At this time, I’m looking for participants who have been using the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol for at least 6 months and are willing to share their experience.

You can join the anonymous study by completing the form here.

If you complete the study, I offer a free 30-minute consultation where you can ask questions about the process, share your experience with the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol, and learn more about your attachment patterns. This is not mandatory, but it’s a way for me to thank you for participating into the study and get some free insight and support.

To schedule the consultation, please email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com and include the unique ID you created when completing the form. This ID (a combination of letters and numbers) is used only to match your response with your request and does not identify you personally.

Free attachment style quiz

After completing the quiz, you can read more about your result below.

All results are personalized and while this isn’t a diagnostic tool I do take great care when I look over the answers.

Understanding your attachment style quiz results

You are probably wondering what else you can know about your attachment style. Here’s a breakdown of all the attachment styles.

Anxious preoccupied

If you find yourself thinking about someone constantly, needing reassurance, or feeling like your mood depends on how they respond to you, this is often described as anxious attachment.

According to John Bowlby, attachment develops from early experiences with caregivers. When closeness is consistent, the system learns that connection is safe and predictable. But when it is inconsistent, sometimes present, sometimes withdrawn, the system adapts in a different way.

Instead of relaxing into connection, it starts to monitor it. Attention shifts toward signs of distance, changes in tone, or anything that might signal loss. The goal is not overreaction, but maintaining proximity in an environment where closeness could not be taken for granted.

This is where a deeper explanation becomes useful. In the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation developed by Patricia Crittenden, these patterns are understood as differences in how people process information under stress.

When early relationships are unpredictable, a child cannot rely on stable sequences or clear cause and effect to understand what will happen next. In that context, emotion becomes the most reliable signal. Subtle shifts in closeness, attention, or tone carry important meaning, so the system learns to amplify and prioritize them. Over time, this leads to a style where feelings are intense, urgent, and difficult to step back from, especially in relationships.

Dismisive avoidant

If you tend to shut down emotionally, value independence strongly, or feel uncomfortable when others get too close, this is often described as avoidant attachment.

In early relationships, this pattern develops when emotional needs are not met consistently, or are discouraged altogether. The system learns that expressing need does not lead to connection, and may even lead to rejection.

Instead of seeking closeness, it adapts by reducing reliance on others. Attachment is about maintaining proximity, but when proximity is not rewarding, the system reorganizes around self-sufficiency.

In the Dynamic-Maturational Model of Attachment and Adaptation, this is understood as a shift toward relying on cognitive information over emotional signals. Feelings become less accessible or less emphasized, while logic, structure, and distance become the primary tools for navigating relationships.

This is why avoidant patterns can feel stable on the surface but disconnected underneath. The system is not lacking emotion, but has learned not to use it as a guide. As Peter Fonagy suggests, this can also affect how one interprets both their own internal states and those of others, especially in close relationships.

Fearful-avoidant

If you experience relationships as both deeply important and but also pain-inducing, wanting closeness but also feeling overwhelmed or unsure, you could be having a fearful-avoidant or disorganized attachment.

This pattern tends to develop when early relationships are not only inconsistent, but also frightening. The same person who provides care may also be a source of distress, creating a conflict that the system cannot easily resolve.

Attachment systems are designed to seek safety. But when the source of safety is also a source of threat, the system struggles to form a stable strategy.

This results in more complex patterns that may shift between emotional intensity and detachment, depending on context. Both emotional and cognitive signals can become difficult to organize, leading to responses that feel unpredictable even to the person experiencing them.

Secure

When early experiences are consistent and responsive, the system learns that both closeness and independence are safe. There is no need to amplify emotion or suppress it.

This creates a stable expectation that others can be relied on without constant monitoring or withdrawal.

Ssecure functioning reflects a balance between emotional and cognitive information. Feelings can be experienced without becoming overwhelming, and thinking can guide behavior without disconnecting from emotion.

This balance allows for flexibility. Under stress, a person can reflect, adjust, and respond rather than react automatically.

Learn more about your own attachment patterns

The quiz gives you a general result, but attachment patterns are often more nuanced in real life. If you want a clearer understanding of how your pattern actually operates in your relationships, you can request a personalized attachment evaluation.

Feel free to contact me to schedule an appointment for a personalized attachment evaluation. You can learn more about working with me here.

Maybe the very things that you do, that you hate, are the very things that keep you afloat.

What if the very things that kept you looking disorganized, the underachiever, the does-good-but-could-do-better, are the very things that saved your life from slipping into so much pain your own body couldn’t handle it?

What if those times when you were fantasizing about someone you couldn’t have saved you from the emptiness of your existence at that moment, emptiness you had no solution for, and the focus on someone else, on this magical, shiny object, was both the source of pain and a strong antidepressant?

What if you could only remove yourself from the obsession when you could grasp a solution, a new way, another way to face your pain and place something in that place that appeared empty?

What if choosing the donuts was wise?

What if choosing to eat to numb yourself out was the only way to survive, to escape pain, to flip the switch from fight or flight to rest and digest? What if instead of punishing yourself for not doing better and adding more to the pain that caused seeking refuge in the first place, you asked yourself what food did for you as a wise survival strategy?

And it could be food, it could be binge-watching TV series, it could be giving relentless advice to other people as a way to escape the chaos from your own life and feel that you do have some competence.

What if choosing the healthy habits wouldn’t have saved you at that time? And all habits can become unhealthy. One can run for too long, one can meditate for too long, one can only write and never live.

What if instead of adding pain and shame to what you’ve done to wisely save yourself, you remove some of it?

