The Modern Moms Roadmap to Balance Podcast

Episode 42: Cultivating Calm: Nervous System Regulation In Motherhood with special guest Kristin Mize, LCSW

• Kayla Nettleton • Episode 42

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Can managing anxiety and people-pleasing really lead to a balanced life? This episode of the Modern Moms Roadmap to Balance podcast brings you a compelling conversation with Kristin Mize, a seasoned therapist and coach specializing in maternal mental health. Kristen, a mother of three, shares her personal insights and practical strategies for regulating the nervous system, setting boundaries, and maintaining mindfulness. Her journey from dealing with anxiety and perfectionism during her kids’ toddler years to their current preteen and teen stages offers valuable lessons on the evolving nature of motherhood.

How do past fears and experiences shape our parenting styles today? Listen as Kristen opens up about the challenges parents face when their children don’t meet expectations. Drawing from both personal and client stories, we explore the impact of perfectionism and discipline fears on current parenting reactions. Kristen emphasizes the necessity of responding thoughtfully rather than reacting instinctively and discusses how anger or retreat can create a disconnect between parents and children. The episode also highlights the journey many parents undergo from being helpers to managing their mental health struggles while raising their kids.

Ever wondered how therapy and coaching can make a lasting difference for overwhelmed moms? Kristen provides an in-depth look at her multifaceted approach to supporting moms, from addressing immediate crises to tackling deeper, recurring issues. She sheds light on the influence of generational programming and the importance of redefining self-worth. Discover the benefits of her specialized three-month online coaching course, weekly coaching sessions, and free webinars on growth mindset and nervous system regulation. Connect with Kristen on Instagram for more insights and join a community focused on achieving balance and mental well-being.

Helpful Links

Website: kristinmize.com

Social Media Handles

@calmmomcollective
Facebook Community: The Calm Mom Collective

About the Podcast Host
Kayla Nettleton is a licensed therapist based in TX, business owner, mom of 3 kids and coach for therapists who want support and guidance in their journey in creating an aligned business model so that they can live the freedom based life they've always dreamed of without sacrificing their own needs.

In her private practice as a therapist Kayla specialize in helping women overcome anxiety, perfectionism and people pleasing tendencies so that they can lead a more fulfilled and authentically aligned life


Find Kayla on IG
@kaylanettleton_lcsw
@themodernmomsroadmaptobalance

Email: kayla@kaylanettleton.com

TX Residents can Schedule a Free 20 minute therapy consultation here.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Modern Moms Roadmap to Balance podcast. This is Kayla Middleton, your host, and today my guest is Kristen Mize. She is a licensed therapist and coach specializing in maternal mental health, and she has over 20 years of experience. She is a mom of three boys and is a survivor herself of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders is a survivor herself of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. She helps overwhelmed moms overcome anxiety, perfectionism and people pleasing so they can be the calm, confident and connected mom they always were meant to be Welcome.

Speaker 2:

Kristen. Hi, thank you so much, Kayla. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Yes, thank you so much for giving us your time, and so the first question that I always ask everyone is what is your definition of a balanced life?

Speaker 2:

Oh gosh, so lately, I would say within the last year balanced life for me as a mom of three and as a business owner and a wife, has honestly been when this may sound silly, but when my nervous system, when I'm regulated, when my nervous system is in that regulated space, that's when I know I can take a good deep breath, I can rest, I can sleep at night, you know. And so it doesn't necessarily mean that the things around me are quote unquote balanced, but it's more about starting with me and that, obviously, if I'm, you know, more regulated, I can move about my day, interact with my kids, my husband, my clients in a much more balanced present way.

Speaker 1:

And what does that look like for you specifically?

Speaker 2:

So for me it looks like setting boundaries with my work schedule. I know you own your own business, as do I. Summertime gets tricky with the kids, and so it's really yeah, it's, you know you're an Uber driver and all that, but it's when I can real, when I start. I'll say it like this when I start to feel myself overextended, I notice it in my body first, and so if I start to feel overwhelmed or tense, I usually sense that in my nervous system first and that I just look at as a sign okay, where can I pull back? How can I do things differently?

