You Might Be in the Peacekeeper Family Role If…

• You can tell someone’s upset before they even say anything.
• You rehearse difficult conversations over and over (and over) before having them…or avoid them completely.
• You pride yourself on being “low maintenance,” and secretly feel guilty for having needs.
• You are often the first to apologize to end the conflict, even when you are not actually wrong.
• You monitor other people’s tone, body language, or mood shifts.
• You are often the “middleman” in arguments.
• You overexplain yourself in an attempt to keep others from getting mad at you.

Somewhere along the way, you learned that your role was to keep the peace. You became small, easy, agreeable. You learned to mold yourself into whatever lowered the tension in the room. You became the “easy” one because rocking the boat never felt safe.

You were the Family Peacekeeper.

Note: The Fixer and the Peacekeeper can look very similar in how they manifest, though at their core they are very different. The Fixer manages people, while the Peacekeeper focuses on conflict. As always, roles can shift and co-exist and it is common to see yourself in many of the roles because we often do what we need to in order to cope and survive. Take care of yourself as you read!

What It Looks Like to Be in the Peacekeeper Family Role

The peacekeeper family role produces an expert at managing tension. Those who develop this role master the ability to monitor the emotional temperature in the room, acting on anything they can to attempt to smooth things over. Whether it’s minimizing the issue, mediating the conflict, or suppressing their own needs, the Peacekeeper is eloquent and effective at lowering the tension in the family.

The Peacekeeper does the emotional work for the family in order to avoid conflict. They are the buffer, the mediator in the family. The Peacekeeper’s main goal is to make sure everyone is “okay,” even if it avoids the problem as a whole. Over time, the child in this role becomes highly attuned to other people’s emotions, often at the expense of their own emotional authenticity.

What It Feels Like to Be in the Peacekeeper Family Role

Children who grow up in the peacekeeper family role experience constant tension and anxiety, living in an emotionally hypervigilant state in order to monitor the emotional temperature of the home. Think of it like being a human thermometer. They learn that if conflict starts, something bad may happen.

The Peacekeeper may feel disconnected from others and from themselves, often having to isolate and minimize to maintain calm in their home. They may have suppressed their own emotions and their own opinions to achieve this faux sense of peace. They prioritize harmony in the home over their own authenticity, not by choice but by survival.

A Note on Matthew 5:9 and the Peacekeeper Family Role

The Peacekeeper is often praised for their ability to bring “peace” in the home. They may feel helpful or like the one making their family “healthy.” Biblical peacemaking is completely different and does not enable dysfunction, silencing oneself, avoiding hard conversations, and pretending everything is okay when it is not.

Jesus was incredibly confrontational at times. He held boundaries, disrupted systems that were bringing harm. He told the truth, even if it upset others.

Being a biblical peacemaker often requires healthy conflict first. Those who grew up in the peacekeeper family role often carry fear and anxiety surrounding conflict. Biblical peacemaking is not fear-based. It is the courageous pursuit of truth, repair, and genuine peace. Peacekeeping avoids tension. Peacemaking creates safety.

How the Peacekeeper Family Role is Formed

The peacekeeper family role is often formed when conflict and anger are unpredictable in the family system. Conflict may escalate quickly, and emotions are experienced as volatile and damaging. The child who becomes the Peacekeeper takes on emotional responsibility for the atmosphere of the home when emotionally immature parents do not.

This dynamic can emerge through abuse, though it is not always the case. Chronic emotional instability in the home can be one of the greatest predictors of a child developing this role.

The peacekeeper family role often comes into play when love became conditional on not rocking the boat. The less conflict the child created, the more acceptance they experienced. So the child grew to learn that love meant keeping others calm, not adding stress, and staying agreeable. The child learned to suppress their own emotions and to anticipate any emotional shifts.

The child may be asked to take sides between parents, or between their siblings and their parents. Even if they don’t take sides, they may seek to keep the peace between siblings and parents, especially the Scapegoat or Truthteller child.

What It Costs You to Carry the Peacekeeper Family Role

The greatest cost for someone raised in the peacekeeper family role is their conflict style. They often grow up to be conflict avoidant, anxious in disagreements, and may emotionally shut down with any confrontation. This can show up in friendships, work relationships, and romantic partnerships. The Peacekeeper may find themselves overexplaining everything in an attempt to avoid conflict or disruption.

