All posts by admin

If it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…Why Am I Not Feeling it

December 19, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Let’s be blunt…holidays are the MOST COMMERCIALIZED time of the year. And not only that, they become the dreaded list of extra items on an already full “To Do” list for most women. So what we really start feeling is EXHAUSTED. Dr. Natalie explains in this video how we find ourselves in this quandary and offers us some insight on how to start the new year right!

Join us monthly as we work together to help you design the life you have always wanted for yourself. No gimmicks! Just results! Dr. Natalie has nearly two decades of experience as a Clinical Psychologist and she is ready to help women in midlife break the chains of living in constant survival mode.

Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will also have access to online courses, workbooks, guided meditations, and get the video highlights sent out after each months group coaching event. It is well worth it!!! Make 2023 your year!!!

Sign Up for FREE Group Coaching For a Year

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses to help your with your personal growth and development.

CLICK HERE and Design the Life YOU Want to Live In

How To Work With Dr. Natalie

Book a Deep Dive Call to Work with Dr. Natalie

Learn to Love Your Story - Personal Development Course, Mumblings of a Midlife Mess

Do I Get to Want Things?

August 27, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Mumblings of a Midlife Mess

Are you a woman in midlife who feels complacent in a life you don’t feel excited about anymore? What if I told you that I could help you rediscover JOY in your life and help you to DESIGN A LIFE that you’ve only dreamed about? I assure you I can. Don’t think this can be true? Ask me your questions and I will show you how midlife can be your BEST LIFE!

check out my:

One of the main reasons women in midlife come to my programs is to find a sense of self again. I know that sounds strange, yet the truth is these women have no idea who they really are or what they really want in life. They know what they do, they know who they care for, and they may even know what they are good at. What they don’t know is who they really are. The real version of them. The one that has been locked away inside. Why is this? Because early in our childhood the social conditioning begins. “Be a nice girl” we are told. “Shouldn’t you share that with your friend?” we are asked. We are even likely to hear, “you’re a natural at being a little mom for everyone” or “You are so good at knowing what others need.”

And then we are off to the races. Once we are conditioned to find our worth in how we codependently take care of others, we are hooked. Like a drug, we seek more and more and more. We want to be that friend, that sibling, that spouse, that parent, who against all understanding can hold it all together. Can take care of all the things and still look good doing it. Because don’t forget our looks are our other form of social currency as women. It has to look easy and we must look beautiful doing it, in order to fully gain our worth. And we hustle for our worth in this madness for a long while. Many of us keep hustling, until we can’t anymore. And when the last of our roles has ended and our beauty’s shiny luster wears off with age, where does that leave us? It leaves us to our own devices. It leaves us with ourselves. Only the woman who we now inhabit has been a human doer for so long, she is a stranger to us. Who is she at all? What are her wants and desires? We sometimes have no idea where to even start.

That is usually where I come in. A woman will come into my office for therapy or join one of my programs for coaching and we will start to unravel the layers of social conditioning that has told her who she is. We are seeking to help her find who she actually is. Underneath all the tasks she had and roles she played is an actual person. However, it is a person that often times has been so horribly neglected for years there is no recognizable aspect to this person. This self (inside the socially conditioned woman/human doer) is a stranger to the women who work with me. This is where the work begins.

Learning to Love Our Stories is a journey of self love, self exploration, and self empowerment. Yet not one of those things is attainable without true self awareness. If we do not know the person we truly are we cannot love them, we cannot help them explore, and we certainly cannot help them make empowered choices to create the life they want to live. And that is where all stories begin really…they start with meeting the main character. So what happens when you are the main character and you don’t know yourself? Answer…you start to know yourself by listening. You are listening for what it is you truly want. That is usually a wonderful indication of who you really are.

So here is the catch. If a woman has been conditioned most of her life to look out in her world and identify what is wanted of her by others and meet those needs, she has atrophied the cognitive muscles to look inside and see what she wants and needs for herself. And when these women are finally sitting with me trying to learn these new skills it is an effortful process. It is like an adult trying to pick up a new language. Let me explain. Speaking fluently in a new language is never going to happen overnight. There will need to be repetition. Tons and tons of repetition. And even then we initially learn a new language by translating it through our native tongue. So you hear a phrase in the foreign language and you think through the lens of your current language to know what that means. Then you decide in your current language what you want to say back and you translate that back into the foreign language. It takes a LONG time to really get the hang of this. A LONG TIME and A LOT OF PRACTICE.

