Are you in the Family Fixer role?

You Might Be in the Family Fixer Role If…

• You have become the “therapist friend” or the “fixer partner.”
• You feel guilty choosing yourself or your own needs if it makes someone else upset.
• You struggle to say “no.”
• You anticipate problems before they happen, sensing tension before anyone else notices.
• You often overbook yourself because you always say “yes” when someone needs you.
• You panic internally when someone is upset with you.
• You often apologize for things that aren’t your fault.
• You’re the reliable one, everyone’s “go-to.”
• You’ve been called “too sensitive.”
• You seem to figure it out when no one else knows what to do.

You were always monitoring the room, anticipating tension before anyone else noticed. You learned to scan for conflict, shifts in tone, or signs that someone was upset. Staying ahead of the chaos felt safer than having to react to it.

You may have been praised for being “mature,” “easy,” or “so responsible.” Adults admired how helpful you were. What they often didn’t realize was that your maturity came from survival, not safety.

Your needs became secondary to everyone else’s. You learned that being helpful kept the peace, earned approval, or prevented conflict. Somewhere along the way, being loved became tangled with being useful.

You were the Fixer.

What is the Family Fixer Role?

The family fixer role is a dynamic in which one family member carries the emotional labor and keeps the family system functioning. The Fixer is often the one jumping in when there’s a problem, solving pain, and stabilizing everyone to maintain the family’s peace.

Where the Golden Child carries the expectation and the Scapegoat carries the blame, the Fixer carries the responsibility of the family.

What it Looks Like to Be in the Family Fixer Role

The person in the family fixer role is often incredibly competent, calm, and nurturing. They are emotionally intelligent and level-headed in a crisis. These are wonderful skills, but they were hard-earned and necessary. The Fixer often steps into this role because someone has to.

The Fixer typically puts themselves aside to become a blank slate, managing everyone else’s emotions. They are usually only praised when they are in this role and criticized or punished when their own emotions or needs get in the way.

Whether the problem is emotional, relational, financial, or logistical, the Fixer steps in to help. Their main goal is to manage the emotions and crises in the family, feeling wholly responsible for the outcome.

What it Feels Like to Be in the Family Fixer Role

The Fixer may feel like they are drowning while making sure everyone else can breathe.

They are the reason airplane attendants remind us to put on our own oxygen mask before helping others. The Fixer has been taught to put everyone else’s needs first, always.

The Fixer’s biggest fears are others’ suffering and being helpless to do anything about it. They feel safest when they are in control or acting as a leader. They are constantly scanning the room, looking for tension and adjusting their behavior to keep the peace. This is constant emotional attunement, and being in a chronic state of emotional monitoring is actually a form of hypervigilance.

How the Family Fixer Role is Formed

Many families where the family fixer role develops have caregivers who are emotionally immature, unavailable, or volatile. This dynamic is common in families where one or more caregivers have unmanaged mental health issues, alcohol dependency, constant conflict between adults, or where showing emotion was proven to be unsafe and unwelcome.

The child learns that if they can manage everyone emotionally, the home feels safer. They learn that anticipating needs prevents chaos. So, they push aside their own feelings, needs, and preferences in order to maintain a false sense of stability.

What it Costs You to Be the Family Fixer

Growing up in the family fixer role, the adult Fixer often struggles to know their own personal needs. They may not know the answers to simple questions like, “What do you want to do?” Instead, they focus on others and what those others may want.

The Fixer confuses being needed for being loved. They learn that love is conditional on managing their partner or making others’ lives as easy as possible.

At work or in friendships, the Fixer becomes everyone’s “go-to” and feels indispensable. They become hyper-responsible. This makes building boundaries and identifying their own needs feel nearly impossible, because the praise they receive further reinforces the need to be needed.

The Fixer may also struggle to receive help, since they only feel loved when they are the one giving it. Saying “No” feels almost impossible. They overextend themselves and take on too much to appease everyone else.

It is not uncommon for the person in the family fixer role to develop deep resentment when they are burnt out from constant monitoring and fixing. This over giving does have an end, and at that end is resentment, passive-aggressive behavior, emotional outbursts, or withdrawal. Their anger is rarely explosive, but instead a seething question: “Why does everything fall on me?” And even then, the Fixer often blames themselves for not being stronger.