The Peacekeeper grew up learning that peace is the absence of conflict, instead of the presence of safety. When conflict is present, it can feel dangerous to their nervous system. In an attempt to seek homeostasis in their relationships, the Peacekeeper often has difficulty setting boundaries with others in fear their needs will rock the boat. They grow to fear disappointing or inconveniencing others.

Those shaped by the peacekeeper family role may have discomfort around anger as an emotion, from others and from themselves. They become so accustomed to suppressing their own emotions that the presence of anger, which felt unsafe and volatile in the past, can be dysregulating. This buildup of emotion can cause the Peacekeeper to become emotionally suppressed and resentful. This can lead to the presence of anxiety, depression, or physical symptoms such as headaches, insomnia, or high blood pressure. This might sound like the outcomes of chronic stress. And you’d be right about that.

What Healing Looks Like for the Peacekeeper Family Role

For Parents of the Peacekeeper

Parents of the Peacekeeper, it is never too late to mend the damage done by conflict and anger in your family system. (If you’ve read our other blogs in this series, you know we’re saying that a lot. We want to be sure you know that! It can be really tough for parents to look at something they’ve done that isn’t helpful and we want you to know you can work to make repairs, no matter how old your kiddos are!)

Do the Work

The peacekeeper family role often develops as a coping response to big emotions in the home. It is the adults’ responsibility to regulate those emotions, not the child’s. Learning how to regulate your own emotions is a great first step in bringing healing to this dynamic. Learning to model healthy communication can also begin to bring change. If you need some tips on what healthy attachment looks like, check out Adam Young’s Big 6 here.

Make Space

Healthy homes allow conflict without withdrawal, violent disagreements, and shame. Making space for disagreements without punishment is a way to help facilitate healing. After conflict, it is important to learn how to repair and reconnect, rather than withdrawing or shaming.

Accept Boundaries

The child in the peacekeeper family role learned they cannot have needs, opinions, or boundaries to have safety and peace in their home. Encouraging the child to explore their opinions, advocate for their needs, and have autonomy to set boundaries can help both the child and the dynamic heal. Children deserve to take up space, especially in their own home.

Forgiveness may not be immediate, if ever given. Speaking into the hurt caused, giving it words and a name, can be incredibly healing. Apologizing for the emotional chaos present in the home can begin to facilitate healing.

For the Peacekeeper

You deserve to have a voice, to feel and need, to think and grow. You do not have to shrink or flatten to matter. You don’t have to agree to be good.

Set Up Support

Finding a therapist who understands the peacekeeper family role can be deeply helpful. A therapist can assist you as you rediscover your voice, learn to tolerate conflict without it feeling dangerous, discern the difference between disagreement and abandonment, and reconnect with your own emotions.

Anger, for you, may not have been an accessible or safe emotion. A therapist can also walk alongside you while you learn to reconnect with your anger (or other emotions that were suppressed as the Peacekeeper) in healthy ways.

Get to Know You

Living out the peacekeeper family role often meant bending to what others wanted or needed. Taking the time to understand what you want as a person, what you think and believe, can be a genuinely healing practice.

Set Boundaries

You didn’t have many boundaries in the peacekeeper family role; you often were the boundary between peace and chaos. Your needs matter too and it is not selfish or wrong to ask for them. Others can be disappointed, inconvenienced. It may be their very privilege to know you and hear about what you need from them. Authentic, healthy relationships can survive honesty, tension, and repair.

You Don’t Have to Carry the Peacekeeper Family Role Alone

The mediator. The stabilizer. The glue. The diplomat. The Peacekeeper.

You had to swallow yourself to become what they and you needed for peace. You held everything still, even as others were allowed to knock it all down in their anger. You deserve a life where peace does not require disappearing.

If any of this is resonating with you, whether you’re the one who grew up in the peacekeeper family role or the parent realizing that maybe this is something you did or are doing, and you’d like to speak with someone about it, we have a team of wonderful therapists and coaches here at The Journey and The Process who would love to walk alongside your healing journey. You don’t have to go it alone and healing is possible. It would be an honor to walk with you. Reach out below for a free, 15-minute consultation today.

