Dear Stressed-Out Woman,

I know you probably picked up your book because you wanted to get out of your own head for a little while.

Same.

I love getting lost in a good story, but somewhere along the way my therapist brain usually sneaks in too. I start noticing the perfectionism, the people-pleasing, the family roles, the relationship patterns, the grief, the burnout, and all the little ways a character is trying to hold herself together.

So this blog is where my love of books and my therapist brain meet.

I’ll tell you what I actually thought about what I’m reading, what made me laugh, what annoyed me, who I was rooting for, and the moments that made me want to yell at fictional people who absolutely cannot hear me.

Then I’ll ask the question I almost always end up asking anyway:

What if this character were sitting across from me?

What would I want to understand before giving advice? What might she believe about herself underneath the way she’s coping? If she were my client, what might we work on together?

And because fiction has a funny way of showing us pieces of ourselves, I’ll leave you with a few questions to think about too.

This is not me diagnosing fictional characters or turning your fun romance novel into homework. Promise.

It is just a place to talk about the very human things that keep showing up in the stories we love: anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, people-pleasing, relationships, grief, boundaries, family expectations, self-worth, and what happens when you have been the strong one for a little too long.

So come for the books. Stay for the therapist thoughts. And maybe, every once in a while, recognize a little bit of yourself in the character too.

From one recovering perfectionist to another,

Hayley