What Healing Looks Like for the Family Fixer Role

For Parents of the Fixer

It is never too late to minimize the damage done. Here are a few ways to foster healing in this dynamic:

Create Space for the Fixer. Allow the Fixer to feel whatever they need to feel. Let them explore their own likes and needs. This helps them recapture their autonomy and personhood outside of being needed.

Do the Work. When parents go to therapy or find healthy ways to manage their own emotions, it begins to remove some of the burden from the Fixer. It is not the child’s job to be a parent’s therapist.

Praise Their Wholeness. The Fixer is far more than what they do for others. Allow them to be fully human, with strengths and weaknesses, flaws and graces. Praise them for being whole, not just useful.

For the Fixer: Steps Toward Healing

You are far more than what you can give. You have adapted well and fought hard to help. You deserve to be helped too. You don’t have to carry it all alone.

Boundaries. The Fixer deserves boundaries after a lifetime of having essentially none. Creating space for personal needs and time does not reflect on your worth. “No” is a complete sentence. You are allowed to say it.

Reconnecting with You. Reconnecting with your own needs, wants, and desires is a powerful step toward healing. Asking yourself what you want and how you feel can begin to give your own needs a voice, for perhaps the first time.

Therapy and Community. The Fixer is so used to being everyone’s person. They are the shoulder to cry on, the “I’ll handle it” friend. How the Fixer shows up for their people, they deserve people to show up for them too, with boundaries, with love, and with earnestly gentle care.

You Were Never Meant to Carry it Alone

The caretaker. The enabler. The strong one. The emotional manager. The Fixer. However you have had to show up, however you have felt you had to earn love, it is not all you’re worth.

It may have felt like you had to earn your place. You may be tired, dear friend. You have been carrying so much. You deserve support. You were never meant to carry it alone.

If you read this and felt the “oof” in your chest, whether you’re in the Family Fixer role or a parent recognizing you’ve fostered this dynamic, 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. Healing is possible, and it would be an honor to walk with you.

Reach out below for a free, 15-minute consultation today.

Need more than blogs? Join our Transformational Topics Community.

You need more than just a blog. You need a deeper dive because you’re so ready to heal. Therapy or coaching might be out of reach for you right now. Or you just need a little more between sessions.

That’s where the Transformational Topics Community comes in.

The Transformational Topics Community is a private membership for trauma survivors who are ready to move from surviving to truly living. Each month, our licensed therapists and certified coaches guide you through one carefully chosen healing topic. It begins with a private podcast episode delivered directly to your favorite app—no new logins, no extra platforms. Just press play.

From there, you’ll receive three weeks of practical tools designed to help you gently apply what you’re learning to your real life.

Worksheets. Journal prompts. Art prompts. Short videos. Audio practices. And once a quarter you’ll get a live zoom with other community members and our amazing team.

This is not busywork—real tools for real life.

Each one is thoughtfully created to help you:

• understand yourself more deeply
• reconnect with your body
• and begin building the life you know is possible

Expert-backed. Compassionately guided. Created for people who need support but may not have access to therapy right now.

This is not therapy or coaching. But for many, it may be your next best step forward. Join us now for just $10/month.

References

[1] Bailey, K. (n.d.). Why you feel responsible for everyone: The burden of the family fixer. Lime Tree Counseling. https://limetreecounseling.com/family-fixer-role-adult-child-of-alcoholic/

[2] Gillis, K. (2023). 8 Common dysfunctional family roles. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/invisible-bruises/202303/8-common-dysfunctional-family-roles

[3] 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/

[4] Stillwater Therapy (n.d.). Breaking old family roles: You’re not the “fixer” anymore. https://www.stillwater-therapy.com/resources/breaking-old-family-roles-youre-not-the-fixer-anymore

The post The Family Fixer Role: How Childhood Trauma Creates the Need to Fix Everyone appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

You Might Be Experiencing the Golden Child Syndrome If…

• You feel anxious when you’re not being productive
• You struggle to know what you actually want
• You seek acceptance, but praise often feels uncomfortable
• You fear disappointing people more than anything
• You put everyone else’s needs above your own
• You’ve been called “mature for your age” your entire life

You were the easy one, the pleasure to have in class, the one your parents didn’t have to worry about. You knew how to be good. You had everything together. You made it look so easy. No one saw what it cost you to stay that way.

You were the Golden Child.