So how does this match up with what women are trying to do when they are learning to know the real version of themselves? Let me give you an example. Once I helped a mother at the start of her empty nesting, who was really struggling to know what she wanted in her life. She had spent the better part of nearly three decades taking care of her kids and her spouse, making sure that their every need was met. So now as she was looking at retirement from those roles she was really shook up. She didn’t have a purpose. She didn’t see a meaning to her existence any longer. Her depression was entrenched in this understanding that she had worth as a mother and a wife, yet the circumstances of her life were no longer providing her opportunity to express this worth. This was her native tongue. To be a human giver in a family setting.

Here is where the new language starts. We talked at length about self care…a totally foreign concept and one that was saturated with this idea that she was selfish if she did anything for herself. She wanted to start being better about self care, but she wasn’t quite sure how to do that when it always felt so uncomfortable. I would suggest starting with easy things that she already wants. She then asked me, “Do I get to want things?” She was seeing the idea of self care (the new language) through the translation of her old life, which told her doing something for yourself is selfish and childish. What happens is the ideas are lost in the translation. “Doing for yourself” or “self care” has different cultural meanings when translated literally. In the language of a therapist it is a form of general hygiene, like brushing your teeth every day, eating nutritious meals, and getting enough sleep. In my client’s language, “doing for yourself” meant she was choosing herself above others and in so doing disrespecting those she loved.

Any good teacher knows that when there is a meaning breakdown, it is helpful to bring in a metaphor that makes sense to someone given their cultural conditioning. So one of the ways I helped this woman to see what self care meant, was by translating it through the idea of caring for others. She needed to see herself as one of the “others” she was caring for in her life. For years, her spouse and children had wanted for nothing as she had dutifully served them. Now she needed to turn her attention to the one that was neglected all that time…herself. This was still uncomfortable for her, so we took the metaphor a bit further. I asked her what she would think if her youngest child came home and told her that they had felt ignored their whole lives in the family home. That all the other siblings had more needs than this child did, so this child learned to be quiet and not make a fuss. And if this child told my client that they had watched as she poured herself into the other siblings and now this child was feeling neglected and somehow jilted as a result of this inequity, I asked my client, “What would you do for this child?” My client had a TON of answers for that and a reinvigorated purpose as she spoke about what she could do for this child in a scenario like this. When she was done telling me what she would do for that child, I told her to think of herself as this neglected child and to apply those same ideas to herself. That is the true meaning of the translating the meaning of self care into her native language.

Women often have no idea that they don’t know themselves and almost never have a language for this experience. What they know is they are sad, irritable, aimless in their purpose and function in life, complacent, and not sure where to start to try and fix any of this. I tell them that they are right where they need to start. In their discomfort. As I teach them a new language for how to know themselves and articulate their needs and wants, I ask that they sit in their discomfort and listen. Listen to what the discomfort tells you. If you are worried whether you did enough for your children, maybe what you are hearing is that not enough was done for you. You can’t literally translate what you hear into your native tongue. Your body mind doesn’t speak that way. If you hear yourself filled with resentment that your partner has an entire life with their work, hobbies and friends, maybe what your body mind is telling you is that you want a life too and its urging you to go out and find that. If you notice yourself feeling lonely, maybe what you’re hearing is that you need to expand your tribe and find new connections. Piece by piece, thought by thought, worry by worry, I help these women translate what their body minds are telling them and help them to create new self empowered choices to design a life the meets these new insights.

What can be really neat about my work is that it is a lot like a treasure hunt. There are treasures hidden under the sea of emotions that we are having as we transition in midlife. Our job is to learn the movements of the sea and the storms, in order to understand where those treasures may have drifted off to on the seafloor. It is always an adventure. And it is not for the faint of heart. We must prepare ourselves for storms as we set sail to find ourselves. Treasure is there to be sure, but so are dangers. A trusty navigator and a crew are always helpful additions to this journey. If you think you are in this boat on your own, take a listen to what a recent group cohort said about their journeys in the Learn to Love Your Story program. You may find that having someone like myself on your side, who has the navigational tools to manage the sea and storms, as well as a group of women that are in this with you to discover their own treasures, is just the right fit for what you need to weather your midlife storm.

