Am I The Problem?

A listener writes in about growing up with a parent who was controlling, critical and sometimes physically abusive, and who scrutinised her weight from childhood. She has built a life she is happy with, but now her other parent is seriously ill, and her difficult parent, who is caring for them, phones almost daily to complain. They feel better afterwards, while she feels anxious and unable to sleep. Setting boundaries can bring rage and silent treatment, and she doesn't want to cut either parent off. She wants to know how to have a relationship with the parent she actually has, and how to tell compassion from childhood conditioning.In this episode Helen works through why the real question may be how to grieve the parent you never had, and why that grief is what makes a relationship with the parent you do have possible.Covered in this episode:- Grieving the parent you never had, and why it isn't giving up on the one you have- Parentification, and the "what would my parent think?" voice as a shield- Being the repository for someone else's distress- Compassion versus conditioning, and the question that tells them apart- Why you don't have to choose between taking everything and abandoning them- Quiet boundaries, and what to expect when the old system notices a changeHelen covers parentification in more depth in episode 4 of Is This A Thing?, the paid companion show, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or to Foundation tier and above members of The Hub.Got a question you want answered? Use the submission link below, or leave it as a comment wherever you are listening.Submit a Question: https://liberationacademy.co.uk/podcast/The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles: aperioprofiles.co.ukIf anything in this episode is close to home, please consider contacting your local mental health services or your GP. In an emergency, always 999.

A listener writes in about her dad, who she used to think was the good parent. Her mum stonewalled, gaslit and shamed her and her siblings from the time they were tiny, and her dad never stood up to her, and sometimes even agreed with her to save his own skin. Now a parent herself, she stood up to her tall, large ex-husband whenever he was unkind to their scapegoated child. Every conversation with her dad ends in a row, and she is angrier with him than with her mum. She wants to know how to become less angry with him.In this episode Helen works through why the question may be the wrong way round, why discovering the enabling parent can feel like a second betrayal, and what the anger may actually be protecting.Covered in this episode:- The second betrayal, and why the "safe" parent can hurt the most- Why enabling behaviour serves the enabling parent, and why being abused too does not remove a parent's duty to protect their child- Secondary reactive anger, and what it may be protecting- Toxic hope, intermittent reinforcement and why an apology cannot give you the parent you needed- What to do when the rage starts, and the question to ask yourself afterwards- Three questions to ask before deciding whether to raise it with himHelen covers the enabling parent, and the different types of enabling parent, in more depth in episode 3 of Is This A Thing?, the paid companion show, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or to Foundation tier and above members of The Hub.Got a question you want answered? Use the submission link below, or leave it as a comment wherever you are listening.Submit a Question: https://liberationacademy.co.uk/podcast/The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles: aperioprofiles.co.ukIf anything in this episode is close to home, please consider contacting your local mental health services or your GP. In an emergency, always 999.

A listener who is pregnant with her first baby writes in about her mother. At her wedding, her mum chose the colour scheme, the caterers, the venue and even the dress, and the listener went along with it to keep the peace. Now her mum is pushing for the baby's name, the nursery colour and a place in the delivery room. When the listener said she wanted her husband as her birth partner, her mum called it her right as a mother, then stopped speaking to her for three weeks and told people she was being excluded. Her sister calls her cruel, her dad wants an apology, and her husband is furious. She wants to know who is right, and how to tell her mum to back off without upsetting her.In this episode Helen works through why "without upsetting her" may be the heart of the problem, why a mother's disappointment is not a right to be in the room, and how the silence, the accusations and the calls from the rest of the family add up to a campaign with one aim.Covered in this episode:- Hurting someone versus someone being disappointed that they didn't get their way- Keeping the peace versus keeping other people peaceful, and what giving in teaches- The silent treatment, the guilt trip and "recruitment" (sometimes called flying monkeys)- Why a boundary is not an application for permission, and what to say once, kindly- What to do when the silence arrives, and why timing is yours to pick- Her husband's anger, and why "I want" lands differently from "he wants"Got a question you want answered? Use the submission link below, or leave it as a comment wherever you are listening.Submit a Question: https://liberationacademy.co.uk/podcast/The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles: aperioprofiles.co.ukIf anything in this episode is close to home, please consider contacting your local mental health services or your GP. In an emergency, always 999.

A listener overhears her husband telling a room full of men he wishes she would lose weight, because he “didn’t sign up for a fat wife”. She says nothing until they get home. He turns on her for eavesdropping, then collapses into how much he hates himself, and she ends the night comforting him. Four weeks later he does it again while she is cooking dinner, and adds that she is going to make the children fat too. She has written in asking whether she is being oversensitive, because she has put on weight, and because he says he is only worried about her.In this episode Helen works through what is actually happening in that pattern: why being overheard is not eavesdropping, why “I didn’t sign up for a fat wife” is a punchline rather than concern, and why a sorry that arrives after the anger has failed is doing the same job the anger was doing.Covered in this episode:Deflection, or what is colloquially called DARVO, and how it moves the argument onto youCompassionate empathy, and how your own empathy gets turned into the thing that silences youIntermittent reinforcement, also called breadcrumbing, and why “he isn’t like that all the time” is a description of the mechanism rather than a defenceMoral justification, and the test that separates real concern from a licence to criticiseWhat an apology is actually worth, where intent matters, and what repair looks like when someone genuinely slipsWhy “oversensitive” is a change of subject, and who has no business deciding the size of your hurtThe peacekeeper role, weaponised incompetence, and the cost of keeping someone else’s peaceFour questions to ask yourself if you are not sure whether you are self-invalidatingHelen covers DARVO and how to respond to it in more depth in episode 1 of Is This A Thing?, the paid companion show, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or to Foundation tier and above members of The Hub.Got a question you want answered? Use the submission link below, or leave it as a comment wherever you are listening.Submit a Question: https://liberationacademy.co.uk/podcast/The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles: aperioprofiles.co.ukIf anything in this episode is close to home and you need support in the UK, Refuge runs a 24 hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247, and Men’s Advice Line is on 0808 801 0327. In an emergency, always 999.

