The Day My Therapist Brain Failed My Son

I need to say this out loud.

There are days I don’t like the mother I become with my child.

Not because I don’t love him.

But because I’m tired. And scared. And watching him struggle breaks something primitive inside me.

This afternoon, he sat at the kitchen table with his pencil tapping against the wood.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Workbook open. Letters floating. Instructions already forgotten.

“Just finish this,” I said—too calmly. The forced kind.

He froze.

Foot bouncing. Eyes blank.

And then the pencil flew across the room.

Something in my chest caved.

That familiar cocktail—rage, guilt, helplessness, heartbreak.

He’s 11.

Wild imagination. Bright mind. Overflowing energy.

And already the world has named him:

ADHD. Disruptive. Difficult.

Every label lands on me like an accusation.

As a practitioner, I know what these behaviours really point to—

not disease, not defect—

but a nervous system that learned early that the world is not a safe place to soften into.

But today, my training disappeared.

I snapped. I controlled. I pushed.

I became the very pressure that overwhelms him.

Later that night, I sat beside his sleeping body in the dark.

The same hands that threw the pencil now curled around his blanket.

Peaceful. Unaware.

And the grief came—the quiet kind that doesn’t cry loudly.

The kind that asks:

How many times will I fail him before I learn to stay?

From his lens, I could suddenly see it.

Not defiance.

Effort.

Trying.

So much trying.

And I realized something that cracked me open:

He already works harder than most adults ever will—just to stay regulated.

Why was I making it harder?

I don’t know when I learned this violent idea

that to make children do better,

we must first make them feel worse.

But I am unlearning it.

Every day.

Through heartbreak.

Through failure.

Through the raw moments where I realise how easily love turns into pressure.

And I see the same pattern everywhere.

In parents pushing harder while children shut down.

In practitioners chasing quick results while quietly bypassing the inner world where fear actually lives.

Sometimes the surface improves.

The behaviour shifts.

The symptoms quieten.

And yet—inside—nothing has truly settled.

Real change only comes

when presence meets skill,

when awareness is paired with grounded craft,

when we stop trying to fix from the outside

and start listening from within.

That’s the intersection I live in now—

as a mother learning to soften,

and as a practitioner learning to stay precise without becoming cold.

And that’s why I hold two kinds of spaces:

Spaces where you and your child can breathe, unravel, and be met in 1:1 work—without force, without labels as identity.

And practitioner training programs for those who feel called to hold others—so your depth doesn’t outgrow your skill, and your skill doesn’t bypass the human in front of you.

Not shortcuts.

Not formulas.

But foundations.

If you’re exhausted from trying to manage what is actually asking to be understood…

If something in your body softened while reading this…

You don’t have to run anymore.

You can reach me at +91 7016500451

—for 1:1 healing spaces

or for my practitioner training programs.

Some lessons don’t arrive through effort.

They arrive the moment

we stop bracing

and let ourselves finally feel what’s been asking for care.