Speaker 2:

And so, whether that's, you know, spacing out my clients more, or taking a mental health day, or maybe I'm doing too much, running my kids around to too many places, I'll tell them to pause. You know really checking in with myself pretty consistently, and I've been doing that for a few years now and it's been super helpful. So then, not overextending myself and then ending up, you know, in burnout, like you know, that was my cycle years and years ago. So it's really checking in with my gut, literally before I say yes to anything as best I can. Right, so that it's not obligatory, it's coming from a place where I have the bandwidth.

Speaker 1:

Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned, before we hit the record button, that your children are older. I mean not older as an adult, but they're in their preteen and teen years. Yes, at what point did you recognize this piece for yourself? Did you find it early on, or do you find that it was something recent or more in the middle?

Speaker 2:

So it's interesting because you know I work with women in all stages of motherhood, whether they're trying to conceive and struggling, or they have newborns, toddlers and now teens. I think you have to redo and revisit this work at every stage. Originally I started I started working on my emotion regulation and my nervous system healing when they were toddlers and I felt so burnt out I was just burning the candle at all ends. They demanded a lot of my physical energy. At the time I was trying to build a business.

Speaker 2:

My husband's career took him out of the home a lot of hours of the week and I had this perfectionistic. I have to do everything right, everything has to be just so. My kids have to behave. You know they have to go to bedtime at a certain time. So I was a walking ball of stress. You know I'm probably just so much adrenaline and cortisol and I was wondering why my kids wouldn't go to bed and be calm. So I really started working on that when they were toddlers, to try and calm myself down through breath work and mindfulness.

Speaker 2:

That was the first time I practiced mindfulness was like 10 years ago and I was a skeptic. I was like I can't sit and look at pay attention to my thoughts, and you know it's so easy. I try and tell people. Anyone listening, you know it's so easy, I try and tell people. Anyone listening, anybody can practice mindfulness. I don't care if it's for 30 seconds or 10 minutes, but so I started then and I was better able, I was able to grow my stress tolerance that way and really look at, okay, you know what is my agenda, getting things done.

Speaker 2:

Or you know, running my family, running my household versus a toddler's or three toddlers, and just the vast dissonance between those. It really helped open my eyes to all right let's, let's bring it back Right and so letting go of a lot of my expectations and even just trying to connect with them more and teach them calming and emotion regulation skills, that was new to me. Yeah, growing up in the 80s and 90s it was just like go to your room Right, yeah, yeah, or I'll give you something to cry about, or it's not that bad, calm down Right. Or it's not that bad, calm down Right. But obviously through. I'm a lifelong learner and we didn't really learn about the nervous system when I was in school grad school.

Speaker 1:

I don't think we did either, Like just pausing to think it maybe, and I'm like but was that in biology class? I don't think it was like specifically in our or at least my therapy program.

Speaker 2:

No, no, it was about changing your mindset, changing your thoughts.

Speaker 2:

Obviously, some some trauma, informed practices, but that was the missing link that changed my world, changed the lens in which I practice, you know, in my counseling and in my coaching, and then also changed the way I'm able to parent my kids.

Speaker 2:

Um, so that all started when they were toddlers, but then recently, and I thought we had a good thing going, but then teenage years hit, and pre teen, and so it was kind of like going back again and that was really eyeopening. I had to do a lot more work on myself, on, you know, even like the way I grew up, you know what was coming up for me in my reactions to these teenage or preteen behaviors, and so I would say it's, it's constant work, but I don't want to say that in a bad way, it's just it offers hope for sure, because it means there's always going to be more. You can learn and grow. So those are, I would think, the two timeframes in which working on regulating myself and finding a new norm and understanding typical development of my kid was super helpful. Those two times stand out.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Speaker 1:

And one thing that stood out to me that I don't think we've really touched on in the podcast is this the stress tolerance, so being able to tolerate a little bit more stress and more speaking.