References

[1] Embark Behavioral Health (2025). Dysfunctional Family Roles: Identifying and Addressing Them. https://www.embarkbh.com/treatment/therapies/family-therapy/dysfunctional-family-roles/

[2] Integrated Care Clinic (2025). The masks we wear: Roles shaped by our childhood homes. https://integratedcareclinic.com/blog/the-masks-we-wear-roles-shaped-by-our-childhood-homes/

[3] Jenkins, J.M. (2016). Peacemaker in the family: A salute and a challenge. https://www.jmarshalljenkins.com/2016/06/09/peacemaker-family-salute-challenge/

[4] Van Sickel, E. (2019). Roles in dysfunctional families. Restored Hope Counseling Services. https://www.restoredhopecounselingservices.com/blog/2019/3/21/roles-in-dysfunctional-families

By the way—we aren’t AI. AI can be a useful tool; however, we are actual humans. We do love a good m dash, ellipses, and semicolons. We will never give up the Oxford comma. We just want you to know there are actual people here writing and sharing. We know the amount of AI-generated stuff out there can be mind numbing, so we want you to know we are actual flesh and blood sharing our expertise and wisdom. 

The post The Peacekeeper Family Role: Signs, Origins and How to Heal appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

What is a Destructive Relationship?

When people think about a destructive relationship they often think of the physical or sexual abuse. Physical and sexual violence are only two types of abusive behaviors that can occur. We prefer the term coercive control – a pattern of behavior that steals the autonomy of the victim and breaks down his/her entire personhood. As our friend Greg Wilson calls it, “abuse is a dangerous reversal of love.”

Coercive control takes many forms, but the root of all of them is power and control. The Power and Control Wheel shown below illustrates many other types of abusive and coercively controlling behaviors that can occur. Not all aspects listed have to be present for it to be considered a coercively controlling relationship. If even one coercively controlling pattern is present – whether physical or sexual violence is present or not – the relationship may be destructive.

Why Separation May be Wise

Here at The Journey and The Process we are pro-marriage therapists. We believe in marriage and we believe marriage can be great. We help couples have great marriages all the time. That said, when coercive control and abusive behaviors are present both parties need to get treatment individually if there is to be any hope for the marriage. The person doing the coercive controlling needs to figure out why they feel the need to control their partner and learn ways to have healthy, connected relationship without abusive tactics. The person being coercively controlled needs to heal from the damage the abusive behaviors has caused and learn new ways of relating and being in healthy relationship.

Marriage separation can facilitate healing for both people in that it can help break relationship patterns. It can be incredibly hard to shift the relational dance in the same house when there is coercive control occurring. Some fear separation means divorce, but that isn’t at all true. A healthy separation where both parties are working on their own stuff can lead to true healing and maybe even reconciliation. Our goal when separation is appropriate is to help our client heal and be able to be reconciled – first and foremost to God. If reconciliation happens with his/her partner that’s an added bonus.

If you think coercive control may be present in your relationship, reach out today to schedule your free, 15-minute consultation and get connected to one of our incredible therapists or coaches.

For men who are struggling with using coercively controlling behaviors, we invite you to join our Men of Peace cohort. You can learn more and apply here for the next cohort.

The post When Marriage Separation May Be Appropriate appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

The first time I suggest this to a new client, I can almost always predict their reaction. Their eyes go a little wide. Sometimes they laugh. Let’s be honest, they almost always laugh. Not like “haha that was funny,” but more like, “haha you are not sane.” And then they say some version of: “What?”

Yes. That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. I know how it sounds maybe less than helpful. Stick with me, though.

When the client gives it a try, here’s what almost always happens: that same client comes back the following week and tells me it helped more than they expected. Sometimes a lot more. Because figuring out how to stop worrying isn’t about eliminating worry altogether. It’s more about learning to be the one in charge of when and how much it gets.

The Problem with Worry that Has No Address

There are infinite things to worry about in this life. If you’ve ever lain awake at 2am running through the full catalog — your finances, your kids, your health, that thing you said in a meeting three years ago (literally why do we replay old conversations?!) — you already know this. Worry has an extraordinary capacity to expand and fill whatever space you give it. It’s like kudzu (for those who don’t know, kudzu is an invasive plant you often see in the southern US, it can grow like a foot a day and it takes over everything).