In a family system, each person often falls into a role – spoken or unspoken. It’s the way the system seems to function, with each member fulfilling a duty. This 14-part series explores common family roles found in dysfunctional family systems and how they shape the way we show up in relationships, work, and identity. We’re starting with the one that often gets praised the most…and questioned the least. Golden child syndrome.

The Golden Child is the favored child who often receives special treatment, high praise, and meets high standards. The Golden Child is often the one who can do no wrong – or more accurately, the one who is not allowed to.

Let’s also quickly explain what we mean here by syndrome. A syndrome is a group of behaviors or traits that tend to occur together. A syndrome describes what is happening, but unlike a disorder, it doesn’t always have a single, clearly understood root cause. As you’ll see, the Golden Child Syndrome is formed through a varied family system dynamic that has many layers that include the role he/she is placed in and learns and his/her own way of being that is part of the innate self.

What it Looks Like:

From the outside, The Golden Child may look privileged and highly regarded in their family. They may receive constant praise for their achievements, earned or not. But this praise comes with strings attached.

The Golden Child is often held to unrealistic expectations and face consequences when they are not met. Consequences in this role do not often look like punishment in the traditional sense but instead may come in the form of the withholding of love and acceptance. The Golden Child learns quickly: if they are not “perfect,” they are not worthy of love.

What it Feels Like to Be the Golden Child

Being the Golden Child can be incredibly lonely. They are often ostracized from their siblings; the pedestal they’re placed on keeps them out of reach. The siblings of the Golden Child often develop resentment and jealousy. The Golden Child may cope with this elevated status by developing entitlement-oriented and superiority-driven traits that live up to this “perfect” image they seek to obtain. From the outside, their suffering can look like privilege. What it really is, though, is a coping mechanism to receive love and care.

The Golden Child often develops intense people-pleasing tendencies, carrying the belief that others’ needs must come before their own. Many Golden Children struggle to identify what their own needs could be, their identity slowly shaping itself around expectations and external praise.

Perfectionism and the fear of failure become the armor the Golden Child learns to wear. When someone is taught that their worth is directly derived from their ability to be “perfect,” failure becomes a terrifying option.

How the Golden Child is Formed (Golden Child Syndrome)

Favoritism plays a lead role in the formation of golden child syndrome. One child is often selected as the idol in the sibling line-up, assigned to take on the expectations and dreams of the family system.

The Golden Child’s existence may revolve around the parents’ attempt to live vicariously through them. Rather than being a separate being with their own strengths, weaknesses, hopes, and dreams, the Golden Child becomes an extension of the parent or caregiver. This version of themselves the parents see through their Golden Child is an idealized version. When the Golden Child does not live up to this dream and ambition, they are often harshly criticized.

This criticism often comes wrapped in the package of coercion. The family system makes it unsafe for the Golden Child to be anything aside from “perfect.” The child may not feel safe voicing their opinions or feelings.

Conditional love becomes the foundation of the Golden Child’s world. Their identity, motivations, and role become defined by the approval and acceptance of their family system. Yet, the system has taught them that the only way they can gain this approval and acceptance is through performance. This codependent and symbiotic relationship between parents and the Golden Child fuels the system and ensures the Golden Child continues seeking approval and strives to accomplish the family’s goals. The Golden Child learns that if they stop performing properly or agreeing wholly, the love vanishes. Their nervous systems become wired for relentless achievement and hypervigilance in seeking acceptance or rejection.

What it Costs You to Be the Golden Child

Bessel van der Kolk, MD, a psychiatrist and trauma researcher, found that childhoods fraught with conditional approval produces hyperactive threat-detection systems in the nervous system that endure into adulthood. Conditional love breeds hypervigilance in Golden Children – one of the most enduring effects of golden child syndrome. These Golden Children often grow into adults who are trained to monitor and respond to others’ emotional states in order to maintain their own safety. Existing in a constant state of fearing rejection can quickly escalate to emotional burnout, chronic stress, and other states of havoc in the Golden Child’s nervous system. The Golden Child’s body may stay on high alert, even in moments that are supposed to feel safe.

Growing up in a home where their parents offered love in return for accomplishment, the Golden Child often seeks external validation. They may struggle to develop a healthy sense of self-worth and autonomy outside of their parents’ expectations and validation. As adults, this can morph into a desire to hear external validation from other authority figures, such as a boss, or from their romantic partners.

