m a burden”), & fear (“If I show my real self, I’ll lose love or create conflict”). Emotionally immature parents often interpret a child’s needs, boundaries, opinions, or emotions as threats, because they never developed the capacity to tolerate difference. They reject anything they can't control or personally relate to. So you learned to shrink, smooth yourself out, perform, or disappear. EIPs avoid self-reflection or changing, so you did.

Your Role Self became the mask that kept you protected in a system that demanded compliance over authenticity. She became the responsible one, the easy one, the high achiever, the emotional sponge, the child who intuitively understood:
“If I adapt to what they need, I’ll stay safe.”

Meanwhile, your Authentic Self - the part of you with natural preferences, impulses, desires, & boundaries - was suppressed. Not because she was wrong, but because the environment rejected her, making her feel dangerous.

This is why distinguishing these two selves matters so deeply. If you don’t, you’ll continue mistaking survival strategies for your identity. You’ll think your self-abandonment is compassion. Your guilt is morality. Your fear of conflict is maturity. Your silence is kindness.

The truth is, these traits were born from unmet needs in an unsafe emotional ecosystem. They are adaptations, not destiny.

The healing begins when you recognize: 'My Role Self helped me survive, but she doesn’t have to define who I am now.'

Reconnecting with your Authentic Self isn’t rebellion, it’s restoration. It’s the moment you stop performing for safety & start living from truth. That’s where real freedom & connection finally begins.

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11/25/2025

When your anger feels 'too much', but everyone elses never did...

You know that quiet, tight feeling in your chest when something bothers you… but you smile, nod, say “it’s fine.” Until it isnt. Until 1 more request, dismissal, “can you just…” tips you into that familiar internal snap.

“yes, yes, yes… F** you.”

This is the cycle: swallow your irritation → stay agreeable → feel taken for granted → explode internally → fantasize about burning the whole relationship down. The hardest part? On the outside you still look calm, capable, composed.

If nothing changes, this pattern keeps eroding your self-trust. You keep abandoning your boundaries until you dont recognize your own needs anymore, maybe youve always struggled to recognize your needs at all. It becomes easier to disconnect than disappoint, so relationships become fragile, draining, or distant.

But none of this makes you “dramatic” or “too sensitive.”
It makes you someone who grew up with emotionally immature parents whose anger dominated the room, while yours was punished, minimized, or ignored. You learned early that staying small kept you safe. That being pleasant kept the peace. That your anger was dangerous, while theirs was allowed to rage freely.

So of course your adult nervous system gets confused. Of course anger feels like a threat instead of a message.

Your anger isnt the problem, your childhood conditioning is. Anger is actually a wise internal signal. It protects your energy, boundaries, truth. When you learn to recognize it before it becomes a breaking point, you stop cycling between passivity & shutdown. You make mindful choices instead of reacting with an automatic 'yes'.

On the other side of healing, anger becomes grounded. Direct. Safe. You set limits without rehearsing them for hours. You speak up before the resentment builds. You stay connected to the people you care about because you’re finally connected to yourself.

This is the version of you who trusts her inner signals, who doesn’t apologize for having needs, & who no longer fears her own fire...because she knows how to hold it with clarity & calm.

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Allie Jayne Reed, LMHC

12/20/2025

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Monday	11am - 6pm
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