Mumblings of a Midlife Mess

It’s Lonely at the Bottom

July 31, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Mumblings of a Midlife Mess

check out my:

I know we are all very different in our experiences in life, yet there are some very universal aspects to our lived experiences that I think we overlook. We think that we are “all alone” in our experience, when in fact we are not alone. In fact, we may all of been there in one capacity or another. So today’s blog is really about helping us to explore this concept and maybe save ourselves from the collective illusion that we are alone in our suffering.

When I was in my thirties, I found myself in a management position on a large scale for the first time. I had supervised and managed prior to this, but during this particular stint in my career I found myself in boardrooms with individuals (mostly male and mostly white), whom had been doing these jobs for decades. I was definitely the lowest on the totem pole as far as seniority and gender role, and most definitely was seen as green. This lead me into a continual battle of trying to prove my worth in this environment. I was working harder and longer hours than anyone else in this level of management and getting less recognition than all of them. It came to a head for me towards the end of my work with this agency, when I joined a coalition within the agency that was looking at making some modifications across disciplines and the CEO of one of those disciplinary areas took credit for not just part, but all of what I did. ALL OF IT. I am certain that my name never even came up in the rooms where this man pitched these ideas. He later was promoted and then found employment outside the agency entirely, and you better bet that this interdisciplinary project was part of the wave he was riding as he did so.

This was a major learning moment for me. I had the fortune of also working under a manager that was a woman, who had experienced many similar instances in her longer career with this organization. We commiserated some about this, yet that wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I was really upset by the feeling that there was a setup that I wasn’t going to be able to break working within this kind of a hierarchy. It was one of the factors that lead to my looking for other employment and moving on in my career. What I discovered is that once you are in the unenviable position of hustling for your worth and proving yourself, that energy takes over completely. Its lonely at the bottom. And if you don’t stop this pattern yourself there is no one else that will come to save you. You have to be your own hero. Others will always benefit from your assuming the myth that your worthiness must be proven. Others can (and many unfortunately will) capitalize on your courageous efforts to prove yourself by taking credit for your work, your credibility, and your value. Not everyone is trying to do this as an intentional and manipulative ploy. It is just that the system of “haves” and “have nots” will always result in more “haves” and “have nots”. If you assume the role of a “have not”, trying to always prove yourself to the “haves”, then you are perpetually within that energy.

This is not to say you can’t liberate yourself from this. You can, but you must remember that you will not liberate yourself within the context of this system. You will have to leave the system behind completely. Sometimes this happens in the literal sense, as it did for me when I left this position; and sometimes it is in a more figurative sense, when we leave behind the unspoken rules of “haves” and “have nots”, and dance to a different drummer right within the context we are stuck in. I’ve tried it both ways…and in both contexts I have learned another valuable lesson. It is always lonely at the bottom. Meaning…when we get started with a venture like this, we feel like we are on our own. We are fighting the fight, yet we are depleting our own stored energy because we have no back up.

I want to explore this part of the journey a little further. I see this “loneliness” factor as a rumble strip (for more explanation on what I mean by this, feel free to read another blog where I explain this metaphor in more detail). Loneliness tells us that we are slipping back into the “have” and “have not” paradigm again. We feel alone, because we are still indoctrinated in the illusion that we are fighting to prove our worth. When you notice that you have a case of the “I’m all alone in this”, stop. Here is where you need to change your tactics. The truth REALLY IS that we are NEVER ALONE. NEVER! In fact there is always people suffering in these same ways we are. We are not unique in these experiences.