The Golden Child from childhood to adulthood may struggle with criticism. In their role, failure or perceived weakness was enough to challenge their worth as a human. If they were to not meet expectations, they were no longer worthy of being loved. When someone criticizes them, even constructively, it can feel like a personal attack. Many Golden Children do not tolerate this type of feedback.

In turn, the Golden Child as an adult may also struggle to accept positive feedback as well. Growing up in a home where their identity was crafted by praise, receiving compliments may feel dangerous and trigger their same anxiety from childhood.

The Golden Child’s self-image is one of the most devastating casualties of golden child syndrome. Unable to form an identity outside of their family’s acceptance and praise, the Golden Child may view themselves constantly as “not good enough” when “perfect” is out of reach. This inadequacy haunts the Golden Child throughout their life, in their relationships, career aspirations, and achievements unless they begin to examine their way of being. They may find it difficult to trust their own judgment, leading to difficulties becoming independent and making decisions. In their roles as adults, they may develop imposter syndrome, not believing they are capable or worthy of their positions because they are never quite “good enough.”

Dan Siegel, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry, found that children raised with performance-based, conditional love are significantly more likely to show symptoms of anxiety and lower inherent motivation in adulthood compared to the children in homes with unconditional positive regard. We worked with a teen client whose parents were exacting in their expectations and she, needing their love and support, worked hard to meet them. The result was burnout and suicidality at the tender age of just sixteen.

The Golden Children as Golden Adults become anxious and struggle to find motivation away from their parents’ approval. Rest can begin to feel unsafe, even if earned. Slowing down can feel like losing your worth. It often leads the Golden Child to constantly over-book or overload themselves in an attempt to avoid that feeling.

Relationships with family are often casualties to being anointed the Golden Child. Sibling dynamics are often fraught with jealousy and resentment from the other siblings and guilt from the Golden Child. They often carry guilt–knowing, even if they couldn’t fully name it, that the way they were treated wasn’t the same as everyone else. The Golden Child may develop resentment toward their parents, creating a complicated source of inadequacy, lost worth, and lack of identity.

What Healing Looks Like:

Parents

Parents of Golden Children, it isn’t too late to mend this imbalance. There are a number of ways to create healing in the family dynamic when you realize you’ve inadvertently created Golden Child syndrome for one of your children:

1. Setting Healthy Boundaries

Creating boundaries in the family that ensures attention is balanced between siblings is a strong way to amend the damage created by the Golden Child role. With our young client, the parents were able to see as we worked together how their expectations were formed by their own struggles and fears and were able to balance the family dynamic.

1. Encourage Identity Independent of Praise

Parental praise cannot be the end-all-be-all of the child’s worth. Encouraging the children to explore their own experiences and feelings about them can help remediate this damage. Rather than praising the child’s accomplishments, parents can honor the traits the child exhibited (e.g., courage, strength, wisdom, kindness, honesty, empathy, curiosity, etc.). For our client and her family, her parents actively praised things other than her accomplishments. They also praised her accomplishments, which is appropriate and needed, but it was no longer the sum total of the praise they gave.

Outside of praise, creating a space where children can explore their own identity, interests, and beliefs can be a wonderful way to help bring healing to the Golden Child. Encourage the children to make decisions based on their values rather than on the influence of the parents. For our client family, this meant looking carefully over the extracurricular activities for the teen. Some serious cuts were made in her schedule and she was able to lean more fully into her interests and activities, not just what her parents thought would get her into the best college.

1. Therapy

Surprise, surprise that the therapist is recommending therapy as a remedy for this dynamic. I hear you. Let me explain. Therapy for both the parents and the children can be a wonderful way to create a safe space for everyone to examine what was going on for this dynamic to be present. Whether it’s individual or family therapy, it can bring in an empathetic third-party who is rooting for all of you, willing to get in the trenches with you to explore this and bring healing. It’s not easy work, but you don’t have to do it alone. Our client family did excellent work both individually and as a family. We saw much of the anxiety our teen client was experiencing melt away as the pressure was lifted.

The Golden Child

Healing is very possible. You are so deserving of it. Healing often begins when you realize your worth was never meant to be earned. You might start to wonder who you actually are outside of who you were expected to be.

1. Gather Your Tribe

It is not all on the Golden Child to heal. Healing is done in community and in practice. Through self-reflection, open-communication, and emotional support, healing is available. And, yes, therapy is incredibly helpful for those who are on this healing journey. Having a therapist on your side can help facilitate this growth and healing.

