Defy the Gravity of Your Emotionally Immature Parent

Struggling With Poor Boundaries? Compulsively People Pleasing? How’s Your Inner Perfectionist Doing?

It’s Time to Defy Gravity, & Release Yourself from the Orbit of Your Emotionally Immature or Personality Disordered Parent

You May Present Yourself Well, And Others May Even See You As Confident And Capable.

But deep down, you're filled with self-doubt. You bite your tongue to avoid revealing how you really feel—because you know how it’ll go: they’ll either ridicule you or make it about themselves. You’re always on alert for signs of distress in others, because you’ve learned that it might turn into an explosion of rage. You’re terrified of conflict, because you’ll just end up being attacked, being wrong.

Even though you intellectually know better, you find yourself pulled back into your parents’ emotional orbit. And even though you want to break free, you notice the patterns:

🌀 You struggle with boundaries (even when you know you need to speak up).

🌀 You people-please (even if it means abandoning your own needs).

🌀 You aim for perfection (even though you know it’s impossible).

You’re stuck in a shame spiral—trapped between the anger you feel toward your parents and the desire to earn their approval. It's exhausting, confusing, and painful.

But maybe the hardest part?

You don’t really know who you are. You don’t even know that it’s okay to ask that question—or that it’s your right to live according to your own needs and values.

You are walking on eggshells.

Having an emotionally immature parent, even one with Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, or with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or NPD, isn’t always easy to identify. Particularly if you’re the child of one. If you’re unsure, check out this article I wrote.

As you look around, you feel how foreign you are from others who aren’t constantly second-guessing themselves, who are at ease with being less-than-perfect, and comfortable in relationships where they can let themselves be themselves.

This is a love letter to all those not seen, to all those given the impossible task of being the parent to their parents. Of being the unwilling recipient of their parents’ often bizarre expectations. Of not being seen at all, for the wonderfully complex, unique beings you actually are. As an expert on immature parents, I found clients with the same issues coming in to see me. Like me, they were exhausted. Numb. Constantly overwhelmed, trying to control every facet of their existence.

You Are Not Who Your Parents Wanted You To Be. You’re Not Yet What You Can Be.

Professionally, moving beyond perfectionism to risk-taking and exploration, beyond poor boundaries to assertion. Personally, knowing the joy of true intimacy with another, rejoicing in what you share, and energized by your differences.

And finally, to know that you are inherently worthy, to savor another’s worth. It is not enough to know intellectually that you are worthy. You must feel it in your bones. That your greatest gift to the world, the gift that underlies all others, is the next breath you take.

Let’s take it together…start here!.

WHO AM I?

Hello, I'm Inga!

I was born to two Adulting 101 dropouts! I know what it’s like not to be seen. To be invisible. Mom: “Make me feel better about myself”. Dad: “Who’d you say you were again?”. I was becoming a person that didn’t match the ideal child of my educator mother and psychiatrist (yup!) father…and so instead, I became invisible. I ended up both taking responsibility for the reactions of everyone around me, and believing I would inevitably fail.

I arrived at the age of adulthood without the first clue of how to actually, well, “adult.” But along the way, I met my people. And they saw me, as I emerged, visible.

And over the last 25 plus years, I’ve had the profound privilege of fighting alongside my clients. Pulling the damaging lessons of their immature parents out by the root. Going to the intellect, then past the intellect, to the body. The body that shrinks, at the moment you know you’d be better served by standing tall. That surrenders when you need to assert, or shuts others out when you most need to lean into their comfort. I speak to you as one of you, and I see in you the seeds of whom you can become.

When I created my own group for Adult Children of Those with Personality Disorders in 2018, I brought what I understood was needed, according to my clients, and brought in my own somatic exercises…many generations of groups since, I now bring client-approved and -tested course to you!

WHO AM I?

Hello, I'm Inga!

I was born to two Adulting 101 dropouts! I know what it’s like not to be seen. To be invisible. Mom: “Make me feel better about myself”. Dad: “Who’d you say you were again?”. I was becoming a person that didn’t match the ideal child of my educator mother and psychiatrist (yup!) father…and so instead, I became invisible. I ended up both taking responsibility for the reactions of everyone around me, and believing I would inevitably fail.