The “unhealthy habits” are sustained by shame, by unmet needs, by loneliness, by pain.

What if you think like a strategist and simply acknowledge that at that moment, that was the best solution, and that some solutions are better than others for you? What if you don’t add to the pain? Instead, you slowly discern what you actually need and you slowly, and at a sustainable pace, remove the substitutions for something real

Why does being self aware isn’t enough to change your relationship patterns?

You might understand your reactions.

You might know your attachment style.

You might be able to explain exactly why you react the way you do.

And yet, when it comes to actual relationships, you still find yourself in the same dynamics. The same anxiety. The same difficulty connecting with others. The same sense that you are missing out on something you cannot quite grasp, and the grief that comes with that.

That’s usually not a lack of insight.

It’s usually a pattern that took root in your childhood. One imprinted into the relational parts of your brain that need new experiences to build new connections.

The internal “love & safety map

We all carry in our psyche a number of associations based on early childhood experiences with our caregivers, including the following:

1. Who we are attracted to

Chemistry often follows familiarity, not necessarily health.

If unpredictability, emotional distance, or conditional approval were part of your early environment, your nervous system may register those dynamics as “this is what my first experience of love feels like,” a pattern that only gets stronger as it is reinforced, even if your conscious mind knows “better.”

Often, this gets reinforced if we do not have the micro-skills to manage the relationships in our lives, or if we do not have at least one model of secure relating around us, so the feeling of familiarity never changes.

2. How we behave once we are attracted to someone

Aside from learning what is “good” and “attractive” to us, we also inherit, through repeated experiences with our caregivers, patterns of relating.

Do we shut down when the other person gets closer?

Do we anxiously wait for the next text, putting everything else in the background?

Are we constantly scanning for small shifts in tone and behavior?

Are we always expecting to be abandoned?

These responses are usually patterned and automatic. They activate before our conscious mind has time to intervene, and it takes nervous system retraining and conscious effort to begin dismantling these patterns.

3. What feels possible in love

We all “know” deep down what is possible in love. Through exposure to other relationships and through personal history, we might develop either a positive or a more negative set of possibilities.

What makes these possibilities become reality is our brain’s ability to detect patterns and keep us “safe” by following what feels familiar.

For example, if one of your parents cheated, you might become more lenient toward micro-signs of disconnection in your own relationships, which over time can turn into full-blown emotional or physical affairs. And once this becomes reality, the pattern gets reinforced into a solid belief: “all men cheat” or “all women fantasize about other men,” and so on.

Ultimately, when you hear about relationships that involve loyalty, you may find it hard to believe they exist, or perhaps you find it hard to believe someone would be loyal to you. That is how powerful these internal possibilities can be.

What makes change possible

By the time you have read this, you have probably acquired a few insights and maybe even a headache. But the good part is that the brain is shaped by relationships and can also build new patterns in relationships.

Meaning, no amount of reading, courses, and so on will help you as much as seeing your patterns activate in real time and observing your reactions in yourself and in another person, as it happens in a therapeutic relationship.

We learn who we are in close relationships with others, and we learn who others are in relationship with them.

Relationship patterns are relational by nature.

They were formed in interaction.

They tend to replay in interaction.

And they shift most reliably in interaction.

Reading about attachment, understanding trauma, or analyzing your own behavior can create clarity. But clarity does not always translate into new experience.

The nervous system changes through repeated, emotionally meaningful experiences, especially ones that contradict old expectations.

That is why many people find that real change happens not just through thinking differently, but through gradually experiencing connection differently, which for many people happens inside a therapeutic relationship that feels safe and steady.

That in itself is scary. The process of finding a secure attachment figure, the process of vetting people, the process of opening up slowly, and since many of us have experienced heartbreak in one way or another in our lives, it makes sense to want to do all the work by ourselves.

This new relational experience, when it happens, doesn’t change the nervous system overnight, but small, consistent new experiences and good tools, over time make changes that compound, shifting the internal map begins to adjust and adapt to a new reality.

And this new reality, this new map, becomes the lens through which you see yourself and others.

Next steps

If insight hasn’t translated into change, and you’re ready to actively shift these patterns in relationship, I offer 1:1 online sessions. Click here to learn more about my rates, my approach and how to contact me.

Abuse that happens early on tends to become entangled with the psychological development of the individual. A child’s brain and sense of self develop in the context of unsafety, unmet needs, conditional love, overfunctioning, and overgiving to a parent who should have been the one giving to the child.

However, narcissistic abuse that happens later in life is not any less insidious. It can leave people feeling “crazy,” drained of energy and confidence, often struggling with body image issues or holding new beliefs about life and relationships that feel deeply damaging.

What I define as narcissistic abuse includes:

- Constant overfunctioning and compromising in the relationship

- Connection based on domination rather than authenticity (the other person must always “win” to maintain the connection)

- Gaslighting, lying, and deception

- Conditional “love”

- Emotional, psychological, and financial exploitation

- Constant erosion of self-esteem

- Social isolation

- Objectification

- Triangulation

This list is not exhaustive, but if I were to describe narcissistic abuse in one sentence, it would be: a relationship in which the other person seeks to exploit and dominate rather than connect authentically.

Of course, these relationships do not usually start this way. There are often “good times,” followed by the growing sense that no matter what you do, the goalpost is always moving, and you will never feel good enough around this person or truly loved by them.

In a relationship with a parent, this may look like constant pressure to achieve, followed by dismissal or lack of acknowledgment once achievements are reached. The goalpost keeps moving, making it impossible for the child to “win” the parent’s approval. The now-adult child may continue to work hard, yet their efforts are consistently minimized or made to seem insignificant.