1. Boundaries

Just as the parents need boundaries when raising their children, it is important for Golden Children to establish boundaries when healing. The Golden Child is encouraged to set boundaries based on their own values and beliefs, to recognize their own needs and limitations. Our teen client was able to express the activities she liked and did not like. At first it was super scary for her since she’d never given her own opinion to her parents. She was able to learn to speak up and respectfully state what she enjoyed and what was too much in her schedule.

1. Reclaim Independence

In healing, adult Golden Children are encouraged to explore their own interests, apart from the expectations put on them as children. Relocation can potentially be an option, if needing physical space away from their family. The healing Golden Child is encouraged to find themselves, through play, through choice, through vulnerability.

Conclusion

The easy one. The pleasure to have in class. The hero. The saint. The Golden Child.

So much was expected of you–and even more was taken from you. Oftentimes parents don’t mean this with malice, but it doesn’t make Golden Child syndrome any easier. Healing is possible. I know it feels like you have to do it perfectly, that you have to do it right. It takes learning and practice to let go of those standards set for you so long ago. You don’t have to do it alone. Healing is messy, but it is worth it. You are worth it.

If any of this is resonating with you and you’re ready to finally rest and heal, we’d love to help you. Reach out today for a free, 15-minute consultation with one of our amazing therapists or coaches.

References

[1] Bay Area CBT Center (2024). Exploring the golden child syndrome: Navigating the complexities with trauma therapy. Bay Area CBT Center. https://bayareacbtcenter.com/golden-child/

[2] DeWitt, H. (2024). Golden child syndrome: How does it develop, and what effect does it have? Thriveworks. Clinically reviewed by Christine Ridley, LCSW. https://thriveworks.com/help-with/children-teens-adolescents/golden-child-syndrome/

[3] Embark Behavioral Health (2025). Dysfunctional family roles: Identifying and addressing them. Embark Behavioral Health. https://www.embarkbh.com/treatment/therapies/family-therapy/dysfunctional-family-roles/

[4] Martino, M. (2025). Understanding golden child syndrome: Symptoms, impacts, and strategies for healing. Handspring. Medically reviewed by Amy Kranzler, PhD. https://www.handspringhealth.com/post/understanding-golden-child-syndrome

[5] Wright, A. (2026). The golden child: The burden of being the ‘easy’ one. Annie Wright. https://anniewright.com/golden-child-high-achieving-women/

The post Golden Child Syndrome – What it is and how to heal appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has become an easy target in online trauma spaces, and some of that criticism is earned. CBT is structured talk therapy built around the link between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and it is heavily researched and widely covered by insurance. The problem starts when people treat CBT like a universal solvent for suffering. Trauma is not just a “thinking problem”; it lives in the nervous system, in attachment wounds, and in the body’s survival responses. If therapy ignores felt safety, minimizes real harm, or rushes to “challenge thoughts” while someone is still in danger, CBT can feel cold, overly intellectual, and invalidating. Done well, though, CBT becomes a practical tool inside a larger trauma-informed therapy plan.

What is helpful about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

A core strength of CBT is helping people notice automatic thoughts, especially automatic negative thoughts (often called ANTs). Many trauma survivors can “spiral” at lightning speed, jumping from a stressor to catastrophic outcomes because the brain is trying to predict threats and self-protect. Slowing that process down is powerful: noticing the thought, checking whether it is accurate, and choosing what to do next. CBT also gives language for what is happening in the mind, engaging the prefrontal cortex (our thinky thinky parts) so we can make meaning rather than being carried by alarm signals alone (our feely feely parts). The key nuance is that some negative thoughts are accurate. If you are in an abusive or coercively controlling relationship, fear may be a wise signal, not a cognitive distortion. Therapy must honor reality, increase safety, and support the body, not argue someone out of valid danger.

That is where “third wave CBT” approaches can shine, especially dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). DBT skills such as mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness can give trauma survivors options when their nervous system is overwhelmed. ACT adds room for values, acceptance, and committed action when life is hard and pain is real. Most importantly, these approaches can integrate somatic therapy concepts: what you notice in your body when a belief shows up, where shame lives physically, and how the nervous system shifts during stress. Many clinicians also pair cognitive work with body-based trauma methods like EMDR, brainspotting, internal family systems, and somatic experiencing, which help reprocess traumatic memories and the negative beliefs attached to them.