In fact, the illusion that we are alone is a function of the “have/have not” system of oppression. Except, instead of others oppressing us, we are doing the work for them. This feature of how systems sustain inequalities is called internalized oppression. The things we were taught and learned we are now enforcing on ourselves. In this case, believing we are alone in this suffering keeps us locked in the energy of trying to prove ourselves over and over again. There is nothing to prove. We already have worth. Yet, if we keep trying to prove that worth, there is an implicit bias that we may not have that worth in the first place or we wouldn’t have to prove ourselves. As we continue to pursue proving ourselves we are keeping ourselves oppressed on autopilot, without anyone else having to do anything.

The remedy to this is to get connected to others. To build ourselves a community of people that let us know this is not the case. In the story I’ve shared here, my community started with someone else who had the same experience and was willing to help me see I was not alone. This connection started to build a community of other supporters in my career that were there when I felt stuck in the spiral of “have” and “have not”, and would challenge me to break the the cycle by not participating in my own suffering. I would stop trying to prove myself and would honor my worth. If those who I worked with didn’t honor that worth too, I would leave. They did not deserve my service if they could not honor the worth it brought to their organization. Ultimately that has lead to my working for myself. I said NO liberally. Said NO without abandon in these organizations when they were not honoring what I brought to the table. And eventually I said NO as many times as I needed and disappointed as many people as I needed, so as NEVER to disappoint myself again.

That is, until I realized I had become both my “have” and my “have not”. I had started to hustle for my worth in my worth again, even though I was working for myself. I wanted to prove myself to myself, that I could have my own practice and start a new business venture simultaneously. And when the math didn’t work, because there were not enough hours in the day, I doubled down and kept killing myself trying to make both work. I was going to prove it to myself that this could be done. But then I realized that insidious “have” and “have not” system had seeped into me again. I was feeling alone in my battle. I was noticing that I wasn’t feeling appreciated. I recognized that even without another person to prove myself to, I could get caught in the grips of proving myself and hustling for my worth. As I noted in my first blog in the “Mumblings of a Midlife Mess” series, I was going back to an old and familiar pattern and oppressing myself without even noticing.

The antidote…community. And you, my story lovers, are a part of that for me. I need to surround myself in the truth that I already have the worth and no hustling is necessary. I don’t need to prove that the side hustle can out-do the day job. It already has that worth. I just have to have faith in that truth and act accordingly. So, I share this with you to help you see that even we can be our own oppressors. Even with the best of intentions, we can fall into old patterns. And one of the ways that we can stop this in its tracks, is to share it with others. To out it. To say aloud, this system is not serving me and is not true.

I am not lonely at the bottom, fighting for my worth. I am in good company all around. We have all done this to ourselves and we will all continue to fall into these old patterns. Yet, if we come together and gain the support of one another when we recognize this, we can and will transcend this.

Connection, Midlife Women

Dear Parents & Caregivers of Our Graduates

June 3, 2022 admin Leave a comment

I wish I had a penny for every time I felt rushed when they were young, or wanted to get through a frustrating time, or I just wanted some rest. How many of those times were there? Countless. Countless times when I was rushing to get to a game, to pick up a kid, rushing to get to the next thing that I needed to do as their parent. And yet, if I had all that money those pennies add up to right now, I would spend it all for just one more moment with that kid curled up next to me. Just one more moment. There just weren’t enough. Even though there seemed to be so many that I was just struggling to get through at the time.

tired mother kidding while sitting with children — Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

Parenting a child is a funny thing. No one tells us when we have these children that a little fractal of our hearts break off to become this wonderful little person. In the beginning, this fractal is fragile and it is our job to protect it. And then as this fractal of our heart grows it is our job to shape it, to teach it, and to make sure that it has the values we want it to. And then as this fractal of our heart becomes its own person and grows away from us, we are left here watching a part of us and having almost no ability to do the protecting and shaping that we once did. It leaves us feeling raw. It leaves us wondering what next. It leaves us with a hole in our hearts, but not one that was put there against our will…one that was left there by our choice.