I arrived at the age of adulthood without the first clue of how to actually, well, “adult.” But along the way, I met my people. And they saw me, as I emerged, visible.

And over the last 25 plus years, I’ve had the profound privilege of fighting alongside my clients. Pulling the damaging lessons of their immature parents out by the root. Going to the intellect, then past the intellect, to the body. The body that shrinks, at the moment you know you’d be better served by standing tall. That surrenders when you need to assert, or shuts others out when you most need to lean into their comfort. I speak to you as one of you, and I see in you the seeds of whom you can become.

When I created my own group for Adult Children of Those with Personality Disorders in 2018, I brought what I understood was needed, according to my clients, and brought in my own somatic exercises…many generations of groups since, I now bring client-approved and -tested course to you!

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

Defy Gravity, & Release Yourself from the Orbit of Your Emotionally Immature

My coaching program is your path to finally breaking free from the emotional orbit of an emotionally immature or personality-disordered parent—and reclaiming your voice, boundaries, and sense of self.

For those of you who want a full experience, the complete course includes:

  • An initial 50 minute intensive coaching session to hear your story and understand the impact of your emotionally immature or personality disordered parent

  • 3 additional 30 minute coaching sessions, either online or in person, while you take the online course

  • Full access to my online course, including brief videos, articles to listen or read, comments section for further feedback, and exercises to practice

  • Text support via Signal between sessions

Yours for just $1195

Payment plans are available. (3 installments of $450)

For those who want the stand-alone online course, which can be done in conjunction with your therapist for additional support if needed:

  • Full access to my online course, including videos, articles to listen or read, comments section for further feedback, and exercises to practice.

  • Text support via Signal for six weeks

Yours for just $495

My hope is that, with sufficient interest, we might add a zoom group every other week. It is nothing less than magical to hear the stories of others mirroring your own, and to experience the deep understanding and support from others who truly get you!

Real Stories. Real Change.

Each person you’ll hear from once felt stuck, shut down, or overwhelmed. These are their stories of reconnection, regulation, and renewal.

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nervous

Anxiety, Embodied: The Biology of “Mental” Illness

April 30, 20256 min read
Central Nervous System

It’s 1965, and a little girl is hiding behind a door. It’s recess, and the other children are jumping rope, playing tag, and laughing as children ought to be at that age, no care in the world. But not the girl, sandwiched between the brick building and the metal door to the classroom. She’s sweating, counting down the minutes until she can once again sit at the back of the class, avoiding being called on. Hoping she won’t be seen.

Welcome to Anxiety Land

Some of you have only lately been introduced to your capacity for anxiety: the sudden, rapid pulse, the racing thoughts, the inability to sit still, the abrupt startle awakening you at night, the debilitating tension throughout the day. For most of you, this is a nearly lifelong condition. Traditional psychotherapy attempts to give simplistic reasons for this. A dysfunctional home or unfortunate preschool experience, leading to a belief about the world, usually as an unsafe place. Once this is successfully countered, through the magic of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, with its reframes and positive cognitions, your anxiety should go away.

After all, it’s a choice, isn’t it?

I wish it were as simple as that. However, even for the clients for whom that worked temporarily, their anxiety crept back, like a weed, in some other form, to curl once again around their gut, their throat. And for the past 25+ years, these clients and I have journeyed to greater regulation and ease by a different route.

An Exercise…

Try something for me. Stand up, slooowly, making yourself as tall as you can. Let yourself notice how your body alerts to the shift. Did you feel increased activity, energy, even anxiety? This is what our body wants to do when it suspects a lion’s about to jump out of the bushes, but we’re not sure. We want to see, we want to engage our ability to fight the beast, or flee from it. This is the moment we hold our breath, completely focused on the present, on the next ‘tell’ indicating whether the threat is real.

Once the lion has passed us by, our desire to fight, flee, or freeze dissolves. We collapse on the ground, and catch our breath. We turn to the other survivors, and embrace. Even laugh. And return to the rest-and-digest ease that is supposed to be our normal state.