Speaker 1:

Or when we talking about toddlers specifically, I think what moms are often thinking is okay, well, I'm going to regulate myself. I mean, I'm going to be able to show my child how to better behave or better act, and so, because I'm doing it in a calm way, they're going to actually get it and they're going to do that Versus we're regulating ourselves. Yeah, we're trying to get to a calmer state, yes, to teach them in a way that they can hear us, but they're not necessarily going to just all of a sudden a light bulb switch and they're these well-behaved children all of the time. But what's really happening is for us, as moms, being able to tolerate some of the their hustle and bustle of being a toddler, their rambunctiousness that comes with toddlerhood and learning how to behave and act, or not. I don't even want to use the behave, but live in this world.

Speaker 2:

Yes, exactly, live authentically right. It is completely developmentally appropriate, especially coming from. I grew up with sisters and then, having three boys, I thought there was something going to be wrong with it. They were just nonstop and just understanding, taking time to understand that I chose I want to parent. I call it realistic parenting. Okay, it doesn't. Maybe it's conscious parenting, it's. It may be gentle, it may be a lot of things, but I want to be conscious of letting them be authentic and as toddlers, they're going to have energy and they're going to be silly I'm going to spill milk at dinner and you know.

Speaker 2:

And so that was huge to help and hugely helpful for me to understanding, like what is age appropriate and they're they're doing what is age appropriate, whereas and I'm not sure if this was the case in your home growing up, but I see that it was my own case in most of my clients where and I'm the firstborn, I'm not sure if you are Okay, yes, I'm also the firstborn daughter I call it a syndrome, but you know, we were to be seen and not heard. Don't make a mistake, don't ruffle the feathers. Certainly don't have an opinion. Right, and this is no knock on our parents. They certainly did the best they could with what they know, but what that did was in research shows is we then started to get small and sort of deny parts of ourself, like the silly parts, right, and so what we were denying is actually now what we know to be developmentally and age appropriate.

Speaker 2:

You know, it was just sort of like parented out of us or sometimes scared out of us. Oh, yeah, I would say scared. Yeah, exactly Like you know, and so it was just the time we grew up in and they didn't have the resources that we now have to learn different ways or to understand both parents and kids in a different light. So that was really a light bulb went off with that. And especially now as it relates to my teenagers and preteens, when I want to like, especially now as it relates to my teenagers and preteens when I want to like, you know that's disrespectful, but can they help it? Like there's so much going on in their brain, right. So certain things they cannot help, it can be, you know, parented and corrected, but I'm a huge believer on connection before correction and that's helped, you know, but that was just something that just never happened.

Speaker 1:

You know, if you're a millennial, oh yeah, no, it was do as I say. Don't ask me why, because if you ask me why it's just going to be because I told you so.

Speaker 1:

Exactly which isn't helpful because you never learn anything with I told you so. You never know what's going on in your parents' mind. If it's's just no, it's because I said how, how do you learn from that? How do you learn to not do that again? So what ends up happening is for us as kids, since we're talking about ourself right now. We just learned to. Okay, how? Okay, let me see what kind of mood my parent is in. What is what is like their mood? Can I bring this up? Or maybe I just won't bring it up at all, because last time I brought something up like this, I was grounded. So I'm just, I'm just going to hide it away and just tell my best friend about it, maybe not even her Cause I'm scared she'll tell my mom or something, right?

Speaker 2:

And then we wonder why we're all anxious, like walking on eggshells or, again, like being afraid to do certain things that you know. And what that does is it sends a message to our nervous system that we're in danger, Right, and so chronic exposure to that sense of fight or flight adds to anxiety, burnout, health problems, and I think that's what we started seeing. I know myself I was 31 and I had shingles. Like you know, a lot of my clients struggle with health problems. Turns out, when you can reduce the stress or, you know, work on some of these things like perfectionism, people pleasing, you know, overextending yourself, it can get better.