In a romantic relationship, criticism and subtle seeds of doubt planted about your attractiveness, intelligence, or character slowly corrode your self-esteem. What once felt like a fairytale, where you were adored and placed on a pedestal, begins to feel insulting and destabilizing.

Triangulation, where a partner compares you to past partners or highlights their qualities, is also common.

These are only examples. There are countless permutations of how narcissistic abuse can unfold, far more than can be covered here.

How narcissistic abuse recovery looks like

Narcissistic abuse is not simply something that happens to us. It changes us.

The hurtful words we are told can haunt us for years. They make us doubt our qualities, slowly eroding our sense of worth, even long after the people who said those words are no longer in our lives.

A person who has experienced narcissistic abuse often feels a constant need to prove their worth, because the narcissist’s primary weapon is criticism. Through criticism, they justify their behavior by making it seem as though you deserve what is being done to you.

Some people collapse and stop trying altogether. Others become high achievers, fixers, rescuers, people who overfunction in relationships and take care of everyone else. But despite all their effort, despite everything they do to better themselves, they never quite feel better.

Internally, their representation of self remains organized around the narcissistic structure, meaning:

- Self-acceptance is based solely on performance

- Criticism resonates deeply, while acknowledgment does not

- Giving feels natural, even compulsive, while receiving feels dangerous

- Relationships are imbalanced, with one person consistently compromising and sacrificing

- Boundaries are followed by intense guilt and the feeling of being a bad person

- Expressing needs feels excruciating

- Trust in others is low, while emotional dependence is high

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What fuels recovery from narcissistic abuse

Recovery is tricky, because while it starts with awareness, it is not a passive process.

Knowledge needs to feel lived, true, visceral, in your bones. And as knowledge expands, it often opens the door to seeing even more ways in which old programming has been holding you back.

Recovery can feel like a journey through a dark wood while holding a lantern. The further you walk, the more you can see. But you can only see as much as you are willing and able to walk while holding the lantern.

Reading, taking courses, watching videos, journaling, meditation, and similar practices can all be valuable tools. But all tools have their place, and their usefulness depends on timing and context.

While knowledge can be acquired through study, hyper-personal patterns and unique defense mechanisms tend to come online only in relationship, both in relationship to others and in relationship to oneself.

Recovery is about having a different experience, not just about knowledge

It helps to read about the importance of feeling seen.

But what about actually being seen?

It helps to read about fight, flight, fawn, or freeze responses.

But what about seeing them unfold in real time and having someone guide you through the process of returning to safety?

It helps to read about secure attachment, about what makes a relationship healthy, about what makes communication healthy.

But what about having someone offer you that experience and teach you skills with compassion, empathy, and patience for your own pace?

The therapeutic relationship, when it is with a securely attached provider, cannot be replaced by books or courses, because our psychological development is deeply linked to the quality of connection we experience with others.

Opening yourself up to such a relationship is not easy. It is difficult, and it requires courage.

The purpose of the therapeutic relationship is to slowly reshape internal models over time. This process prepares you, in real time, both to reject connections that are unhealthy for you and to become emotionally available for connections that are nurturing and reciprocal.

Even for those who are single or already in a relationship, changing the internal representations one holds about themselves can lead to a much more peaceful and grounded life, especially when the inner critic is no longer running unchecked.

Neuroplasticity in adulthood is supported through a series of small, repeated changes that involve focused attention, emotional engagement, and experience over time.

Next steps

If this perspective resonates and you are looking for support that goes beyond insight alone, you are welcome to to my about page where you’ll learn more about how I work and my rates.

If you have any questions or you want to schedule an appointment, feel free to email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com

When people give us reasons why they disrespect us, our first instinct is not to doubt their judgment, especially if they are our caregivers, but to doubt ourselves. And there is a real consequence to being what we are as well. Wouldn’t it be obvious to want to change?

Our reality is often shaped by our environment, and if we are surrounded by, and stuck in, an environment filled with criticism, we end up working overtime, hyperaware of our “flaws,” tortured by them even, despite seeing other people who have the same flaws as us achieve things or receive love we think we don’t deserve.

However, when the relational environment is filled with criticism, it is better to change the environment, not to change yourself. Repressing who you are or beating yourself into a shape you don’t fit comes with a price. You never quite feel loved, and when you come closest to love, what you end up presenting to others is a false self, built out of fear of rejection, still fearing and unable to endure the possibility of rejection, but now wearing a false veneer.

Maintaining the idea that you have to dress a certain way, earn a certain amount, or have a certain social status to be accepted and loved, and that losing those traits will leave you abandoned, takes up a lot of energy. And it hides the suffering of never actually believing there might be someone out there who could love you, a little flawed.

It may sound like a cliche, of course money buys happiness, it buys shelter, good healthcare, good food. But aside from covering the essentials and some more, achievement is often not the cure to low self esteem. Even worse, when people reach their goals and still struggle, they may feel even more hopeless.

As Matthew Perry, star of Friends, famously put it:

“Now, all these years later, I’m certain that I got famous so I would not waste my entire life trying to get famous. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.”

So what then? If success does not fix the mysterious problem, if positive self talk feels like a scam, if meditation is boring and daily affirmations feel like daily torture, where do we go from here?

What is there left to do?

Why high achievers develop low self esteem

In the last 100 years something astonishing happened. We now know about the brain and the psyche more than we had known for centuries. Sure, there were many roadblocks on our way here, including cultural biases and prejudices that always make their way into any science, social or not, but we have reached a point where we have found the red thread to what makes us more inclined to think, feel and behave in a certain way.