I’m sure you feel this too, as you watch this beautiful young soul that you have cared for graduate and start a new phase of their life. It just doesn’t seem imaginable. Yet it is. And you are at these graduation ceremonies and parties, just standing in disbelief next to this person that looks like an adult, while all you can see is the small child you still adore. Who told them they could grow up so fast? Who said that was ok? It certainly wasn’t you. You are left with just the notion that your job is now done. But what next?

photo of a man wearing academic gown together with his parents — Photo by Vantha Thang on Pexels.com

I know your grief. I am experiencing it too. And it’s so weird how we moved from wanting to just get past the monotony of it all, into longing for even one day of the worst of it again. And that’s where we find ourselves in times like these. With a whole mixed bag of emotions that we’re just not quite sure how to handle. We want to cry, because we know that we will miss it all so much. We know that we’re also so proud of them that it seems almost impossible to contain all of this love and admiration inside of us. We can’t tell enough people how wonderful they are and how we would be their biggest fan even if we hadn’t raised them. They are just so amazing to us.

Yet, what are we going to do with the space…the void that shows up in the wake of their growing up and moving on with their lives? What will we do with all the time, with all the love, with all that we still want to give them? What will we do? We have spent the better part of two decades or more taking care of them. We know how it is to be in the role of their parents and caregivers, yet we’re not so certain what our role is now. Not to mention it doesn’t seem fair that a part of our heart is just walking around in the world without us. How is it even possible that we will survive not knowing all the time what’s happening? Not being able to save them from all of the bad that we can see in the world? Not sharing in all of their joy going forward? It just doesn’t seem fair that a part of our heart is in their‘s, yet we will never have the intimate front row seat to their life in the way we have up until now.

There’s really only one thing that we can do. And that is to take care of the heart that fractal left. It may not seem like what we think we should do, yet it is the only thing within our power to do. We must take care of our own hearts. We must grieve and then we must keep moving forward and enjoying this beautiful life that is still connected to ours. If we stay too long in our longing, in our regret, in our missing what once was, we risk missing the enjoyment of the person they are now. This young adult that we are growing to love. Just remember that neither of us know how this works. We are all on the growth edge of a new relationship with one another.

macro shot of heart shaped cut out — Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Here’s the truth of it. Since we cannot go with them and will not be in their lives the way that we have up until now, we must learn to take care of the heart where that fractal left. It is our job to take care of ourselves. To learn what it’s like to be the parent or caregiver of this young adult. It is our job to find our way in this new world that we find ourselves in. It is our job to love ourselves and in so doing transmit the love in our heart to that fractal, however far away it may be.

So take care of yourselves, my story lovers. Take care of the one that took care of them for this long. Take care.

Current Events, Selfish is the New Selfless, The New You!

Loving Your Body Can Turn Up the Sex Drive in Midlife

February 10, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Come on ladies…aren’t you sick of being told your age and hormones are the culprit for your low sex drive? Guess what…THAT WAS A LIE (I had to do a little Maury Povich for you there). The real truth is that if your body is the culprit, it isn’t in the way you have been told.

Our beliefs about our body and its attractiveness to our partners is much more likely the issue at hand. We are terribly self critical about our bodies…we were socially conditioned to be. And all of it is a load of crap!!! Ideal beauty is defined by culture, media, family, etc. It is not a gene in our DNA. And since we have been sold on the idea that we are never going to be good enough, we are continually buying the next product to correct that. Capitalism is built on this principle. Psychologists like myself, HATE THIS for you.

Watch this video and learn some tips on how to change your mindset about your body. Because if you start loving your body again, you may just find your sex drive going up too.

Do any of these sound like you?

- Feel a sense of lack, despite success in life or having done everything “right”
- Struggle to articulate how you feel to others
- Experience guilt about how you’re feeling
- Have lost your way
- Are struggling to overcome turmoil in your life
- Have become resigned to accepting a life you don’t love

Many of us are suffering like this — daily life has become an ordeal, and we don’t know where or how to find help.

Dr. Natalie’s Online Courses and Coaching CAN HELP. Click below and get started.

Click Here for Your FREE Gift

Unlock the next chapter of your life with our transformative 20-week group coaching package tailored for women in midlife. Embrace empowerment, break free from the status quo, and design a life that aligns with your true aspirations. Join group coaching and allow Dr. Natalie to guide you on this empowering adventure to break free, rediscover your passion, and create the life you’ve always envisioned for yourself. Your journey to empowerment starts here. Let’s design the life you deserve!