Speaker 1:

you know, yeah, it can, it can, can, it doesn't. It doesn't have to stay like this forever. There there is hope and yes, it does take. It does take some work and it does take some refining, because things will never say the same. Your toddler's not gonna be a toddler forever. They're, they're gonna be teenagers and then they're gonna be adults, and so some of this stuff takes some reworking, as your child and as you change, because us as parents also change as well as we continue living and get older.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I told my 14 year old I said I'm growing up with you, I'm learning with you, you know, and and that's just the way I choose to parent, and he does not rule the roost, don't get me wrong, but I I'm choosing to do things differently where he has that freedom to express, and so I want to be the safe space, you know, and, and what I have found I'm getting, but the less I pushed him and so and this also I found with toddlers the less attention we give to the behaviors we don't want to see, the more likely they are to dwindle. Right, whereas I was nag, nag, nag, nag, nag on my, my son, and he was pushing farther and farther away, and the more I just kind of saw him for who he was, as a person, not the state of his room or his. You know, you know teen language that they speak the more he came around.

Speaker 1:

You know, yeah, and these are really good instances to even be able to reflect for ourselves. What was I like as a teenager, what was expected of me? And even if you come up with, I could never have let my room get to that state. Right, ask yourself why. What would happen to you Because that's usually what is triggering us is the what would happen if you did let your room get to that state. And that's what you're fearing, and that fear is being mirrored to your child, like on your child.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but it doesn't come out as fear, it comes out as yelling, and you know, but absolutely I had to realize like oh my gosh, this would have gotten me in so much trouble. And it comes out fight or flight. It can come out in yelling, right. It can come out in retreating and just ignoring the problem, right. But either one it creates this moment of disconnect between you and your kid.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So what are the things that I was trying to get to earlier which we kind of went on a bit of a tangent I don't want to even say tangent because they're very related. But one of the things I was trying to mention earlier when I brought up the story of how oftentimes because I see this in many of my clients is, oftentimes, when our children are not doing exactly as we say or behaving in a way that we want them to behave, it's put on on us as if what am I doing wrong as a parent? That my child is not following a direction. How have you seen that within your own clients or within yourself?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's so funny you say that because recently it's come up a lot with my clients who are all moms and their first borns Okay, I don't know so where they have a hard time connecting or they're easily triggered by. It's not always their first one, but it's usually the one who's pretty, you know, headstrong and maybe a little bit anxious themselves or perfectionistic, likes to do things a certain way, or, if they're, I see this a lot with moms of kiddos who have some neurodivergent because they're not progressing in the textbook way or of how they were expected to, and that can be really triggering and scary for them. And so I do a lot of reminding and educating and coaching on, you know, ways to meet the needs of kids that are different than us, right, and a lot of reminding. And again, this is something I had to learn myself of what is appropriate we're. We can't expect a four-year-old to remember the same thing. You know, just because they get it once doesn't mean it's going to happen every single time.

Speaker 2:

But here's the thing If you grew up perfectionistic every single time, but here's the thing, if you grew up perfectionistic, pleasing, afraid to make mistakes, you quickly learned right out of fear a lot of times and whatever that might look like, right, maybe you just wouldn't get approval or admiration from your parents, or maybe you would get yelled at or maybe you would get hit, right. So you know, I can tell you, every single one of my clients and I I imagine you can see this as well they come to therapy because they don't want to be that way, they don't want to raise their kids the way they were raised, and so they're open to hearing different things, right, they're open to to hearing that information. So that can be really powerful. You know, I don't want to mess up my kids. I hear that all the time and I didn't hear it and that's what put me back when I had kids.

Speaker 2:

So, but it's, it's so much learning, I think, can be really powerful. What is appropriate and how do I help moms realize how do you want to respond, not react? How do you want to respond to your kid when they're not doing something that you think they should be? And that's, you know, it's so much about responding, not reacting. When we're reacting, we're, you know, repeating patterns. So that's how I try and help moms recognize. You know, how did you want someone to show up for you when you were a kid and that's pretty powerful.

