It was 14 years ago at a health retreat on the brink of burnout that I met my inner “Should Woman”. I was a new mum to a beautiful and very intuitively aware 18 month year old that needed all my love and attention whilst I was anxious and distracted by a very hands on and financially precarious business.

Programmed with perfectionist and high achieving tendencies, I was performing all the roles to the best of my ability and felt I was failing miserably. Whilst trying to save and grow our business and show up as the best mother and wife as I could, I was stressed, miserable, exhausted, emotionally unregulated, often irrational and holding it together by a sheer thread!

My attendance at the health retreat was a non-negotiable with my husband, he had created an opportunity for me to attend and regardless of all the reasons why I felt I couldn’t go, he made it happen (bless him!). The retreat was intense, I struggled to let go, I had been holding everything together for so long, I felt if I released just one thread, I would unravel into an unrecoverable mess. However, after a couple of days of being nurtured with delicious organic food, participating in movement and mindfulness practices and connecting with nature I started to notice a tiny glimmer of me. Not the mum, the wife, the business owner, employer – just me and it was encouraging.

I decided to attend a counselling session and when I arrived and sat down, all my challenges came spewing out like a big verbal vomit. All the things that were happening, the logistical challenges, how I felt I wasn’t coping, I was stretched so thin, how I was exhausted and that I “should” be able to handle things.

Once the general synopsis was shared my counsellor stood up and gently asked me to take a seat in her chair. She asked me to look toward the very chair I had just been seated and reflect on what I had just shared. After a moment of introspection, I realised for the first time how hard I was on myself, like truly hard! It wasn’t so much my life circumstances which were challenging at the time, but more so how I perceived them, and my own expectations of how I “should” be coping or managing them. I discovered that this idea that I “should” be able to cope, that I am strong and can manage multiple tasks, projects and roles was a persona, born from the subconscious mind.