Research first in psychology, and then in neuroscience, found the following. Your sense of self is not something you are born with. You are born with a brain, but the way the brain develops is highly relational.

What does that mean?

Your sense of self emerges when your own mind is discovered through the mind of your caregiver. Your caregiver’s ability to connect, love, empathize, understand their own states and the states of the newborn all shape the brain of the newborn.

As researchers like Allan Schore and Peter Fonagy show, the child’s sense of self is shaped by how well the caregiver can attune to emotions, soothe distress and reflect the child’s inner world.

When a parent sees the child as a separate psychological being, the child develops:

• coherence of self

• positive self image

• stable identity

• belief others can be good and safe

• belief they are good and safe

• an overall sense of safety with regards to the environment

• a relationship model that emphasises attunement, presence, safety and care

This also happens through behaviours such as attunement to the child’s needs, creating a safe space for the child, being comforting when the child is in distress and being encouraging of their pursuits and exploration.

These experiences create both a brain that is structurally more able to self regulate and representations of themselves that are positive.

How negative self perception develops

When caregivers are overwhelmed, emotionally unavailable, unpredictable or unable to understand the child’s inner world, children borrow the skills and, so to speak, the brain of the not so functional caregiver.

Without emotional visibility, children develop what Daniel Brown calls pseudo maturity, an adult-like competence that hides an undeveloped inner self. Their confidence cannot be built based on who they are because the parent rejects that or does not understand what the child is. Instead, it is built on competence alone.

The child learns that by becoming something, they achieve the right to be something, which in many cases is what the parents believe about themselves as well. Hence the borrowed mind.

There is only one problem. The child and now the adult attempts to solve a problem that does not exist. Low self esteem related to your sense of self that does not improve with competence is not caused by poor competence but by flawed representations in the brain of what the sense of self is.

The more you try to prove yourself worthy by becoming more and more competent, the more you are shown that no amount of competence is fixing the problem. And perhaps because you think that is the only solution to the problem, dread settles in and helplessness.

For example, some of my clients lead teams, run companies, or make six figures, yet panic when they receive a short text like ‘We need to talk.’ Their competence is sky-high, but their internal map still whispers they are not enough.

Healing the root cause of low self esteem

Healing self esteem is not cognitive, it is relational. Your mind was contained by a mind growing up that did not lead to a positive self image. That is it. You do not have to earn it. Good self image at the baseline is not earned, it is relationally acquired.

Competence is earned, and guilt over things we have done can sometimes be a good thing because it teaches us what to do and what not to do. But shame, shame about who we are at our core, is not guilt, it is not a true representation of our actions or our history. It is a state that cannot be pinpointed yet it stays still, and is the wound of the insecure attachment to your caregiver.

Fortunately, we can slowly re wire those pathways based on new relational experiences that challenge old beliefs and their meanings.

These new relational experiences have to have the following features:

• are safe

• are able to slowly allow you to come out of your shell and speak your mind

• are corrective and able to show you new perspectives

• are corrective by allowing you to express negative emotions in a completely new and safe environment

• are able to guide new representations in your brain (this can be done via Ideal Parent Figure Protocol or coherence therapy techniques)

• are mirroring your own internal states and respond appropriately to them

• are done in relation with a securely attached practitioner

Most of this sounds like what a friend or a partner can do, however, there is a little caveat.

It may sound counterintuitive that something so deeply personal, your self esteem and your view of yourself, can be significantly changed by someone outside of you, but in reality our psyche was always the recipient of the environment. With the addition that as adults, we are no longer helpless toddlers and we can now choose, by our own will, to take steps in the right direction.

Next steps

Want to learn to embark on a journey of self discovery? Go here to learn more about me and how I help my clients change their inner map to change their life.

References

Brown, D. P., & Elliott, D. S. (2016). _Attachment disturbances in adults._ Norton.

Dana, D. (2018). _The polyvagal theory in therapy._ Norton.

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E. L., & Target, M. (2002). _Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self._ Other Press.

Heller, L., & LaPierre, A. (2012). _Healing developmental trauma._ North Atlantic Books.

Porges, S. W. (2011). _The polyvagal theory._ Norton.

Schore, A. N. (1994). _Affect regulation and the origin of the self._ Erlbaum.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). _The body keeps the score._ Viking.

Walker, P. (2013). _Complex PTSD: From surviving to thriving._ Azure Coyote Press.

Wallin, D. J. (2007). _Attachment in psychotherapy._ Guilford Press.

In this short guide, I’ll teach you how to identify signs of avoidance right away—even from your first text conversation. I’ll also explain the anxious “mindset” that makes people who lean anxious more likely to overlook low engagement, low investment, and low capacity for connection.

How to Detect Avoidance From the First Conversation

Avoidants often fly under the radar when the person they’re dating is preoccupied with being liked and accepted—regardless of who’s doing the liking or accepting.

That’s the anxious bias: valuing other people’s opinions and attention, even before knowing whether those people are emotionally safe or capable of making sound judgments.

On one side, we have someone with a very positive bias and a strong openness to connection… but without much discernment. If that feels familiar, here are some clues to help you catch avoidance early and start asking the right questions.

Avoidant-Speak: Learn Their Language

The clearest clue with avoidants is lack of follow-up and frequent breaks between conversations.

For example:

• They text you one day, then disappear the next, only to reappear on the third.

• Conversations feel drained of emotion—they share what they did, but not how they feel.

• They rarely use your name.

• They don’t seem terribly interested in knowing you. They may ask questions, but their curiosity is limited.