What is Trauma-informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Trauma-informed CBT takes into account what we know to be true about trauma and doesn’t bypass pain or minimize the harm someone has experienced. A trauma-informed CBT mindset also respects faith without spiritual bypassing. For people who connect mental health and Christian faith, identity beliefs matter deeply, but not in a “take two verses and call me in the morning” way. The whole person – mind, body, and spirit – is tended to in the healing process. As we often say here, we are not just brains on a stick.

If trauma planted the belief “I am worthless,” true healing will involve both cognitive and somatic work: naming the belief, tracking sensations, understanding where it came from, and gradually moving toward a truer, grounded belief about worth, safety, and strength. Practical tools include tracking thoughts, urges, behaviors, emotions, and sensations to find patterns before a harmful coping strategy takes over. When you can see the ditch your mind keeps flowing into, you can start backfilling it with new skills, support, and safer choices over time. Cognitive behavioral therapy is not the whole answer for trauma, but used wisely, it can be a valuable healing tool and a steady, empowering part of whole-person trauma therapy.

Your Next Best Step

We are passionate about providing the best, most comprehensive care to those who are healing. If you want to learn more about the whole-person therapy and coaching we offer or want to connect with one of our amazing therapists or coaches, reach out today for your free, 15-minute consultation. We’d love to help you heal and be your truest, most whole self.

The post Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Trauma appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

The hidden habits that keep us stuck — and the mindful shift that moves us forward.

We spend a lot of energy trying to win stuff like arguments and situations. We often have an inner monologue running constantly in our heads. But winning and being effective are not the same thing. In fact, the drive to be right is one of the biggest obstacles standing between us and the peaceful, purposeful life God promises, and also can really mess up relationships.

This week we dig into the seventh principle of mindful connection: effectiveness. This isn’t about productivity hacks or life optimization. It’s about something far more personal — learning to do what actually works, in a way that moves you toward your goals, your relationships, and ultimately, toward God.

Over years of working with clients — and doing my own inner work — I’ve seen the same pain points come up again and again when it comes to living effectively. Let’s walk through them together.

The Pain Points Standing in Our Way

These are the most common struggles that come up when we talk about effectiveness. Thankfully every single one has a way through.

“As Brené Brown said, ‘Clear is kind.’ If we are responding to what we think we should be, or what the situation should be, then we’re missing out on information and connection opportunity.” — Tabitha Westbrook

What Effectiveness Actually Looks Like

Being effective is not about being perfect. It’s not about getting everything right the first time. It’s about purposeful movement — doing what works, in this moment, toward the goal in front of you.

That requires a few things: knowing what your goal is, responding to what’s actually happening (not what you think should be happening), and being willing to adapt how you pursue that goal when something isn’t working.

Psalm 139 is an invitation to honest self-examination — not condemnation, but rather it’s about getting clarity. Asking God to search our hearts, including for willfulness, is one of the most effective things we can do. We can’t change what we don’t know and we all have things we need to adjust from time to time. It positions us to respond to reality rather than our own story about reality. I was super heartened by a leader I respect a great deal sharing a story where he’d recently made a mistake and had to make repair and figure it out. I myself had to evaluate the way I respond in stressful situations when I realized my response in a particular situation showed me an area I was not as effective as I’d have preferred. None of these situations are meant to slam us into the pavement and tell us we’re horrible. This isn’t about shame when we ask God to show us stuff. What they do is help us grow and refine and see those areas where we can grow in our ability to be effective. Think about it this way, a loving parent looks at us and goes, “Hey, that’s probably not gonna take you where you want to go. Would you like to try something different? I can help you out.”

A Few Ways to Practice This Week

Effectiveness is a skill, which means it takes practice. Here are some ways to build it intentionally:

• Notice the “right vs. effective” moment. When you feel the pull to win an argument or dig in your heels, pause. Ask: what am I actually trying to accomplish here? Does being right get me there?
• Set a SMART goal. Pick one area of your life — a habit, a relationship pattern, a practice — and make it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Ask: what could get in the way, and how will I address that proactively?
• Try “willing hands.” Sit comfortably and place your palms face-up in your lap. Notice what shifts in your body and your mind when you physically open your hands. It’s a small gesture with a surprisingly powerful effect.
• Check your TUBES. Before reacting to a situation, scan your Thoughts, Urges, Behaviors, Emotions, and Sensations. This brief check-in can create just enough space to choose effectiveness over reactivity.
• Ask for help. Identify one area where you’ve been trying to go it alone. Reach out — to a friend, a coach, your therapist, or God in prayer. We need each other.