The trouble with unscheduled, unconstrained worry is that it doesn’t stay in its lane. It bleeds into everything. It interrupts your dinner. It hijacks your morning. It shows up while you’re trying to be present with the people you love or focus on the work in front of you. Living on autopilot means worry gets to wander wherever it wants, whenever it wants and you’re just along for the ride.

Most people who struggle with chronic worry have tried to stop worrying by willpower alone. By telling themselves to think positive. By reminding themselves that worrying doesn’t help. All of that is true and none of it actually works. Telling an anxious brain to simply stop being anxious is a bit like telling a river to stop flowing. The water needs somewhere to go. In the history of time, just saying “stop it” has literally never worked.

What the Bible Says About How to Stop Worrying

Before we get to the practical skill, I want to ground us in something. Matthew 6:34 — one of the most quoted verses on worry — says: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Jesus wasn’t dismissing the reality of hard things. He wasn’t saying your concerns don’t matter or that planning ahead is wrong (legit see the rest of Scripture on those). He was pointing to something profoundly practical: the present moment is where your power actually lives. The worries of tomorrow, rehearsed today, don’t protect you from tomorrow’s trouble. They just steal today’s peace. And also, you aren’t in tomorrow yet. And yesterday has already happened.

Philippians 4:6-7 pairs the instruction “do not be anxious about anything” with a specific action: bring your concerns to God in prayer, with thanksgiving. That is not passive and it’s also not dismissive. That is not “just don’t worry.” It is an active, intentional practice of taking what is consuming you and placing it somewhere specific. Giving it an address. AKA, giving the worry water a place to flow that can actually handle it. Which is, interestingly, exactly what scheduled worry time does.

What Worry Time Actually Is

Worry time is exactly what it sounds like: a designated, time-limited window each day when you intentionally allow yourself to worry. You pick a time. Many people choose late afternoon or early evening, somewhere between the activity of the day and the wind-down of the night. You set a timer for no longer than 15 to 30 minutes. And during that window, you worry. Fully, freely, without trying to stop yourself or talk yourself out of it.

Have all the thoughts. Feel all the feelings. Let the concerns that have been circling all day actually land somewhere. Some people journal their worries and any emotions that come up. That’s worry time.

And then, when the timer goes off, you set it aside. You can imagine placing it in a box on a shelf, or handing it to God in prayer, or whatever mental image helps you create a boundary around it. And you return to the present moment.

The critical piece — the one that makes this actually work — is what you do throughout the rest of the day. When a worry arises outside of your designated window, you don’t engage it. You don’t push it away with white-knuckled willpower either. You simply acknowledge it: I hear you. You have a time and a place. I’ll get to you then. And you gently redirect your attention back to what’s actually in front of you.

Why This Works (The Science Behind It)

Worry time works because it does something that willpower alone cannot: it gives the anxious brain a legitimate outlet. Instead of trying to suppress worry, which tends to make it louder and more insistent, you are containing it. You are telling your nervous system: this concern will be addressed. It has a time and a place. It is not being ignored.

Research on mindfulness and anxiety consistently shows that one of the most effective ways to reduce the grip of chronic worry is not to eliminate it but to change your relationship with it. When worry has a designated container, it loses the power to colonize your entire day. You become intentional about when and how you engage with your concerns.

There is also something deeply regulating about the act of being one mindful — doing one thing at a time, fully present with just that one thing. When you give worry a window and then close the window, you create the conditions for genuine focus and genuine rest at all other times. The brain is remarkably responsive to structure and permission. Give it both, and it often surprises you.

I know this all may sound like utter poppycock, but I’ve worked with enough clients and run enough skills groups to have seen the results firsthand. And it’s a personal practice I’ve engaged in a long time.

How to Stop Worrying the Rest of the Day

The other side of worry time (the part that makes it a complete skill rather than just a 20-minute daily exercise) is learning to be one mindful in the hours outside your worry window. This is the practice of doing one thing at a time, fully present, without letting the undone worries of tomorrow crowd into what you’re doing right now.

One mindfulness is the antidote to the scattered, fragmented feeling that chronic worry produces. When we are worried, we are almost never fully present; part of us is always somewhere else, running calculations on things that haven’t happened yet. One mindfulness interrupts that pattern by anchoring you deliberately to what is actually in front of you.