• Their messages are shorter, flatter, and carry little emotional tone.

• They plan dates where real conversation is unlikely (like going to the movies as a first date).

• They struggle to commit to a specific day and time.

• They rarely reach out first—and when they do, it’s timid.

• They don’t often show enthusiasm, excitement, or warmth.

Now, this might sound like a very drab person. So why do people fall in love with them?

Actually, many do. Their calm, collected, almost stoic demeanor often attracts people who are high-energy, talkative, emotional, and eager to connect. Anxious partners can end up pouring all their energy into someone who doesn’t (or can’t) match that flow.

And here’s the kicker: the more aloof the avoidant becomes, the sweeter and brighter those rare moments of affection seem. The distance itself creates a fantasy that anxious partners get hooked on.

The Avoidant Illusion of Security

Another tip: most avoidants believe they’re secure.

If you’re dating someone who isn’t very present, doesn’t talk much, and appears emotionally cold—but insists they’re “secure”—be cautious.

Avoidants often mistake their emotional detachment and lack of conflict as signs of being grounded and secure. In reality, it’s simply connection and conflict avoidance.

That’s why quizzes or labels don’t always help. Stick to the clues you can actually see.

Final Thoughts

If you recognize yourself in the anxious bias, remember: awareness is power. The more you notice these patterns early, the less likely you are to invest in someone who can’t meet you where you are.

Want support on your journey?

Whether you are struggling with anxiety or dating makes you more dysregulated than 3 shots of expresso, I’m here to help. Head towards my about page for more info about working with me.

Friendship conversations are mutual, you take turns sharing and supporting. We also tend to choose friends based on our own emotional maturity. If we’re struggling, we may attract friends who are also struggling, which can create connections that mirror our inner wounds without helping us move forward.

With a professional, the focus stays on you. That focus exists for a reason: the goal is to help you close developmental or coping skill gaps so you can become more functional, adaptable, and ultimately happier.

Because of early developmental wounds, many people don’t have truly “safe” people in their lives. They may also have a pattern of choosing those who are neglectful or unable to truly see them. In some cases, a person may not even realize (especially early on) that they have been surrounded by unsafe people all along.

Speaking with a professional can be a break from that cycle, or even a break from your own loneliness.

The map childhood draws

As children, we unconsciously form beliefs about:

- Whether the world, and we ourselves, are safe

- Whether we are kind, capable, and lovable, or the opposite

- What love looks like (care and encouragement, or chaos and pain)

- Whether it’s safe to express our needs and desires

- Whether we can focus without scanning for danger

These early experiences shape how we connect, cope, and see ourselves. Time doesn’t erase them, instead, the effects compound. Unresolved wounds can snowball into patterns of low self-esteem, poor nervous system regulation, and reinforcing beliefs that keep us stuck.

The map is exactly what the professional works on. Ideally, a good professional knows what a healthy map looks like, understands the many ways development can go off track, and can provide solutions to improve that map, helping the client navigate the world with guidance that leads to greater happiness.

Tools beyond talk

While talk therapy or coaching is essential for building interpersonal skills and understanding patterns, many professionals (myself included) also use tools like:

Guided meditations to shift unconscious beliefs (for example, the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol)

Somatic techniques to release trapped emotions, regulate the nervous system, and create new bodily experiences

A resource I recommend

If you want to learn more about choosing the right professional, especially for healing complex or childhood trauma, Pete Walker’s _Holistically Treating Complex PTSD_ offers a practical and compassionate framework that applies to most therapeutic work.

Work with me

Looking for support? Check out my about page to learn more about my availability, pricing and focus. And as always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Anger is not abuse. Sometimes it can lead to abusive behaviours, but more often than not, anger is an emotion. You just feel it and ask a question, why am I feeling this way?

Am I being disrespected at the moment?

Do I feel in danger?

Is someone crossing my boundary?

Is what’s happening in the moment warranted to make me feel angry or is it a trigger that brought up something from the past that I can’t remember, but I can remember the anger?

Anger is a signal. Is your nervous system saying, look here! PLEASE, look here! I need you to look here, it's very urgent. And some ignore that signal, but the emotion doesn’t go away, instead it gets bigger and bigger precisely because you don’t pay attention and you aren’t “fixing” the root problem of the issue, you aren’t allowing anger to help you uncover what’s really bothering you.

As a consequence, you may end up suppressing anger and exploding in moments when your anger makes no sense, suppressing the anger with food or substances.

Or you may turn anger inward, towards yourself, becoming your own tyrannical voice. An abuser that is always there and never shuts up.

Another way unprocessed anger can show up is by giving you physical symptoms. Being constantly in fight or flight is a big stressor on your body.

Nothing good ever comes from anger, but how do we feel and process anger in a healthy way?

Well, I am glad you asked.

How to express anger in a healthy way

No, breaking plates is not on the list, but it could be!

Write your fears and resentments

This is a technique created by Anna Runkle, from the Crappy Childhood Fairy, in which she teaches people to self-regulate emotionally by writing down all of their fears and resentments, followed by a ritual of letting go and a moment of meditation.

The exercise starts by you writing down, on paper, why a certain thing makes you feel the way you feel.

For example, “I fear that my mother-in-law will make me feel small and insignificant again. I fear I resent my husband for allowing that to happen.”

And you go on and on. Some people, on particularly “busy” days end up writing pages upon pages. This doesn’t just end up improving your emotional literacy, meaning you finally give some meaning to your anger that you can later meditate over what can be done, it also functions as catharsis. The letting out of anger in itself can blow off some of the steam.