With Anxiety, the Lion Never Leaves

In the case of those of my clients crippled by symptoms of anxiety, we may instead want to curl up into a little ball, freeze, hopelessly awaiting the lion’s attack and anesthetizing ourselves to the imminent pain. And for many with chronic anxiety, the lion is ALWAYS about to attack. Even in the middle of the night.

brain

In the last few decades, the neurology of anxiety has received much attention, including by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). We now know there are multiple areas of the brain, including the basal ganglia, anterior cingulate, and amygdala, that control our experience of fear, obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behavior, and shyness (AKA social anxiety)…the very same parts of the brain that kept that girl behind the door, and later on, behind multiple masks she wore to pretend she was comfortable in front of others (although, as it turned out, the “fake-it-till-you-make-it” strategy translated into a partially effective treatment).

brain anatomy

That a significant factor is if either parent also had anxiety (both of hers did). That not only the brain, but the autonomic nervous system in the spinal cord also regulates when we’re happily digesting and resting, simply enjoying the company of others and of our selves (the parasympathetic nervous system/PNS) and when we’re engaged in fight or flight (the sympathetic/SNS).

What is Healthy?

Ideally, we’d be spending the majority of our time, and particularly of our sleep, in the healing PNS (Parasympathetic Nervous System), and, other than a low-level alertness to the possibility of threat, only enough time in the SNS to deal with real, current threat as is needed to resolve it. Think actual lions, or sudden imminent deadlines, or seeing your child start to topple off the counter. In fact, a temporary heightening of our stress level is actually a good thing. It makes us sharper cognitively, and lighter on our feet.

If that fits you, I’m so happy for you! Your relative calmness and regulation is a gift not only to yourself, but to the community around you. Your reasoning is solid, and you don’t have a tendency to being reactive.

However, most of us don’t fit this mold.

We either underreact to real threat, going into freeze or missing the signs altogether, or overreact, perceiving actions and sensory stimuli (visual, auditory, olfactory…) as threatening simply because they resemble stimuli that are associated with painful situations that may have occurred years earlier.

Imagine if you will someone who was mugged from behind on a lonely sidewalk years ago. The threat is long past, but that person even today may find that when they hear footsteps behind them, regardless of where they are or who’s around them., they begin to hyperventilate, feel the urge to run, feel cold and clammy, as their heart races in their chest. And regardless of what they tell themselves cognitively, their body continues to prep for danger until the unwary pedestrian behind them passes by.

This is brilliant, when you think of it. The moments saved by reacting to a trigger similar to the one that wounded you immediately, before you even have time to analyze the sight, or sound, or scent, can make the difference between life or death.

Anxiety is a Kink in Your Biological Software

See, anxiety is not a choice. It’s not a characterological weakness. It’s a kink in your biological software. Sadly, the mood-as-a-choice crowd has been growing in the last decade or two, which complicates the matter, making it worse. Because now, not only do you stutter in a crowd, have difficulty making eye contact, or find your obsessive thoughts getting in the way of rational decision-making, but you understand these to be signs of failure on your part. The shame, then, of being incompetent, unfriendly and untrustworthy, stupid, and my favorite absurdity, “attention-seeking,” makes it almost impossible for you to simply work with your physical self to heal it, because even admitting your anxiety is embarrassing.

Anxiety’s Biology Can Be Healed

Once you can get past your shame however, and simply allow yourself with guidance to gently, compassionately step into your anxious body, you have the power to bring flow to the log-jam of chronic anxiety. What will work for you is special, even unique, so if you tried that yin yoga and it didn’t help, try pole-dancing instead! Meditation works great, but for you, maybe don’t sit. Walk instead. A host of complementary care practitioners are digging in to specific work with anxiety, from acupuncturists and chiropractors to personal trainers. And of course, most of my interventions are all about bringing life to the body in such a way that your specific gifts can be tapped. Strengthening your sense of community, enhancing your spiritual practices, even the judicious use of appropriately prescribed medication as a stop-gap measure. All can be a part of your wheel-house.

And don’t fool yourself for a minute that I don’t understand. That little girl was me.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Quick answers to help you feel informed and confident in your next step.

What are some things about your practice I need to know in determining whether you’re a good fit for me?

After being in clinical practice for over two decades, I’ve brought my focus to two main areas. I address the needs of adult children of emotionally immature and personality-disordered parents, Defy Gravity, as well as those experiencing overwhelming stress and the revitalization of numbed lives, Overcome Overwhelm.