Join Now

Need more clarity on your midlife journey? Sign up for a complimentary call with Dr. Natalie to explore if her transformative coaching program aligns with your aspirations. Get personalized answers to your questions and discover if Dr. Natalie can help you untangle where you life is now and design the life you want to be living. Don’t miss the opportunity to embark on a life-changing experience – schedule your complimentary call today and take the first step toward designing the life you deserve!

Book Your Complimentary Call

Please press the “START” button below to answer a few questions and schedule your consultation:

Disclaimer

The content in this podcast and video is not a replacement for therapy and is not clinical, medical, or mental health treatment. Dr. Natalie Marr is a Licensed Psychologist in the state of Minnesota. Her work with LearnToLoveYourStory.com and all affiliate social media entities is educational and coaching based ONLY. She IS NOT offering therapeutic services of any kind on these mediums.

If you or someone you know is having a mental health crisis or having thoughts of suicide, please use the following crisis resources (this is not an exhaustive list of available resources):

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

CALL 988

Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.org/

Text HOME to 741741

Current Events, Emotional Wellness

Sex for Women in Midlife is ALL in the Context

February 1, 2022 admin Leave a comment

Sexual desire and pleasure are things that seem to reportedly decline for women in midlife. Such BS! That is not what is really going on. It is not our age that dictates the decline in our enjoyment and desire of sex…it is our context that is crippling us.

Listen ladies. I get it. We have a lot on our plates. We are exhausted and yet driven, so we keep on the hamster wheel of life doing ALL THE THINGS, hoping that someday we will arrive at the end of our “To Do” list and finally be able to take that deep breath.

Why do we do this to ourselves? We know that there is no end to the responsibilities, yet we keep illuding ourselves into believing there will be an end and at that end we will finally feel better. Sorry sisters…there is no end.

What there IS, are empowered choices we can be making to step into a life of our choosing. I know it seems like this cannot be the case. That we simply could never pick ourselves over the many duties we have. And yet, if we do not pick ourselves…what do you think happens to all the people we do things for? They get less! Less quality from us. Less quantity from us! Less us! I know this is not what you are aiming for, so come join me February 13 and 20, 2022 to hear more about how to fix this with regard to your sex life.

Let’s change the context!

Current Events, Selfish is the New Selfless, The New You!

Ladies…Stop The Madness

January 20, 2022 admin Leave a comment

The other day I was talking to a friend about how things are going lately. She says, “I just wish I had been able to get more done over the holidays.” She went on to tell me about three projects in her house, how she hadn’t started putting together the pictures for the poster board she is making for her son who is a senior in High School, and then added how she just started dating again and it’s quite the ordeal to learn these new dating apps. I stopped her and said, “So let me get this straight. You have three home projects, extra stuff you’re doing for your kid, and you are dating actively, yet you’re upset you didn’t get more done over the time you had specifically set aside for the holidays?” She recognized my therapizing ways and told me to shut my pie hole, but she got my point.

What in the actual HELL?!? Why do we expect this much of ourselves? And why don’t we get it when we are on the verge of burnout, that our continued choice to go at life at 100 MPH is the reason we are dragging so much? I’ll tell you why…take a listen this Vlog and learn more.

Sign Up for FREE Group Coaching For a Year

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses to help your with your personal growth and development.

CLICK HERE and Design the Life YOU Want to Live In

How To Work With Dr. Natalie

Book a Deep Dive Call to Work with Dr. Natalie

Current Events, Dr. Marr’s Tips on Living in COVID-19, The New You!

Killing it in 2022 – How to Use Your Own Wisdom as Your Guide

January 11, 2022 admin 2 Comments

When I first wrote this blog at the top of the year, we already weren’t off to the best start. Betty White and and Bob Saget had passed and we weren’t but a couple weeks into the year! COME ON 2022!!! Am I right? Especially after 2020 and 2021 being so difficult with the pandemic and changes that brought.

There was still a lot of time between us and the next year…2023. I hope for your sake you were able to turn the ship around in your own personal life.

Now that we are looking at only a few more months of this year, I want to be sure that you really are KILLING IT IN 2022 and beyond. This video shows you some ideas I shared at the top of the year that are still applicable now. Watch this Vlog and learn more about how to use your own wisdom and intuition to help you.

