Natalie K Schmitz LCSW

12/30/2025

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=872652365450865&id=100081183270712&mibextid=wwXIfr

Loving someone with a mental illness changes the shape of love itself. It introduces fear where certainty used to live, patience where instinct once rushed, and grief that has no clear ending. You learn how to stay alert without hovering, how to hope without denying reality, how to care without disappearing inside someone else’s pain.

When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness opens in that exhausted devotion. Rebecca writes for partners, parents, siblings, and friends who have been quietly carrying more than anyone sees. This is not a book about fixing the person you love. It is about surviving the weight of loving them without losing yourself.

The Loneliness of the Caregiver
One of the book’s most validating insights is its recognition of caregiver isolation. Rebecca names the emotional fatigue that comes from constant vigilance, the guilt of needing breaks, and the silence that grows when others do not understand. Caregivers are often praised for strength while being denied support. The book restores visibility to their experience.

Understanding Without Excusing
Rebecca draws an important line between compassion and self erasure. Mental illness explains behavior, but it does not excuse harm. The book helps readers hold empathy alongside boundaries, allowing care to exist without tolerating emotional or physical damage. This balance is presented not as cruelty, but as sustainability.

Grief for the Person Who Is Still Here
A particularly tender section of the book addresses ambiguous loss. The person you love is present, yet changed. You mourn versions of them while still showing up for who they are now. Rebecca treats this grief with seriousness and respect, acknowledging how confusing and isolating it can be.

Education as Emotional Grounding
Rather than overwhelming readers with clinical language, the book offers clear explanations of mental illness that reduce fear and self blame. Understanding symptoms, cycles, and treatment options becomes a stabilizing force. Knowledge does not remove pain, but it reduces chaos.

Caring Without Disappearing
At its core, the book is about preservation. Rebecca repeatedly emphasizes that loving someone with mental illness should not require sacrificing one’s own mental health. Self care is framed not as indulgence, but as responsibility. Caregivers must remain whole if they hope to remain present.

What it offers is permission.
Permission to feel overwhelmed.
Permission to set boundaries.
Permission to love deeply without abandoning yourself.
The book leaves a quiet truth in its wake.
You are allowed to care and still need care.
And loving someone does not mean carrying their illness alone.

BOOK : https://amzn.to/49azrAO
You can ENJOY the AUDIOBOOK for FREE (When you register for Audible Membership Trial) using the same link above.

11/23/2025

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122245454186036994&set=a.122093586608036994&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr

There are books that find me at the exact moment my heart is ready to hear them, and The Absent Father Effect on Daughters arrived in that same quiet, almost prophetic way. I remember the feeling that drew me toward it — a mix of curiosity, tenderness, and the subtle ache that comes whenever conversations about fathers arise. Listening to Ann Sprinkle bring Susan E. Schwartz’s words to life made the experience even richer, her voice carrying the weight of the research, the emotion, and the healing that shaped every chapter. It felt like sitting in a room where someone finally named the things many daughters feel but rarely articulate. From that listening experience, these are the lessons that stayed with me most deeply.

1. The absence of a father creates a hunger for validation that often follows a daughter into adulthood, shaping how she sees herself and how she believes she deserves to be treated: Schwartz explains this emotional hunger with a striking honesty, weaving psychology and lived experiences into a single truth, that a daughter without a present father tends to grow up scanning her world for the affirmation she never received. Through the audiobook narration, this insight felt almost like a gentle mirror held before me, revealing how early wounds quietly mould behaviour, confidence, and relationships.

2. A father’s emotional unavailability can be just as wounding as physical absence, because silence and distance create their own kind of abandonment: Listening to the author describe this was deeply affecting, because she showed that “absence” is not always about disappearance, sometimes it is the father who is in the house yet unavailable, uninvolved, or unreachable. This form of absence, Schwartz notes, can teach a daughter to normalise emotional distance and to expect very little from others.

3. The longing for a father often becomes an internal narrative that influences a daughter's choices, especially in love and attachment: The book beautifully explores how unhealed father-wounds can lead daughters to seek in partners what they never received at home. In the narration, the author’s voice made this feel compassionate rather than blaming, emphasising that this longing comes from a deep desire for emotional safety, recognition, and consistency.

4. Many daughters of absent fathers grow up carrying responsibility that was never theirs, believing they must overperform, overgive, or overachieve to be worthy of love: Schwartz frames this pattern as a survival strategy created in childhood, one that often continues unconsciously long after. Hearing this through the audiobook felt like a soft unveiling, the narrator’s tone highlighting how heavy these invisible burdens can be, and how many women walk through life thinking this weight is normal.

5. Healing begins when a daughter confronts the truth of her father wound rather than minimizing it or covering it with perfectionism, silence, or self-blame: One of the most powerful parts of the book is its insistence that healing requires honesty, not hostility. The author talks about facing the wound with compassion for oneself, acknowledging the grief, and giving language to long-suppressed emotions. The narration made this message feel like a personal invitation to breathe, pause, and accept that acknowledging pain is not disloyalty.

6. The father wound affects a woman’s sense of identity, but it does not have to define her future, because awareness gives her the agency to reshape her self-worth: Schwartz repeatedly returns to the idea that understanding the wound is the first step toward rewriting its influence. What stood out to me as I listened was how empowering this sounded, a reminder that the story does not end with absence, there is room for wholeness, growth, and self-definition.

7. Reconnecting with one’s inner child is essential for healing, because the little girl who was left behind still holds the unmet needs that the adult woman must now learn to honour: The author describes this reconnection as both tender and transformative, a journey where the daughter learns to mother herself in ways she was not mothered, and to stabilise herself in the love she longed for. The audiobook narration made this feel almost like a guided inner walk, where each chapter gently led me toward deeper understanding.

Book/Audiobook: https://amzn.to/4oWLTLi

You can access the audiobook when you register on the Audible platform using the l!nk above.

11/22/2025

01/02/2025

https://dreamdashjournal.com/positive-affirmations-for-work/

Many people go about their work day struggling to get through the day because of boredom, unhappiness, and discouragement. I've been there myself many times- subtly affirming the negative- that something isn't going well, won't work out, or that I'll never achieve my dreams. Thinking this way can be...

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https://www.ted.com/talks/nora_mcinerny_we_don_t_move_on_from_grief_we_move_forward_with_it?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

In a talk that's by turns heartbreaking and hilarious, writer and podcaster Nora McInerny shares her hard-earned wisdom about life and death. Her candid approach to something that will, let's face it, affect us all, is as liberating as it is gut-wrenching. Most powerfully, she encourages us to shift...

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07/02/2024

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Menopause is no joke. It can be debilitating for some, and wreak havoc on careers, marrriages, and relationships. Most medical practitioners are I’ll-equipped to treat it. Self-advocacy is really important. There are solutions, remedies, and support. Don’t suffer in silence. Reach out if you need help.

As we come to the conclusion of another successful Menopause month, Bodyline Medical Wellness Clinics has reviewed the most common questions asked this month according to Google, as well as ensuring the conversation continues by highlighting the most common and the most surprising symptoms when it c...