For each of these areas, Defy Gravity and Overcome Overwhelm, I provide both in person and zoom coaching. The full program for each of these includes both individual sessions with me and an online course which you can access at any time, with no time restrictions.

I also make the online course available on its own, for those who want additional hacks to the existing health regimen they feel confident about.

To understand my approach, it’s also a good idea to read some of my “Deeper Dive” articles.

To be absolutely clear, I do NOT accept clients as a psychotherapist. Some among you may be experiencing clinical-level depression or PTSD, as opposed to the blues or an accumulation of stress. The hybrid model of using my coaching offerings in conjunction to working with a licensed psychotherapist towards a common goal–your ultimate vitality and purposefulness–is highly effective in my experience.

I like your website, and think you might be a good choice for me: what’s my first step?

You can immediately sign up for one of my coaching courses. However, if you want a more tailored experience, or have more questions before you take the plunge, scroll down to the contact form below, and send your question. After I respond via private email, we may also hop on a discovery call. You’ll have an opportunity to ask me what you need to know in order to make a well-informed decision, to get a sense of who I am and what I might offer you, and see how comfortable you are in my real or virtual office.

I’m actually in a fairly good place, I just want to become even healthier, more whole. How do you work with this?

Welcome to coaching! Life coaching is designed for those who want to further enhance their lives. I myself have benefited greatly from other life coaches as I’ve made significant transitions in my life, and have found that, along with clarifying the presenting issue and goal through practical problem solving, parts work (similar to IFS) and narrative therapy, can be extremely helpful.

As I am also a Licensed Massage Therapist, I may also include bodywork for my in person clients at their discretion. Bodywork includes Somatic Experiencing and CranioSacral Therapy to help regulate the body, allowing people to slow down and think more clearly. It also unearths hidden negative beliefs and stressful experiences, where they live, in the body.

My clients may do intensive work for a while, then not see me again for a month or a year, until they want to include my work to once again enhance their health and wellbeing. I absolutely welcome this as-desired (PRN) relationship, and look forward to exploring with you a unique plan that suits your needs.

What are some pointers to keep in mind, so that I can get the most for my investment?

Show up, on time, ready for the work. If we’re meeting via Zoom, please set yourself up for success! A quiet room, where you will not be disturbed, as well as a solid wifi connection, is best.

I’ll give you something to think about, some activity or exercise to perform, after every session, so that you can bring our work into the life you want to improve. Do it.

If my approach isn’t working for you, let me know. Through my twenty five+ years in practice, I’ve become skilled in multiple areas, so I can certainly adjust my approach to better serve your needs.

Particularly if you struggle to get in, stay in, your body, you’ll find that we work better if we initially build some momentum. It is important that you make time to come on at least a bi-weekly basis. After this, we’ll explore a schedule that works for you. We’ll also check in to see if my approach is right for you.

Recognize that the work we’ll be doing, regardless of which coaching option you’re interested in, is somatic (embodied). It digs deep, and actually impacts your body physically. If you don’t believe that you’re open to somatic work, or that it might be too much for you, be honest. I may not be the right person for you. You decide whether it’s worth a try.

I’m already working with a therapist and am looking for complementary services. Would you be open to working with me and my therapist?

My coaching packages’ fees are listed, with an option to pay over time. Additional coaching, depending on the time you need, is available at $225 per 60 minute hour, $150 per 30 minute half hour. Extended sessions are also available. Extended sessions are also available in 2-hour blocks, including coaching outside the office, and are available at $375

Do you accept insurance or sliding scale?

No, but I am willing to create a payment plan for well-motivated clients whom I believe the courses can help.

Be well, and I look forward to meeting with you!

Feel free to contact me.

It’s Time to Step Out of the Shadows—and Into the Life That’s Truly Yours

You are not broken. You were shaped by people who couldn’t meet your emotional needs—and it’s time to release their grip on your life. This course is your invitation to finally be seen, to reclaim your boundaries, and to live from a place of self-worth—not shame.

Here’s a free gift to get started:

My grounding exercise, to help you get centered in your busy day. I’ll occasionally also send special offers and insights (I promise, I won’t deluge your in-box!)