A Word on Grace

As with everything, we hold effectiveness alongside grace. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). That means this work — noticing our willfulness, seeing our own blind spots, and, when needed, adjusting our approach — is not about shame. It’s about real freedom and growth.

The goal was never perfection. It’s mindful connection — with ourselves, with others, and with God. And effectiveness, practiced with compassion and intention, is one of the most powerful pathways to that connection.

The post How to Be Effective appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.

Hi, I’m Tabitha and I’m a recovering perfectionist. I say recovering because it’s an ongoing process, sometimes a rather frustrating one if I’m being honest.

Perfectionism is sneaky. It disguises itself as high standards, as diligence, as caring deeply about doing things well. Before you freak out and say, “Hi, we need to have some standards here” let’s flesh out what I mean. High standards and care aren’t the issue; it’s what underlies those standards. There’s a relentless inner voice that keeps a running tally of every misstep, every shortcoming, every way you didn’t quite measure up today. That voice has a favorite word:

Should.

I should be further along. I should have handled that better. I should be more patient, more productive, more consistent, more spiritual, more everything. And underneath all of that shoulding is the unspoken belief that if you just judged yourself hard enough or tried harder, you’d finally become the person you’re supposed to be. And sometimes that shoulding is encouraged by environments we exist in—maybe our home or even our church community.

Here’s what I know after years of working with clients and walking this road myself: that belief is not true. And the connection between perfectionism and anxiety is far closer than most people realize.

What “Shoulding” Actually Does to You

In therapy, as you’ve seen above, I use this phrase: shoulding on yourself. And before you laugh — or wince — let me tell you why I use it deliberately. Because it captures something true about what harsh self-judgment actually does. It doesn’t clean things up, it actually just makes a mess.

When we should on ourselves, we are essentially telling ourselves that reality is wrong. That the way things are is unacceptable or not enough or wrong. And here’s the problem with that: saying something should or should not have happened doesn’t change the fact that it did. It also doesn’t mean whatever standard we’re applying is accurate. All it really does is add a layer of shame and self-condemnation on top of whatever already happened or whatever we’re trying to accomplish.

Perfectionism and anxiety are deeply linked because the perfectionist mindset is fundamentally future-focused and fear-driven. It’s not just I want to do well. It’s If I don’t do this perfectly, something bad will happen — I’ll be exposed, I’ll disappoint people, I’ll lose something important. It also indicates a standard, and we don’t always stop to explore where we got that standard from and whether it’s reasonable or not. That underlying fear keeps the anxiety engine running constantly, even when there’s nothing actually wrong.

And when we inevitably fall short of the impossible standard the negative self-judgment kicks in. And this, of course, fuels more anxiety. Which fuels more perfectionism. It’s a cycle that feeds itself, and it is exhausting. It’s for sure not a good time.

Has Harsh Self-Judgment Ever Actually Worked?

I want to ask you something directly: Has judging yourself harshly ever produced lasting change in your life?

I’m not asking whether it has ever motivated you temporarily. Sometimes shame and self-criticism do produce short bursts of behavior change. But lasting change, the kind that actually sticks and becomes part of who you are? I have never, in all my years of practice, seen harsh self-judgment produce that.

Think about it this way: if shoulding on yourself worked, I literally would not have a job. We would all just judge ourselves into excellence and go about our days. But that’s not what happens. What actually happens is that we judge ourselves, feel shame, either shut down or overcompensate, fall short again, judge ourselves again and the cycle continues.

The harsh inner voice isn’t making you better. It’s keeping you stuck. And the perfectionism and anxiety it fuels are not a sign of high standards, they’re a sign of rigidity and potentially past wounds that need some healing.

Pride Goes Both Ways

Here’s something that tends to surprise people: thinking too lowly of yourself is just as much a form of pride as thinking too highly of yourself. Both are a form of self-focus that pulls us out of the present moment and out of genuine connection, with others, with our work, and with God.