Speaker 1:

I think, too, it's also helpful to help them differentiate your child not following a direction. It's not a fault on you, right? We're just so used to, depending on how you were raised, probably used to the instant, do as I say and don't question me, which led to that, like quote unquote following direction.

Speaker 2:

Right, right. Or, as you mentioned too, we tend to blame or shame ourselves if our child isn't acting a certain way, because maybe you were the mini adult in your family, or the caretaker and so, and you could get your siblings to follow along. Maybe, maybe not.

Speaker 1:

But you know, the stakes are a lot higher when we're dealing with our own human beings.

Speaker 2:

you know that we grew but, yeah, it has zero reflection on your values, on your worth. If your child is having a hard time, you know what has?

Speaker 1:

so you had mentioned before we hit record that you also have struggled with anxiety and perinatal mood and anxiety disorder. What was that like for you? Oh man, to get through some of that.

Speaker 2:

Yes, Well, you know, you think okay. Well, first of all, you know, I grew up I knew I wanted to be the helper. Okay, I was always the helper in my family, the first board. I was always the easy one that you know, quote nobody had to worry about, and so I was just a natural helper. So I go into this field and I learn and I get my master's and all throughout.

Speaker 2:

I think I had my first panic attack at 20 and I thought, well, that's weird, you know, like I'm not, I'm not worried. I liked to be busy and to get perfect grade and to, you know, you know, be with my friends and and work out. So I didn't recognize it as, oh, I'm worrying about things. But, as you know, I went through little bouts here and there, like major transitions in life. When I graduated college, I had a lot of anxiety. What now? Even though I was signed up for grad school, when I finished grad school, more anxiety and I, you know, use a combination of medication and therapy for each of these situations. It was very situational themed and but again, I'm like I got this, I know what to do, I studied this and so fast forward, my, you know, we struggled with some infertility, had our first baby, perfect pregnancy, perfect everything. I felt great. The twins come along and, yes, it was unexpected. Well, you know, we still had to go through fertility, but things were good until they weren.

Speaker 2:

I was hit around week 20 with just an absolute. It was really hard. The only people that knew were my husband and my sister. I was still going to work every day and now looking at it, it was probably total shutdown from burnout, more so than you know I. You know the thoughts like I don't want this. I don't. I think the depressive thoughts can come after your body shuts down. I know they can. So who knows the egg?

Speaker 2:

But it wasn't a good situation for me with work either. It's in a toxic agency and so, honestly, I didn't know how to get out of it. It took my, my husband and my sister saying we're calling somebody, we don't know what to do. This is terrible, You're not yourself. And so I got right in with my perinatologist, who got me right in at Emory university, their women's mental health center here in Atlanta. Okay, Um, again, nothing was heard of at this time. It was almost 13 years ago and I was like what? There's a reproductive mental health center and got in there and I was able to. She was able to start me on a medication that felt scary to other. You know you go to your OB and they likely offer you Zoloft and it doesn't work for everybody you know, so, yeah, working specifically with a reproductive psychiatrist.

Speaker 2:

They know all the research, they know what's safe, they are more willing to try certain combinations of things that can really help.

Speaker 2:

And so, you know, I it was almost like instantly, when I met with both a perinatologist and a psychiatrist, that I felt like a huge weight was lifted because I thought there was something wrong with me.

Speaker 2:

Like you should be so grateful, you should all the should thoughts right, like what is wrong with you. You should, you know, be jumping for joy that you can have this. You know pregnancy and it's healthy and all of that nonsense, and but it was really weighing on me and as soon as I met with him, it was like a placebo effect. I felt like, oh my gosh, okay I'm, this isn't my fault and I'll be okay. And so, yeah, the rest of my pregnancy was really good and, and here we are today again, therapy and medication kind of threw out. I just accept that, as there is a family history, you know, and certainly I like to do more holistic things to help myself, like exercise, nutrition, mindfulness, spending time in nature, connecting all of those things which are super helpful, but I personally am just someone who knows this is just what it is for me to manage my anxiety.

Speaker 1:

What do you mean? What? This is what it is for you, like those things that you were talking about that you do for yourself.