At the end of the exercise, you are asked to burn or shred the piece of paper (very important to be an actual piece of paper) all while ending the exercise with a few sentences where you express your desire to let it go. You write your name, the date and get rid of the paper.

Some choose to meditate following the exercise as well.

But perhaps the most important function of the exercise is to allow yourself to put some meaning to your anger and not run as a headless chicken. Why do I feel this way? Can I fix it?

If the mother-in-law annoys me, what can I do to prevent her from annoying me again?

And suddenly, you can now move from eating your feelings, distracting yourself away from your feelings, or downright avoiding them, into problem-solving mode which will eventually allow you to relax.

Mimic what anger feels like

Somatic exercises are great at allowing you to feel in a non-destructive manner.

Find yourself a quiet place, take a piece of cloth or a towel, and squeeze it hard, all while allowing you to make all the faces you would make when you feel really angry. Really focus your anger on that towel, and give it a good squeeze. A good example of this you can find here.

Other ways to express anger, in the body, in a safe way is to stomp your feet or simply mimic the movements and the facial gestures a child or perhaps you as a child would make if you were allowed to be angry. Stomp those feet and get it out. Allow yourself to feel it.

Long-term management of anger includes self-expression

Do you know what prevents anger from piling up and making you explode?

Assertiveness.

Yes, the long-term solution to suppressed anger is learning how to communicate with others and place boundaries with consequences. Anger lingers when the issue is not resolved. When you don’t know how to communicate or perhaps don’t know when is time to stop communicating with someone altogether.

You can’t walk through life achieving a state of complete safety, sometimes there will be people who will disrespect you, annoy you and trigger you - the trick is to not always be at war, and choose to surround yourself with people that make it safe for you to relax. And that’s probably the most important skill one can develop. I help my clients understand their needs, put boundaries and increase collaboration both in individual coaching sessions and in group sessions.

Anger is not the compulsion to act - angry people still have a choice

Anger is not a trigger towards action, although many people think they should act on their emotions right away.

Sometimes due to past experiences, we think people disrespect us and walk all over our boundaries, even when they don’t.

Other times, because we sometimes falsely accuse others of trying to harm us and we are in the wrong, we then swing to the other side of the spectrum - we never see anyone as harmful and we continue to rationalize and minimize what is done to us.

Anger and is cue’s is really something that needs to be explored in a safe therapeutic setting and why not, in your journal, where you can start investigating when you were right and when you were wrong about other people’s intentions.

Anger is not about aggressively - it is about discernment.

What do I mean by that?

Anger should be the signal that, in time, becomes more and more accurate at discerning who is safe and who isn’t and when people are stepping over your toes. But by no means, it’s a channel towards aggression. Anger is just an emotion, not a command to go and break a window.

And because it is an invitation, it must sound like one. What is being asked is often never directly said.

Manipulators can target anyone, but they only succeed with people who:

1. Want to solve other people’s problems

2. Have no boundaries around their empathy

3. See others as helpless—and believe them to be helpless if they appear that way

Here’s a clip that perfectly shows how manipulation works:
https://www.facebook.com/sbsondemand/videos/1903274950468416/

Let’s break it down:

1. She sets the hook
   Nicole Kidman reassures her teen lover that she only wants to be with him. That’s the prize—if only…

2. She presents the obstacle
   Her husband has a temper. She implies she’s stuck in a dangerous situation, hinting at the possibility of domestic violence.

3. She offers a false solution
   She says, “If nothing happens, I guess I’ll just run away with my kid.”
   (This creates urgency for the teen—he might lose her forever.)

4. He offers a rational alternative
   “Why don’t you get a divorce?” he asks.

5. She rejects it with a cost
   She says she’ll lose everything, including her home. Divorce is not a real option.

6. She returns to the hook
   With a seductive dance, she reminds him of what he stands to lose if he doesn’t act. She doesn’t ask for anything—she just leads him to imagine the solution.

She never says she wants her husband dead. But she doesn’t need to.
She plants the seed and lets his imagination do the rest.

This is one of the most powerful forms of manipulation—and it happens more often than you think.

Every day life example

In everyday life—especially in relationships—my clients often come to me and say their partners aren’t capable of doing X or Y, so they feel they have to do it for their sake.

For example, one woman started paying her boyfriend’s share of the rent after he had a breakdown, saying he’d have to work two jobs to cover his portion. This wasn’t actually true. But because she was so shaken by his crying and yelling, she gave in and started covering for him.

He never found a better job. She continued paying his share of the rent for the next five years. All the while, he complained about how hard the economy was, how hard everything was. Meanwhile, all of his income went into a savings account—money he kept after the relationship ended.

She had invested in him for five years, driven by guilt, compassion, and a sense of responsibility for his depression and anxiety.

And yes—mental health issues can be weaponized too.

I can help decrease your chances of heartbreak and increase your chances of not getting into a relationship that hurts you—and if you do, to be able to make a swift exit as soon as possible.

That being said, here’s what I think everyone should know before dating—and probably everything that’s enough to know to stay safe emotionally and psychologically.

1. Wants to get to know you in a healthy manner

No rushing intimacy—not even emotional intimacy. Just two people getting to know each other, starting with a casual conversation. And as the trust increases (if it does), the two people can increase the amount of vulnerability in the conversation.

Why it matters
Speaking too much about too many deep things creates the illusion of quick intimacy, when in fact you are attaching yourself to a stranger. You don’t know if they are safe to know your past trauma and disappointments. A real danger is when someone talks about everything they want in a partner during the first dates—if the other person has manipulative intent, they can use that blueprint to become the “person of their dreams” and get them hooked on an illusion.

