Send a text

What if your most frustrating patterns were once your smartest survival skills? The Myth of Normal opens up the idea that when attachment and authenticity collide, we adapt to belong but slowly mute our needs. Instead of pushing for quick fixes, we're reframing anxiety, burnout, and numbness as intelligent signals from a nervous system that’s been working overtime to keep us safe.

Guided by The Myth of Normal, we explore how shame fuels perfectionism and people-pleasing, why blame gives the illusion of control, and how a single question—What happened?—can soften self-judgment into clarity. We talk about the body’s memory, the cost of chronic self-silencing, and the subtle ways culture rewards performance over presence. Then we practice turning toward ourselves with compassion, not as a loophole but as a precise response to context. When we understand what a pattern has protected, we stop fighting ourselves and start building safety.

You’ll hear practical, humane ways to shift: replace self-critique with curiosity, swap pressure for pace, and use simple grounding cues—breath, touch, sound—to restore connection without analysis. We also include a guided micro-practice to help you settle and listen. Hope here isn’t wishful thinking; it’s the lived experience that nothing essential in you was lost. It was safeguarded, waiting for welcome.

Here are a couple of Reflection Prompts that might help you digest this episode and the book!

Take your time with these. There’s no need to answer them all — or at all. You might simply sit with one and notice what arises.

1. Belonging & Adaptation

• Who did I learn to become in order to belong?
• What parts of myself felt safest to express? Which felt risky?
• What did this adaptation once protect me from?

2. The Cost of Being ‘Good’

• Where in my life do I feel over-responsible?
• What might it feel like to disappoint someone — and survive it?

You don’t need to act on what you discover. Awareness is enough.

And if this episode stirred something, here are a few gentle Grounding Practices to settle your nervous system.

1. Orienting (1–2 minutes)
Look around the room slowly.
Name (silently or aloud):

• 5 things you can see
• 3 things you can hear
• 1 thing you can physically feel

This reminds your nervous system that you are here, now, and safe enough in this moment.

2. Hand-to-Heart Reset
Place one hand on your chest or arm.
Take one slow breath in.
And quietly say:

Repeat 2–3 times.

3. Containment Visualization
If emotions feel bigger than you expected:
Imagine placing them in a container — a box, a jar, a basket.
Not to get rid of them.
Just to hold them safely until you’re ready to return.

If you’ve been carrying the weight of being “too much” or “never enough,” this conversation offers relief, language, and tools to come home to yourself—slowly, kindly, and on your terms. If our work helps you feel less alone, subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs a gentler path back to their own voice.

Our final quote from Gabor rounds out the episode like this:

“To make peace with our inner tormentors, we have to first understand them against the backdrop of

https://www.instagram.com/reverseresetrestore/?fbclid=IwAR0ycrx4XHwDTZIwEx5LpeXF2NQOJ3cK1eJ7P1nUezK3REQR6wdBm3Mr_nY

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092872185263

Send a text

What if exhaustion isn’t a personal failure but a cultural pattern we’ve mistaken for normal? We open our first Foundation Friday episode for the year a two-part exploration of Gabor and Daniel Maté's book 'The Myth of Normal.'

I introduce critical questions about the nature of exhaustion and trauma, emphasizing that they may stem not from personal failure but from broader cultural issues. We look at the importance of understanding trauma as a relational, cultural, and systemic issue rather than an individual flaw.

We explore the difference between what’s common and what’s truly nourishing, and we name the quiet adaptations—over-functioning, people-pleasing, emotional self-containment—that once kept us safe but now keep us distant from not just other people, but more importantly, from ourselves.

Through Gabor Maté’s lens, trauma isn’t only about what happened; it’s about what formed inside us when safety and attunement were missing. That shift reframes anxiety, fatigue, numbness, and irritability as understandable responses to unreasonable conditions, not evidence of weakness. We also trace how systems—workplace pressure, social media churn, constant news—reward speed over presence and independence over interdependence, creating a culture where disconnection feels normal and rest feels unsafe. And how we are is tied to who we think we should be instead of who we are.

I've offered some practical reflection points in this first episode to get you thinking about the areas of your life where what feels normal is actually unkind, where coping has replaced care, and how to invite small moments of kindness into the day—so awareness can lead without force.

Subscribe for part two, share this with someone who’s been quietly enduring, and leave a review to help more listeners find space for compassionate self-understanding.

Don't forget to join our Facebook group, Foundation Fridays, to stay part of the conversation for the Myth of Normal and all our books for 2026 which are:

• Be Good to Yourself — Orison Swett Marden (March/April)
• Brave New World — Aldous Huxley (May/June)
• The Kindness Method — Shahroo Izadi (July/August)
• The Gifts of Imperfection — Brené Brown (September/October)
• Radical Acceptance — Tara Brach (November/December)

Closing out the episode is this poignant thought from Gabor around how our behaviour is often informed by the moments when we are operating out of our own myths of normal – our pain, perfectionism, neglect, perceived rejection, need to please, or pulling away from those around us.

"The meaning of the word “trauma,” in its Greek origin, is “wound.” Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.”
― Gabor Maté

https://www.instagram.com/reverseresetrestore/?fbclid=IwAR0ycrx4XHwDTZIwEx5LpeXF2NQOJ3cK1eJ7P1nUezK3REQR6wdBm3Mr_nY

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092872185263

Send a text

Welcome to Season 2 of the Reverse Reset Restore podcast. This episode is number one in a series of 10 where I'll be sharing my Word for the Year and why I believe having a Word to focus on is more effective than a New Years Resolution.

This year, I've chosen Équilibre, the French word for balance, as a guiding theme for the year and in this episode I talk about how that choice collided with illness, what I refer to as “the wobbles,” and a body that insisted on being heard. Instead of chasing perfection, I want to explore balance as a living relationship: noticing when something is off and returning with awareness instead of criticism.

Across this 10 part episode, we trade resolutions for a single grounding word and unpack why that shift reduces shame and increases follow-through. I've broken the word Équilibre into nine touchstones—Experience, Quantum, Unique, Intention, Loved, Ignite, Becoming, Rhythm, and Exuberance—to make the concept usable in real days with real limits. In the upcoming episodes, you’ll hear how each of these sub-words help set boundaries, protect energy, and invite joy, even when rest feels unproductive or progress moves in tiny steps.

We also get practical, in this episode and the ones to come; You’ll learn a brief breath ritual to anchor choices, questions to help your own word find you, and a compassionate way to navigate seasons when work, health, or grief demand more.

Download the free Équilibre workbook here: The workbook focuses on my word, but I’ve created room for you to build your own.

Balance isn’t static or universal; it’s contextual and seasonal. Sometimes it looks like sleep. Sometimes it looks like a hard truth. Always, it asks for intention. If you’re craving a kinder structure for change, this episode offers a map back to center—and an invitation to choose a word that feels like a hand on your back. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a review to tell us the word guiding your year.

As is custom, we always finish the episode with a quote and this one is from John Lubbock who reminds us that

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass… is by no means a waste of time.”

Please hit the like and subscribe, and leave a comment on our socials to tell us the word guiding your year.

#WordOfTheYear
#BalanceNotBurnout
#SelfHealing
#NervousSystemSupport
#EmbodiedHealing
#ReverseResetRestore

https://www.instagram.com/reverseresetrestore/?fbclid=IwAR0ycrx4XHwDTZIwEx5LpeXF2NQOJ3cK1eJ7P1nUezK3REQR6wdBm3Mr_nY

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092872185263