Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of the Relationship Coaching School podcast.

I got a little frog in my throat today. And I'm happy to be here. I'm noticing people a lot,

right? That's what I do for a living. I notice people. And one of the

things I noticed, I was recently with a group of people and I've known for quite a long time.

And one of the people in the group, who's a college kid, is really exhausted a lot of the time.

And this kid's dad takes two naps a day and has some untreated, undiagnosed mental health challenges.

And when we look at exhaustion, there's so many things that could be going on from sleep,

issues, to stress, to staying up late, to being hung over i mean there's just so many

reasons right the one i want to zero in on today is the drain and exhaustion from being in your

strategy and for those of you who are familiar with my book and my work, the strategic self is what

it's an adaptive strategy that comes online when we're young to modify ourselves to fit in

with the environment.

Our true self becomes like not that welcome.

We compensate by developing strategies of being nice or invisible or polite or funny or smart or whatever we need

to do to belong in the family and to make the stress levels not get higher in the family system.

So kids are extremely adaptive here and they don't consciously think about it.

They just start adapting.

And so one of the strategies that people adapt, right, is to be a good boy or a good girl

because their parents are nicer to them.

And they get love, affection, approval, acknowledgement, compliments when they're, quote, good, when they are a good boy, good girl.

And they fall in line with the family role and family system.

Because that helps the parents feel less stressed.

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