The following are the four questions I talk about in the video, which can help you to access this personal wisdom:
- What has worked?
- What hasn’t worked?
- What will I keep doing the same?
- What might I change to better serve me?

My example here is how to do this in parenting, but these questions can work in any area of your life. Try them…and tell me about it by replying below in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts on how these work for you.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Copy-of-Join-Dr.-Natalie.png

And know, I have a monthly Master Class for FREE, in an intimate coffee and conversation setting. This is a great place to get some FREE Group Coaching from me, helping you be the best version of yourself all the time. Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will be part of the mailing list to hear about the topics and get the video highlights I send out afterwards, so it is well worth it.

FREE Monthly Master Class Sign Up

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is full-online-course-1024x683.png

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses that I offer to help people with their personal growth and development.

Online Personal Development Courses

Self-Awareness, Selfish is the New Selfless

Don’t Forget Yourself During the Holidays

December 7, 2021 admin Leave a comment

The Holidays are Amazing aren’t they? So much to do, so much fun to be had, so much extra time…uhh…NOPE! Not that last one. There is most definitely NOT extra time. We do want to try and squeeze every last drop of FUN out of the little time we have though.

If you are a woman in midlife, I’m going to guess that by January you are SO EXHAUSTED that you want to take a long winter’s nap. Am I right? Of course, no rest for the weary! If you are like most of us, January is filled with New Year’s resolutions. So where are you going to find the energy for that after running yourself ragged all holiday season?

Here is a tip from Dr. Natalie on how to prevent this from happening to you another holiday season. Take a look.

Sign Up for FREE Group Coaching For a Year

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses to help your with your personal growth and development.

CLICK HERE and Design the Life YOU Want to Live In

How To Work With Dr. Natalie

Book a Deep Dive Call to Work with Dr. Natalie

Selfish is the New Selfless

Bring a Little Holiday to Your Everyday

December 1, 2021 admin Leave a comment

It’s here! The holidays are upon us. I know this time of year isn’t everyone’s favorite, yet it does have a certain amount of cheer involved…doesn’t it? The things we do in these weeks we do only once a year. Rituals and traditions that help us feel like we unite with everyone we love in our life or who have been in our life. I like to think when I get out the rolling pin and mat that my mother used to bake cookies with me for the holidays, she is standing right with me today, even though she has been gone for years now. Rituals do that.

So do all the fun decorations. Last night I was cracking up with my son as we looked at all of the old cards and pictures he made for me during the holidays. One was just a card with a holiday tree drawn on it and inside he said, “Dear Mom. This is your present. Sorry this is all you get. I am broke.” He may have been 8 when he wrote that. Hysterical!

Today my suggestion is that we bring a little bit of this cheer and celebration into our everyday lives as a form of self care. Watch and see what you think.

Bucking the System, Self-Compassion

It’s Not Just You

November 11, 2021 admin Leave a comment

So many women in midlife are struggling with the idea that they are the only ones struggling. This isn’t true. In fact, many of us from the Gen X generation are struggling with the very same dissatisfactions…women, men, and non-binary alike. We are struggling with a bad bill of goods that we were sold growing up (incidentally as one of the most unparented generations of all time…”latch key” kids as we were).

We were told that we could “do anything”. We were schooled on how the injustices of sexism were torn down in the 60s and 70s by Women’s Liberation Movement. We were given the premise of “color blindness” as an anti-racism principle and educated on the idea that the freedom fighters of the Civil Rights movement had eradicated racism. The idea was that government policies set by Title IX and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had saved us from our parents’ injustices and the world was now our oyster.

Unfortunately, the way things turned out we are now feeling oppressed by the EXPECTATION that we should have been able to do everything, when it was supposed to be an OPPORTUNITY to do anything we wanted without the same constraints of generations before us. As we have helicopter parented the generations behind us, in our Millennial and Gen Z generations, we have done a better job of being more realistic in our expectations and sheltered these later generations from the unreasonable expectation that “you can do anything you want” means “you should be able do everything you want.” Yet, we are still holding ourselves accountable and feeling shame when we are unable to meet these unrealistic goals that should never been served to us this way.