2. Has pro-social feelings

Have you ever met someone who constantly speaks ill of others?
“Women these days are gold diggers.”
“Men these days are pigs.”
“And uh, relationships? Well, you know how they are!”

Is a complete Debbie Downer and absolutely nothing ever goes well in their life? If they’re constantly discouraged and distrustful of everyone, how can they truly connect with someone else? If they’re always blaming society, parents, or politicians—what sense of agency and responsibility do they have in their life? Probably none.

Why it matters
If they lack pro-social feelings and criticize everything, they’re probably lacking in the empathy department as well. RUN!

3. Lives a lifestyle similar to yours

I think this is more important than people realize. Imagine being someone who cherishes good food, relaxation, the occasional exercise, and just an overall chill lifestyle.

Now picture for a moment how frustrated you’d be with a partner who simply can’t see that booze is killing them, and their job is putting them into an early grave. You know that!
Well, you might know it—but they might not care about their life in the same way you do. And that’s their right: to conduct their lives as they want to and create change when and if they want to.

Why it matters
I think one of the biggest heartbreaks occurs when you love someone for just 50% of who they are and absolutely despise the other 50%, praying and begging they’ll change for you.

4. You can communicate to them

What is communication? It’s the ability to express feelings, including negative ones, and create bridges between people. Now sometimes, we do try to communicate with someone—and they show us that they can’t communicate back.

This usually shows up as avoiding difficult conversations. It can also look like getting defensive, ending the conversation, or being unable to take any accountability.

Why it matters
If someone can’t have difficult conversations, can’t take accountability, and can’t admit to anything—they’re not someone you can build intimacy with. That person isn’t open to connection, only to control. When things get rough, they won’t try to resolve it in a way that keeps you in mind, too.

And usually, that’s not something you can fix by explaining more or communicating more—because they don’t want to communicate back.

5. Has good enough self-esteem (oof)

This may seem a bit hurtful to type out, but hear me out.
People who are very insecure are the most dangerous people out there. Sure, we all have some insecurities, but when someone has built their entire lifestyle around managing those insecurities without actually addressing them… they’re just living in hell—and dragging others into it with them.

Why it matters
Due to insecurity, people can either become intense people-pleasers and mirrors to their partners (you never get to know them and can’t have real intimacy, because their sense of self is built around what they can do to seduce you),
or they are in a continuous search for validation, including by seducing others outside the relationship.

What if I am the insecure person?

And my last point is on staying safe while dating if you are the insecure person.

People with low self-esteem also make perfect victims for toxic types. Some people with low self-esteem fix their issues by people-pleasing, others by taking advantage of others and using them as a supply of validation.

So if you are dating and think you may need support, 12-step groups for codependency can sometimes be a good resource. If you are looking for in-depth, personalized support, feel free to head to my about page to learn more about my coaching services.

See you soon.

Before you go playing detective—examining all the red flags, the green flags, the unmet emotional needs, your attachment style, and how much that person resembled your mom—pause.

Remember this simple truth:
There are people who can love, and there are people who can’t.

You stumbled upon someone who can’t.

There are dictators and cruel soldiers. And there are strangers who jump into a river to save a drowning child, losing their own lives in the process.

That’s the confusing world we live in.And the sooner we accept that only discernment can protect us—the better.

You weren’t betrayed by the whole world.
You were betrayed by one person.

You don’t have to understand them. You’re allowed to feel angry.
But hold on to this: they might simply be different from you.

Grieve it.
But remember: this time, you didn’t stumble upon the kind of person who’d save the cat, jump into the water, or help the old lady cross the street.

That’s all.

It means opening up in front of a stranger, when historically, most of us who have been in therapy or have been looking for help were hurt by strangers. What makes matters even more complicated is that this particular stranger will know a lot about you, will get close—which could make the possible sting even more hurtful.

But as someone who was both in therapy and is now on the other side of the room, I think I’ve developed, over time, a pretty good intuition about what actually makes a good mental health professional—whether it's someone with a PhD or someone who finished a coaching course online.

So here are the 5 green flags to look out for:

1. Expertise is pretty clear

Working with a mental health provider is not merely a conversation between two people in which one asks from time to time, “So how does that make you feel?”

The person in front of you should be able to give you guidance, explanations when you ask for them, and paint you a pretty clear picture of why X leads to Y.

Of course, seeing the full picture means the person has some information about you, but after gathering the information—if you are comfortable and ask to know—the other person should be able to tell you why it’s likely for a certain coping mechanism to happen, how it manifests, and what would be a possible approach to treatment.

For example, I work with people who are coming from households in which at least one person was abusive. I also work with people with codependent patterns and people with attachment wounds.

All of the above involve very specific manifestations and some pretty clear trajectories, and by knowing this, I can tell when a client of mine is struggling—and as a consequence, I can guide them better.

Let’s take the following fictional example. Josh is in love with his wife but struggles with some sexual fantasies that involve his wife being with someone else. He feels a lot of shame around those fantasies, and they also tend to come up when he is more stressed out.

He has tried mindfulness meditation, journaling, etc., but nothing seems to make the thoughts go away—quite the opposite. He feels ashamed and stuck, and no amount of talking about it can make it go away.

After a few sessions, I learn that Josh, even though his parents covered all of his safety and physical needs, was mostly left alone. They were working all day, and he was mostly by himself. He was also ignored when big things were happening. For example, when they moved, they didn’t let him know until they were on the way to the airport. The emotional neglect had been severe.