This might look like washing the dishes and only washing the dishes. You notice the temperature of the water, the feel of the soap, the sound of the water running. Or having a conversation with your child and truly being present for it, not half-present while your mind drafts tomorrow’s to-do list. Or sitting in prayer and actually being there, rather than going through the motions while worry runs in the background.

It sounds simple. It takes practice. And it genuinely works. And look – to be clear – this is not gonna be easy every time and it’s not gonna go perfectly. That is okay. It’s a skill and meant to be one of many in your toolbox.

A Few Practical Tips for Getting Started

If you’re ready to try worry time, here are a few things that help it work well. First, choose your time intentionally. Avoid scheduling worry time too close to bedtime — you want enough time afterward to decompress before sleep. Late afternoon tends to work well for many people. I had one client that scheduled it before dinner. Worry time, then dinner time. That worked super well for her.

Second, use a timer and take it seriously. The timer is not a suggestion. It creates the container, and the container is what makes this skill work. When the timer goes off, worry time is over. You can write down any unfinished concerns to carry into the next day’s session and then close the window. Sometimes using visualization can be helpful in this regard. Imagine actually putting the worry away in whatever way works for you.

Third, be patient with yourself. If you’ve been a lifelong worrier, your brain has well-worn pathways leading straight to anxiety. Redirecting those pathways takes repetition. The first week may feel awkward. The second week may feel slightly less awkward. By week three or four, many people find it starting to feel more natural and they are genuinely surprised by how much calmer the rest of their day has become.

And finally, consider pairing your worry time with prayer. Bring what surfaces into your worry window directly to God. I’m not advocating a formula here. If you choose to journal during worry time, you can write worry prayers and lift the up to Jesus as you engage.

You Are Allowed to Put It Down

Here is the thing about learning how to stop worrying that I most want you to hear: you are allowed to put it down – the “it” being the worries. You are not being irresponsible by refusing to carry your worries every waking hour. You are not betraying the people you love by not rehearsing every possible way things could go wrong (this often comes from trauma and is a form of hypervigilance). You are not failing to trust God by choosing to be present right now instead of anxious about tomorrow.

The abundant life Jesus promises is not a life without hard things. Rather, it’s a life where hard things have their proper place, where they don’t get to occupy every room, every hour, every quiet moment. Worry time is one small, practical, surprisingly powerful way to begin reclaiming those spaces.

Give it a try this week. I think you might surprise yourself.

Next Steps

We know this skill is simple, but not always easy! Sometimes we need some support as we heal from or reubuid after trauma. If you need a little support with it, reach out to us for a free, 15-minute consultation. One of our fantastic therapist or coaches would be happy to help you build these skills and those new neural pathways that go with them!

Ready to break the anxiety cycle and find a more grace-filled way forward? Visit tabithawestbrook.com/online-courses to learn more about the Taking Every Thought Captive course series. Use code RESET24 for 80% off.

The post How to Stop Worrying: What If You Scheduled It Instead? appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

I said this to a client once and it stopped them mid-sentence. We’d been talking about all the ways they were bracing for pain that hadn’t arrived yet — rehearsing it, pre-grieving it, building elaborate mental scenarios for how bad it might get.

They went quiet. And then she said, “Well crap. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”

Most of us have two default responses when it comes to suffering and pain. We either spend enormous energy dreading it before it arrives. We do things like catastrophizing, over-preparing, and white-knuckling the future. Or when it does arrive, we shut down and refuse to process it at all. We push it down, power through, and tell ourselves we’re fine. Also, sometimes it never arrives and we bought a ticket to nowhere.

Neither of those approaches works. And there is a better way to deal with suffering and pain, one that is both practical and rooted in faith.

Suffering Is Guaranteed. We Live on Actual Earth.

Let’s start with something the Church sometimes dances around: suffering is not a sign that something has gone wrong with your life or your faith. It is a guaranteed part of being human. Like, that is part of living here is that stuff gets real hard sometimes.

In John 16:33, Jesus said plainly: “In this world you will have trouble.” Not might. Not could. Will. He didn’t promise a pain-free life to those who follow Him. What He promised was this: “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Paul writes in Philippians 3:10 about knowing Christ and “the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings.” I used to really wonder what this meant, then the world became a giant dumpster fire and it’s now real obvious. So many folks have endured and are enduring deep suffering. Because Jesus suffered, we know He gets it. There is a companionship in suffering — both with Christ and with one another. And holding hope together helps us endure.