Speaker 2:

Oh, oh yeah absolutely and continuing with medication and therapy. I mean, listen, therapists need therapists and so you know, just having a safe space to to go when I'm hitting a certain season that's harder than others you know, and so, yeah, I say mom and name easy.

Speaker 2:

And so there's obviously times where the stress of being a mom and the overwhelm take its toll more than others and I have more bandwidth during certain stages of life than others. And I and I think that's the same for my clients they come to me having had everything great right. They were just high functioning, type A, probably anxious individuals and then motherhood hits and there's no like grade that you get or you know certificate that you get to let you know you're doing it right, you're doing it well, you know. And without that, I think that's where a lot of women flounder.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've also filed that. When women who are high functioning and they're anxious, but they don't realize it's anxiety because they're just going, going, going, almost not intentionally avoiding but to avoid, right. So when they have a child, it's kind of like bam, you realize what you were doing before is no longer sustainable on top of having a child, because a child also takes so much of your time and energy. And so that's when it's like, oh my gosh, something is wrong and I need to do something about it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, absolutely. We feel like we're drowning or you know, survival mode, however you want to put it. And and that's a lot of times too when I think, when they are kind of halted to a stop right, maternity leave for some people they go nuts. They're like, oh my gosh, I need to get a hospital. So you know, I was one of them, to be quite honest, Me too, oh yeah, but.

Speaker 2:

but then let's say you return back to work or things. So when you are forced to slow down, that's usually when people's bodies are like wait, what, what do we do? And again it's that adrenaline kick, it's that fight or flight, because rest is not comfortable for people like us, and so their bodies are going to react. And that's when we have symptoms like heart palpitations, tension, you know difficulty taking deep breaths, you know sometimes dizziness, and what is that? Taking deep breaths? You know sometimes dizziness, and what is that? Anxiety, right, those are physical symptoms of anxiety, or their brain can now think or worry about other things that they weren't thinking or worrying about before. And so, yeah, I think, yeah, motherhood is a good way of slowing everybody down, even though it's such a hustle.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, and I think it also hits back on what we were talking about before in terms of that stress tolerance, being able to tolerate some of the stress of being uncomfortable to tackle some of these things or not a tackle, but to dive into some of these things and that's why it's not unusual to have a little bit of increase in anxiety when working on your anxiety, because now you're taking things out, you're putting it all on the table and seeing what it is that may need to be untangled. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

It's interesting that sort of how my years in practice have progressed, because, yes, of course I specialize in perinatal and mood and anxiety disorders.

Speaker 2:

So women with you know, newborns to a year, two years, and what I found was we would, you know, get them on track with managing and coping with the anxiety of being a new mom, or even some of the intrusive thoughts or sleep anxiety. Okay, so that would check out, but then it would it's sort of the next step if they were to stay with me and want to work on. This is always like, okay, so you've always been, you know, fearful of making mistakes or fearful of disappointing people, right, perfectionism, people pleasing, and so that kind of. Then turns some things up about childhood and, and you know, core beliefs, and so certainly I only go there with clients that are willing to and want to cause. That's the deeper word, that's the beautiful stuff, you know, um, but it's just interesting that I swear everybody who came through my doors was already prone to and they say that's a huge risk factor for perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.

Speaker 2:

Is type a personality or a history of some anxiety when you were younger? Yeah, I enjoy helping moms do the deeper work too. I feel like you can get longer lasting results when you can really oh absolutely Help them realize it's not you, uh-huh.