As an adult, he learned subconsciously to detach himself from his friends and even his romantic partners. He never invested too much into them; he didn’t even allow himself to feel too much. He did this because he learned early on that feeling feelings was dangerous and that being connected to others would mean self-abandonment—just like what happened to his parents, who are still somewhat present in his life, continuing the same patterns.

In relationships, he found it hard to commit (he developed an avoidant attachment), but even when he did, his subconscious found a way out.

His sexual fantasies were his way of detaching himself from his wife because being too intimate with her felt threatening. The man in his fantasies, taking her away, was the way he was letting out some of the pressure he felt in the relationship. In addition, his affection and even sexual attraction were fluctuating based on how much space there was in the relationship. All things intimacy scarred him, even though he wanted things to be different.

In his case, starting work on his intimacy issues would be key to improving all aspects of his life.

Working with someone who has knowledge and expertise goes beyond the power of catharsis and being listened to—it offers a clear map. And when interviewing a potential mental health provider, it is important to look out for someone who does seem to have a map in their hands.

2. Can identify abuse

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this story repeating itself over and over again. Someone goes to their therapist, they speak about their abusive parent or partner, and all they get is invalidation—or worse, advice on how to forgive, how to move on, etc.

While sometimes clients can have skewed views on what is considered abuse, more often than not—at least in my experience—it’s quite the opposite. People put up with too much abuse to the point they no longer recognize it as abuse.

A therapist’s inability to identify abuse—or worse, encouraging the client to get in contact with the abuser (“It’s your mother at the end of the day, and she’s old now”) or the more subtle cues (“After all you’ve learned now, you should be able to tolerate them better”)—are not neutral. They are actively damaging, as they normalize abuse and prime the person in front of them for even more abuse.

Ideally, a therapist has a high standard for self-love and self-esteem and is able to see when their client is not holding themselves to that standard. They also indirectly hold up this standard by acting with genuine care, seeing the person in front of them, being empathetic to their struggles, and giving praise for their successes—not encouraging them to compromise and accept people in their lives who don’t love them.

A therapist who can’t identify abuse is also likely to be someone who can’t identify it in their own life (they could be a victim of it), or they could be on the other side of the table—as the bully. If your therapist can’t identify abuse when you present it—RUN!

Alternatively, if you are very well treated and they point out the ways in which you aren’t treating yourself well—or others aren’t treating you the way you deserve—you are probably dealing with someone who both has high self-esteem and wants to cultivate the same within you. Feel free to stay!

3. Shows genuine interest, comes on time, sees you and cares for your experience

I see this question on forums more often than I would like:

“Is it okay that my therapist is constantly late 5–10 minutes?”

“Is it okay that my therapist checks her phone during the session?”

“Is it okay if my therapist forgets important details about me on a regular basis?”

Well, we all make mistakes. But the key here is on a regular basis. Therapy and coaching are expensive, and even 5 to 10 minutes is quite expensive. So if it happens regularly, you are literally leaking money.

As for checking the phone or forgetting important details—well, sometimes people forget, and sometimes they may get an important message. But the general rule is: during sessions, the phone is on silent. And for deep work, the therapist needs to remember things so they have a full picture of what’s going on.

Also, when someone is constantly not paying attention, that’s very poor modeling. You might feel unimportant, disrespected, and so on. And clearly, we don’t want that, do we?

Part of what makes therapy so powerful is that someone gets really close to you and offers you a safe experience. You are seen, heard, on a regular basis, with no ups and downs. A good mental health provider knows consistency is amazing at building trust, higher self-esteem, and even helping people build a more secure attachment.

So yes, it’s not okay if a therapist does all of the above. But if you do have someone who shows up for you on a regular basis, in a positive way, your brain is going to love it.

4. Provides a clear path to solving the “issue”

Now, this is more of a personal green flag—meaning what I personally consider a green flag, what I needed in my own work, and what I deliver myself as a practitioner. That being said, a clear structure often leads to more progress.

Sure, because humans are so complex, we are constantly writing and erasing what’s next on the checklist, constantly adapting to the needs of the client. But that work in itself is very important, in my opinion, because we can see whether the needle is moving and how the client is reacting to certain approaches and techniques.

Also, even though psychology is a young science, it does have quite a rich history of tried-and-true approaches for a large number of issues. Why not draw inspiration from that instead of freestyling our way through crippling low self-esteem and emotional dependency?

5. Is able to repair ruptures in the therapeutic relationship and make you feel safe, even during conflict

Oof.

What conflict? I mean, we are talking about a therapist, right?

Please don’t leave the page yet. The truth is that every relationship—including a therapeutic one—at some point will encounter conflict, and successfully managing that conflict can be incredibly helpful.

Sometimes you might find your therapist annoying.

Sometimes you might feel the therapist thinks you are annoying.

Why is it important to address it and have someone mature and ready for that on the other side?

Because that shows you that conflict and tension can be solved without dissolving the relationship—which is essential in any sort of attachment work you may do. Not only that, but when we solve the conflict with someone successfully, the relationship gets even stronger, as we now have proof that the person is safe—even in stormy weather.

Therapeutic conflict isn’t about dramatic arguments—it’s about navigating moments of discomfort with mutual respect and maturity.

But at some point, there may be a small disagreement, and working through that successfully can actually teach you to have more trust in relationships and not fear conflict anymore.

It will also raise the bar with regard to conflict resolution in all of your relationships outside therapy.

Want to work with me? Have any questions?

Feel free to email me at helpwithmiriam@gmail.com you can also learn more about me and pricing by reading my about page.

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