Knowing that suffering will come doesn’t have to be a dark or frightening thought. It can actually be freeing. When we stop being surprised by pain and start being equipped for it, everything changes in how we deal with suffering and pain when it shows up at our door. Please note, this does not make it easy. The concept may be simple, but suffering sucks. There is no way to sugarcoat that.

The Train Metaphor — Why Advanced Purchase is Unhelpful

When that train of suffering does arrive, God provides what we need to board it. He doesn’t empower us beforehand. He meets us in the moment, when we need it and how we need it.

This is what Lamentations 3:22-23 is pointing to: His mercies are new every morning. The grace for tomorrow’s pain is not available today, because you don’t need it today. You need today’s grace for today’s reality. And, quite honestly, we often are the worst prophets. We predict wrong and a whole other train shows up. And we need God’s provision for something else entirely.

When I was learning I was in a coercively controlling marriage, God led me to Hosea 6:1-3. Those verses basically say God is going to tear stuff down and rebuild it. I remember sitting on my bed as I read it. I can still see the deep plum wall of that room and the purple comforter on my bed. My Bible was in my lap as tears dripped onto the page. I was not a fan. In fact, my words to God were like, “Who reads Hosea anyway?!” (Look, I know plenty of people do, but in that moment I was not amused.) But there was a sweetness of God rebuilding in those verses. I could not have predicted what was coming. It was harrowing. I thought I was going to lose my life a couple times. There is no amount of worry or prognostication that could have made that season easier. But what I for sure had each step of the way was Jesus holding on to me. I obviously made it through, and it’s a rock of remembrance for me now.

This is one of the most practically helpful truths I know when it comes to dealing with anxiety about future suffering. You aren’t meant to carry what hasn’t been given to you yet. And you’re probably preparing for the wrong thing anyway. So spending your present-moment energy bracing for a train that isn’t at the station yet doesn’t protect you from the pain when it comes, it just steals your peace in the meantime.

The Other Extreme: Refusing to Process Pain That’s Already Here

The opposite problem is just as common, and just as costly. When suffering arrives many of us shut the door on it. We function. We cope. We keep moving. We exist. We do this because sitting with pain feels unbearable, or weak, or like we’re not trusting God enough.

But unprocessed pain doesn’t disappear. It relocates. It shows up as chronic anxiety, as numbness, as short fuses and sleepless nights and a low-grade sadness that never quite lifts. It shows up in our bodies (yes, we’d love it if the body stopped keeping the score, but here we are). It shows up in our closest relationships. The pain we refuse to feel doesn’t go away, it just goes underground. It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Psalms tell us that “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Notice it’s not the ones who have it together or the ones who powered through. It’s the brokenhearted. God never minimizes our pain.

Being Present is What Keeps Pain from Getting Worse

One of the most important things I’ve learned, both as a counselor and as someone who has walked through deep grief myself, is that being in the present moment is one of the most powerful tools we have when it comes to how to deal with suffering and pain. We often say “name it to tame it.” When we accurately name what is happening and are present with it, it loses some of its oomph. That doesn’t mean it’s not awful, it’s just not as awful.

When we are living on autopilot with our minds racing ahead to worst-case futures or stuck rehearsing the past we add to our suffering. We take pain that exists in the present and we layer it with fear about tomorrow and regret about yesterday. And the weight becomes almost unbearable. As mentioned in the last blog, we begin to spiral.

But when we’re able to be fully in the present moment — just this moment, just this breath, just what is actually happening right now — we deal with only what is actually in front of us. Not the imagined future pain. Not the replayed past. Just this moment. And this moment is the only where we happen to have real agency.

That is not denial. Nor is it a spiritual bypass. We aren’t pretending everything is fine. It is the radical, countercultural practice of refusing to make your suffering worse by adding to it what isn’t even here yet or flatly ignoring what’s actually happening.