Dr. Natalie breaks down in today’s video, one of the ways this mythology persists for us. Take a listen to her explanation here and stay tuned for her tip on how to dismantle this myth in our own lives.

FREE Monthly Master Class Sign Up

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses that I offer to help people with their personal growth and development.

Online Personal Development Courses

Bucking the System, Self-Compassion

Are You a Self, Divided?

November 9, 2021 admin Leave a comment

It’s the fall and most of us in America have been conditioned to think of fall as football season. Both college and professional. And how many times have you heard or seen the idea of “a house divided“. This is a tongue and cheek way of talking about living in the same household and favoring different teams that are arch rivals. It’s fun and we see lots of memes about it. It can get dicey, but for the most part it is all fun.

But what if the division is inside yourself? What if there are parts of yourself that you desire to disavow? Do you have these aspects of yourself that you want to reject? Here is my question for you… How do you know that these are parts of yourself that should be rejected? Where did you learn that these aspects of yourself are not worthy? Could you unlearn this?

More than likely where you learned not to love this aspect of yourself was in the rules of social conditioning. Social conditioning is a powerful pull. It teaches us what we should and should not be. And I don’t mean to give this a totally bad rap. There are values to social conditioning, including that this keeps us on the straight and narrow, away from making bad choices that could be harmful to ourselves or others. This has value in some places in our life. However, it’s a runaway train. Social conditioning starts to make opinions about subtleties and aspects of our self that we cannot change. When this starts to happen, we start to be a self, divided.

We take the war from the outside and turn it inside. Our internal conflict with parts of ourselves that we do not like about us, creates a discomfort that we seek to numb or deny. One way or the other we are pushing against our own self. And when we are in conflict with our self, we start to be in conflict with our outer world as well.

text on chalkboard — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Warning this is a part where you will hear some therapist speak that likely will irritate you. It’s the section of the blog where I say things that you know to be true, but hate when I’m right.

If you are noticing more irritability in your life or that you’re trying to numb away with over eating, drinking, overworking, or whatever your favorite numbing agent is, then it is likely that there is division within yourself. What you’re noticing on the outside is an effort to make this division either go away or to escape from this discomfort. Yet, the division really isn’t on the outside, it’s on the inside. What about this thing you’re pushing away from, this irritation, this aspect in your outer world that you do not like, has a parallel on the inside of yourself? Think about it.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you are in line at the grocery store and someone asks you if they can go ahead of you because they only have a few items and you have a full cart. Normally this is something you would offer to another person, however you hadn’t noticed this individual standing behind you. Now you’re irritated that they have the audacity to ask. Yet, you let them go ahead of you anyway. Now you’re irritated with this person. Irritated by their arrogance in asking, or at least that’s what you tell yourself.

shopping cart with groceries — Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com

You know what I’m going to say next. You aren’t irritated with this person at all. You are irritated with yourself. Maybe you’re irritated that you allow people to walk all over you. Maybe you’re irritated that this person has the capacity to ask for what they need, and you do not. Maybe you’re just irritated that you didn’t notice that they were there and weren’t able to offer before you were asked. Whatever you’re irritated with, you can bet that it’s a part of yourself that you don’t like. It’s an aspect of you that you’ve noticed in the past and you try to push away. It may even be an aspect of yourself that you don’t think is changeable. I assure you that is not the case. Anything inside of you is changeable. But maybe it doesn’t need changing. And that is where true irritation comes to play.

Why wouldn’t we change some thing about ourselves that’s irritating? I’ll tell you why…because it’s not a part of us that needs changing. It’s a part of us that needs acceptance. It’s a part of us that needs loving. It’s a part of us. And therefore it should not be something that we reject but some thing that we pull close. But what if these aspects of our self are in opposition to other aspects of our self? How do we accept those? This is the paradox. That two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time, even when they are opposite things about ourselves. These can be excepted. These can coexist. And the way we facilitate peace about this is through loving all aspects of our self…the good, the not good, and everything in between.

FREE Monthly Master Class Sign Up

Or, if you are looking for something a little more in depth, take a look at the Online Courses that I offer to help people with their personal growth and development.

Online Personal Development Courses