When we are deep in the perfectionism and self-judgment cycle, we are living on autopilot (if you’ve been reading along with these past blogs, you know that autopilot doesn’t help us get where we want to go). We reacti to an internal critic rather than responding to what’s actually in front of us. We are so consumed with measuring, evaluating, and finding ourselves lacking that we can’t be fully present in our own lives. We miss what’s actually happening because we’re too busy running the internal audit.

Romans 8:1 says it plainly: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Not a little condemnation. Not condemnation except for the really big failures. No condemnation. The inner voice that keeps up the running tally of your shortcomings is not the voice of the Holy Spirit. It is not godly conviction. It is condemnation and it is not from God.

The Difference Between Conviction and Condemnation

I want to make an important distinction here, because I know this is an area where well-meaning Christians can get real confused at times. There is a difference between godly conviction and the shame spiral of perfectionism and self-judgment.

Conviction is specific. It points to a particular thought, action, or pattern and invites you toward something better. It is ultimately hopeful. It says, “This can change. You can grow. Come this way.” And then it moves on.

Condemnation is global. It doesn’t point to a behavior, it indicts your whole self. It says, “You are the problem. You are not enough. You will never be enough.” It doesn’t invite you toward growth. It pins you to the floor.

Perfectionism lives in the condemnation space. And it is worth learning to recognize the difference, not so you can ignore genuine growth opportunities, but so you can stop letting a voice that isn’t God’s (or even your own voice at times) run your internal life.

The Grace-filled Alternative to Perfectionism and Anxiety

So if harsh self-judgment doesn’t work, what does? This is the part I love, because the alternative is not lowering your standards or giving yourself a pass on everything. It is something much more powerful and far more nuanced than that.

There is an essential truth that I come back to again and again, both in my own life and in my work with clients. It holds two things together at the same time: I am doing the best I can in this moment, and I can do better. Both are true. Neither cancels out the other.

This is what theologians call sanctification—the ongoing process of being changed into the likeness of Christ. We are redeemed and we are being changed. We are accepted as we are and we are not yet who we will be. There is no room for condemnation in that process. This is the essence of the now and the not yet.

Practically, this means replacing the should with something more honest and more useful. Instead of “I should be further along,” try: “I wish I were further along, and I’m going to take one step today.” Instead of “I should have handled that better,” try: “I didn’t handle that the way I wanted to. What can I learn from it? Do I need to make a repair with someone?” The facts stay the same. The shame is removed. And the path forward opens up.

Mindful Connection: The Antidote to the Perfectionism Spiral

One of the most powerful tools for breaking the perfectionism and anxiety cycle is the practice of mindful connection. As a reminder, that’s being fully present in the moment rather than lost in the internal audit of everything you’re doing wrong. We keep our feet in this present moment instead of the shoulding of it all.

When we are present we’re able to observe what’s actually happening without layering judgment on top of it. We can notice: I made a mistake. Full stop. Not: I made a mistake, which means I’m a failure, which means I can’t be trusted, which means… Just the facts. Just the moment. Just what is.

This is not lowering the bar. This is seeing clearly. And seeing clearly, without the distortion of perfectionism and self-judgment, is actually what makes genuine growth possible. You can’t address what you can’t see accurately. And you can’t see accurately when shame is clouding the lens.

Progress, Not Perfection

I say it constantly: mindful connection, not mindful perfection. Progress, not perfection. And I say it constantly because people — especially perfectionists (including me) — need to hear it constantly. Because the inner critic is loud, and the grace-filled alternative feels unfamiliar at first.

But here’s a big take away I want you to understand: choosing progress over perfection is not giving up. It is not settling. It is not a spiritual or personal cop-out. It is the only framework in which real, lasting change actually happens. Because change requires trying, and trying requires the willingness to be imperfect in the process.

There is only one perfect person. His name is Jesus. And He didn’t come to give us a higher standard to fail at; He came to set us free. That freedom includes freedom from the tyranny of the should. Freedom from the perfectionism and anxiety cycle that keeps so many of us exhausted and stuck. Freedom to show up, imperfectly and fully, and to grow.

You are not a project to be managed. You are a person to be loved.

I invite you to stop shoulding on yourself. It isn’t working anyway. This week I invite you to take one of the more gracious positions I outlined in this blog and try it out for yourself. Notice whether it’s easier or harder depending on the topic or situation. Notice what you feel in your body as you get curious. And 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 perfectionism and 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 Perfectionism and Anxiety: Stop “Should-ing” on Yourself appeared first on Tabitha Westbrook.