Two weeks after my mother went home to be with Jesus, I went to a concert. A song came on that I had played on repeat during her illness because it reminded me of God’s faithfulness. I stood there — no phone out, no recording, no pretending okay-ness to make the people next to me feel comfortable. I just let myself be fully present with that song and with Jesus. Tears ran down my face. I didn’t care. In that moment, being present with my grief and with God was the most healing thing I could have done. I wasn’t ahead of the pain. I wasn’t behind it. I was in it, and He was there too. And side note, no one at the concert said anything to me.

Practical Skills for Walking Through Pain

Learning how to deal with suffering and pain well is not something most of us were ever taught. We were taught to be strong. To push through. To “give it to God” without really being shown what that looks like in practice. But there are concrete, learnable skills that can help you walk through suffering without being destroyed by it.

These skills include learning to observe and describe what you’re actually experiencing — naming your emotions without being overwhelmed by them. Learning to stay in the present moment rather than projecting into feared futures. Learning to let thoughts and feelings pass through without latching onto them and fueling the spiral. Learning to problem-solve when problem-solving is possible, and to grieve fully when it isn’t.

None of this eliminates pain. I will never promise you that. But it does keep pain from compounding. It keeps suffering from becoming a prison sentence. And it keeps you connected — to yourself, to the people you love, and to the God who promised to be near. And it really does let others come alongside you to bring comfort. We aren’t supposed to do this life alone.

You Were Not Meant to White-knuckle This Alone

One of the greatest lies that suffering tells us is that we have to manage it alone. That needing help is weakness. That if our faith were stronger, we’d be handling this better. Ick for the toxic individualism many of us were taught.

We were created for community. This means asking for help is not a failure of faith nor is being authentic when things, frankly, are awful.

Whether that help comes from a trusted friend, a counselor, a pastor, or a structured set of skills you practice on your own (or all of these), receiving support when you are in pain is not weakness. Or dumb. Or shameful. It’s being gentle to yourself and seeing yourself as God sees you.

The trains will occasionally come. You don’t need to buy the ticket before it arrives. But when it does you can walk through it. It won’t be because you’ve braced hard enough or worried enough or prepared enough. It’ll be because you’ve built the skills, built authentic community, cultivated presence, and anchored yourself to the One who has already overcome. Darkness never wins; Light is always overcomes.

Ready to build the skills to walk through pain without being undone by it? We have an online course just for you. Visit tabithawestbrook.com/online-courses to learn more about the Taking Every Thought Captive course series and start practicing today. Use code RESET24 for 80% off.

Need support from a therapist or coach to help build the skills into your life? Reach out for your free, 15-minute consultation call. We can walk with you to healing.

The post How to Deal with Suffering and Pain: Stop Making an Advanced Purchase appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

One of my supervisees said something to me once that I haven’t stopped repeating since: “nice girls end up in trunks.”

She wasn’t being dramatic. She was naming something super real; something a lot of us learned the hard way. We learned the habit of being endlessly accommodating, sweet, and easy. That habit is straight up exhausting and it can actually put you in danger.

Here’s what trauma therapy has taught me: chronic niceness can be a habituated fawn response that becomes a nervous system strategy. Until we name it for what it is, we can’t change it (which is true of literally everything).

When Niceness is the Fawn Response in Disguise

Most people have heard of fight, flight, and freeze. But there’s a fourth trauma response that doesn’t get as much airtime: the fawn response. Fawning is what happens when your nervous system learns that conflict brings danger, so you default to appeasing, accommodating, and making yourself easy to be around. Essentially you learn that if you’re confronted with a bear, you make it a steak to keep it from eating you.

The fawn response can look polite on the outside while you quietly abandon yourself on the inside. It shows up as saying yes when you mean no, over-explaining your needs (oh, the things trauma teaches us), tolerating disrespect in relationships, staying silent when you should speak up, and smiling through things that are actually not okay.

This pattern shows up everywhere — in marriages, workplaces, churches, and even medical appointments. And in communities that reward being sweet, quiet, and easy (especially Christian spaces where niceness gets equated with godliness) the fawn response can go completely undetected for decades.

The cost is real: resentment, anxiety, eroded self-trust, and boundaries so weak they leave you vulnerable to coercive control.

Niceness and Kindness Are Not the Same Thing

This is one of the most important distinctions I teach, and I really want you to hear it: niceness and kindness are not the same thing.