You’ve spent the last 12 weeks learning how your patterns formed, how they show up, and how they affect your relationships.And if you’re anything like the brains I work with, there’s a part of you that’s been keeping score.Noticing every time you apologised for existing.Every time saying no felt difficult.Every time you slipped back into something you thought you’d already worked through.And quietly deciding that you’re still the problem.If you were taught that your worth was conditional, it makes sense that you’d measure yourself against perfection. But that standard was never designed to be fair, it was designed to keep you safe.In this final episode, Helen brings the whole season together, exploring why progress isn’t about never repeating a pattern, but noticing it sooner, responding differently, and learning to do that without turning it into evidence against yourself.Because healthy doesn’t mean perfect. It means faster awareness, and more kindness when you get it wrong.Resources mentioned:Research on conditional self-worth and perfectionismResearch on shame and behaviour changeAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe

Someone says, “Can we talk about something?” Before they’ve even finished the sentence, your stomach drops. You’re already apologising, defending yourself, or preparing for the relationship to end.If conflict was used to shame, silence, or control you growing up, your nervous system may never have learned the difference between disagreement and danger. In this episode, Helen explores why healthy conflict can feel so threatening, why many people either avoid difficult conversations or assume every disagreement is catastrophic, and how ADHD, autism, and childhood conditioning can make conflict even harder to navigate.Resources mentioned:Research on emotional regulation in ADHDResearch on operant conditioning and learningGo deeper:This week’s companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores why recovery after conflict can take so much longer for some people, what your nervous system is doing after the conversation has ended, and practical ways to shorten that recovery. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe

You meet someone who’s kind, consistent, and genuinely interested in you. They reply when they say they will. They don’t play games. They don’t leave you guessing.And somehow... it doesn’t feel right.If you grew up in a toxic environment, your brain may have learned to treat unpredictability as love and kindness as something to be suspicious of. This episode explores why healthy relationships can feel strangely flat, why emotional intensity is so often mistaken for chemistry, and how early experiences can distort the way you recognise safety, connection, and love.Resources mentioned:Research on intermittent reinforcement and conditioningResearch on intimate partner violence and neurodivergenceResearch on identity and healthy relationship developmentGo deeper:The companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores why a strong sense of identity is one of the biggest protective factors against abusive relationships, including how identity develops, what disrupts it, and why rebuilding it changes the way you recognise healthy relationships. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe

You promised yourself you would never be like them. You would never make your child feel the way you felt. So you do the opposite. You soften every hard edge, struggle to say no, and panic when your child is disappointed in you.But what if trying so hard not to become your parent is still letting them shape the way you parent?If you grew up in a toxic family, you may have no reliable benchmark for what healthy parenting actually looks like. This episode explores the parenting pendulum, why fear can push you towards permissiveness, rescuing, hypervigilance or repeating the very patterns you wanted to escape, and how to find the middle ground between control and fear-led parenting.Resources mentioned:Research on conditioning and learned behaviourChild development and age-appropriate expectationsResearch on rupture, repair, and relational safetyGo deeper:The companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores how much of what your child does is actually about you, including why your child’s behaviour can trigger reactions that belong to your own childhood and how to separate the child in front of you from the child you once were. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe

You have a cupboard full of abandoned hobbies. A project you still can’t bring yourself to throw away. Every unfinished task feels like evidence that you’re lazy, flaky, or incapable.Except what if it isn’t?If you have ADHD and grew up in an environment where your differences were criticised, mocked, or misunderstood, it can become almost impossible to separate the way your brain naturally works from the shame that was layered on top of it. This episode explores how ordinary ADHD traits become confused with character flaws, why unfinished projects carry so much emotional weight, and how years of criticism can leave you measuring yourself with a stick that was never built for your brain.Resources mentioned:Russell Barkley on ADHD and executive functionResearch on self-handicapping and perfectionismResearch on conditioning, shame, and behaviour changeGo deeper:The companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores self-handicapping in much more depth, including why shame changes the way we approach goals, how perfectionism develops as a protective strategy, and what the evidence says about breaking the cycle. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe

You meet someone and tell them your life story within a week. Or you’ve known someone for years and still don’t think they really know you.It can feel like you’re either all in or completely shut down, with nothing in between.If you grew up in an environment where your privacy wasn’t respected and your boundaries were repeatedly crossed, trusting other people can become incredibly difficult. This episode explores why oversharing and hyper-independence are often two versions of the same survival strategy, and why the real work isn’t learning to trust other people, it’s learning to trust yourself.Resources mentioned:Research on attachment and interpersonal trustResearch on boundaries and self-conceptNeurodivergence, masking, and relational safetyGo deeper:The companion episode of Is This A Thing? explores the difference between privacy and secrecy, why so many survivors feel guilty for having an inner world of their own, and how learning to keep something for yourself can become an essential part of recovery. Available on The Hub: liberationacademy.co.uk/the-hubAperio Profiles:Neurodivergent-informed cognitive and personality profiling for individuals, managers, and HR. Not a diagnosis. A functional map of how your brain actually works.aperioprofiles.co.uk This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit helenvilliersliberation.substack.com/subscribe