Speaker 1:

I often tell people or anyone that I am having like consultation with or a client that you come to therapy usually because you have a bunch of fires going. Yeah, and we can get those fires under control. We can get them, you know, you know out no more fires. But what? When the work really happens is after we've been able to extinguish those fires, to work on the deeper things, because if we don't do that, these fires will come back and they do for work. That makes the lasting change.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's funny you say that because I have had instances multiple times where clients come in initially with a new baby and then they come back around two to three because it has come back in different forms, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, absolutely, and I and you know, and that's normal and that's okay, it's okay to have to go back for more support, right? Oh yeah so, oh, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, so, but I really, I really I'm kind of nerdy about it. I really enjoy it because and it's just so eyeopening I'm, like I said, I'm just kind of a research nerd also and just understanding how we as millennial sun, gen X women, mothers, were programmed, you know, and how that is affecting our own mental health but also our own expectations, our own beliefs, and so many of us at least, I know our perspective is skewed. Right, people come to us for help. There's a lot of people out there who don't want it necessarily, but so many of us are trying to undo and redo and start. You know new patterns and it's so cool to do that, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Can you talk a little bit more about your, your coaching? What are you doing on that side, Cause you know you're you're a therapist, but you're also a coach, correct?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes. So really, it came out of my passion for sharing my knowledge with more people, having a bigger impact. And so, while counseling, I'm only licensed in the state of Georgia and I see clients in my office. I see them virtually. What I also realized is some of the women many, in fact coming to my office don't necessarily qualify with, like, let's say, a diagnosis code of a mental health condition. Okay, I don't think perfectionism or people pleasing is in the DSM right, so. So, however, you know, I could still take the skills that I'm teaching clients in my office who want to come see me to more people who don't necessarily think, oh, I don't need therapy, or I don't want therapy, or you know, but they still get stuck in these similar patterns. So, ideally not ideally my clients are all the same.

Speaker 2:

You know, I market to perfectionistic people pleasing, anxious or overwhelmed moms, and it's really an A to Z map of okay, yes, we can put out some fires, but we also it's kind of going in from the inside out. And so, you know, there's it's a three month online course, it's self-paced, and I teach everything from regulating and healing your nervous system, because that is so much a part of today's, I think long-term healing work all the way through really helping them understand okay, why is it that you are the way you are today? It's not your fault. These are things that happened in childhood and doing all the way through, teaching self-compassion and mindfulness and really helping redefine self-worth all the way to the end where you can then feel good enough, just showing up as you are, who you are and you're more. You're able to be much more present with your kids, your partner, whatever you're doing, because you're not up in your head constantly with the anxiety, the worry or the to-do list or am I enough? Or what is so-and-so doing over here.

Speaker 2:

You know the comparison, the comparison trap. So it's really. It's very. It seems broad, but I take you step-by-step on how to essentially be comfortable in your own skin, making your own decisions that work for you, for your family, and not worrying about what other people are doing or saying. A lot of that, too, is teaching boundaries. That's part of the course, and so with that, you know, you get coaching sessions once a week for the 12 weeks you're coaching, and the moms love that because they can also have camaraderie there, you know, and realizing I'm not alone, and so that had been something that I just got off the ground this year, and I'm super excited about it because, like I said, I think there's such a need, but not everybody's going to take time and go sit in a counseling office for an hour a week for you know years at this point.

Speaker 2:

it can take years, but this is sort of the fast track strategies and concepts to understand in order to reduce and unlearn your anxiety and perfectionism. And so, yeah, I could talk about it all day, but but yeah, it's, it's available to anyone worldwide because it's coaching, not therapy, and that's the beauty of it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, awesome. And if someone, if you know any listeners here, what is the best way to get in contact with you, to get into your world?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I am. So my gosh, there's many ways, but you can find me on Instagram. It's at calm mom collective. You can follow me there, dm. I do free webinars weekly on Wednesdays in my Facebook group, but if you find me on Instagram, I'll. I'll get you over to the Facebook group, but I do. You know 20 minutes. I call them mini podcasts, really, but teach some things like growth, mindset or nervous system regulation or I don't know, stress, tolerance and things like that. Just little quips to kind of, to kind of help you. So I would say that is the best way is Instagram, and then I can figure out what you need and I can get you there.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, yeah, well, thank you so much, kristen, for joining us today and giving us some of a little bit about your own wisdom and your perspective.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Thank you so much. It was really, it was an honor and it was really great speaking with you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Speaker 2:

Yes, you too, we're, almost there.