Niceness is other-regulated, driven by the need for approval, fear of consequences, or the desperate hope that if you just keep things pleasant, nothing bad will happen. Niceness stays quiet. Niceness goes along and it smiles sweet when it should speak.

Kindness is self-sourced. It comes out of genuine care, not fear. Here’s what makes it real different: kindness is willing to tell the truth. If I am being kind to you, I might say something hard, not because I don’t love you, but precisely because I do.

Think about Jesus in John 2, flipping tables in the temple (personal fave story). In that moment, He is as much kindness and love as He is justice. He’s giving people the opportunity to see something different. That was kind. What they were doing was not. And there are a myriad of other Bible stories that model kindness that way, minus the table flipping part.

In faith-centered spaces, love without truth becomes enabling. Truth without love becomes noise (and honestly can also become spiritually abusive). Mature, healthy relationships hold both — warmth and directness, care and clarity, grace and honesty. Hmmm, sounds like dialectics (two opposite things that can be synthesized). When we stop confusing niceness with kindness, we can finally become both warm and direct at the same time. We become boundaried.

What Healthy Boundaries Actually Are (and What They’re Not)

Let’s talk about boundaries for a second, because most of us were taught them wrong.

A boundary is not an ultimatum. It is not a punishment. It is not a tool to control another person’s behavior. A boundary is simply information about what you will allow and not allow, and what you will do if a line is crossed.

Here’s the difference: “You can’t talk to me that way” is not a boundary — that’s trying to control what someone else does. “If you keep talking to me that way, I’m going to leave the room” is a boundary. You’re managing your own behavior, not theirs. That person can still talk to you however they want, you’re just not going to stick around for it.

I love to think about boundaries as fences versus walls. Sometimes you need a solid wall — a firm, non-negotiable limit with someone who has proven themselves unsafe. Oftentimes you need a fence with a gate you can open and close, depending on what’s needed in the moment. Neither is wrong, it just really depends on what’s appropriate for that relationship. Both can be wise, and sometimes in different seasons.

For survivors of domestic abuse, spiritual abuse, and coercive control, guilt around boundaries can feel overwhelming. You were trained to prioritize everyone else’s feelings above your own. But guilt is not a reliable moral compass (also, sometimes it’s false guilt, but that’s another blog). Safety matters. With safe people, healthy boundaries don’t damage relationship, they deepen it, because you are showing up more authentically.

A Practical Tool: DEAR MAN for Assertiveness

If you’re trying to find your voice and don’t know where to start, my favorite DBT interpersonal effectiveness skill, called DEAR MAN, is worth learning. It gives you a clean structure for hard conversations without overexplaining, over-apologizing, or shutting down.

Here’s how it works:

Describe the facts of the situation briefly and without judgment.

Express your emotion in a few clear words.

Assert a clear, specific ask.

Find the reward, the win-win, and explain what’s in it for both of you.

The MAN part is staying Mindful, appear Assertive, and be willing to Negotiate when that’s appropriate. And sometimes negotiation is not appropriate. We do not negotiate with terrorists (and coercive controllers or abusers are terrorists in this example).

This approach helps you regulate before you speak, keeps your ask clear and understandable (because people are not mind readers), and reduces the spiral of overexplaining that so many of us with the fawn response know all too well.

You Don’t Have to Keep Performing

Healing from the fawn response is a process, and it’s okay to need practice (as I say, “practice makes proficient”). Be kind to yourself as you learn (go back and brush up on self-compassion, if needed). The goal isn’t to become harsh or hard; it’s to trade performative niceness for honest, grounded, safe connection.

You are allowed to be both warm and direct. You are allowed to say no and still be a good person. You are allowed to set a boundary and still love someone deeply.

The trunk is not your destiny.

Ready to Go Deeper?

If this resonated with you and you recognized yourself in the fawn response and you’ve spent years being nice at the expense of being safe, you don’t have to keep figuring it out alone.

Working with a trauma-informed therapist or coach can help you identify your patterns, find your voice, and build the kind of boundaries that actually protect you, without making you someone you’re not.

If you’re ready to work with one our amazing trauma-specialized professionals and explore therapy or coaching options, reach out to us today. We’re happy to help you build skills and live a healthy, boundaried life.

The post The Fawn Response and the Difference Between Niceness and Kindness appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.