Julia Reeder LLC

10/09/2025

I have worked with addictions of all kinds throughout my career, be it alcoholism, codependence, or some other numbing/problematic behavioral pattern. And a common statement I hear is: “I don’t know why I do this.“

The intellectual case we are implicitly making with this statement is: if only I knew why I did this, then I would change. Since I don’t, I guess I can’t 🤷‍♀️

Essentially, it’s a cop out. In fact, many people I see who say this (including myself on occasion ) DO in fact know WHY they do the problematic behavior in question.

Knowing why we numb out or seek comfort in damaging things can indeed be helpful. But actually changing the behavior is more of an emotional and behavioral process. When you catch yourself saying “I don’t know why I do this,” consider the notion that you are collapsing a bit. It’s a resignation — a shield against doing hard things.

Understand why you’re partaking in an addiction can help you summon compassion for yourself, which is an important part of behavioral change. It is worthwhile to investigate your motives. When you’ve done this, don’t then create for yourself the speedbump of convincing yourself that you don’t make sense. You do, you just need to now grieve or cry or break up or go to a meeting or whatever it is that you don’t want to do but know you need.

08/18/2025

True story: a client told me today she can’t bring herself to look at her bank account. I told her maybe she needs to print out her bank statements and literally motorboat them 🤣 thanks for your wisdom and support. Everyone who needs to get right with money should hire you! 🧘🏽‍♀️ 💵 🪄

08/12/2025

Inspiration today came in the form of a client who shared how overwhelmed she was by her daughter‘s emotions on the first day of school. She was reminded of herself as a kid (she had a very difficult childhood). When asked how she copes with this overwhelm, she said “I just let her feel how she feels and just hold her.” This moved me as I know from personal experience how tempting it is to try to just cheer your kid up so you don’t have to feel their pain vicariously anymore. Given how disregulating it is to see her child have big feelings, it is all the more brave for her to make space for those feelings. She is my hero.

06/20/2025

06/20/2025

All human beings have the capacity for addiction. In fact, some would argue that every human being indeed suffers from some kind of addiction. The extent to which your needs were not met as a child is equal to the extent to which you have the propensity to be addicted to something. In other words, if you were unable to attach securely to your caregiver, you’re more likely to attach instead to a substance or activity. Saying somebody has an “addictive personality” is reductive. Like all labels, it can undermine or ignore the cause of the phenomenon, which is attachment.

03/11/2025

When someone complains you’re too sensitive or emotional, what is likely happening is that THEY are the ones having a hard time tolerating YOUR emotion.

01/30/2025

“Know your rights” (red cards) inform people of their constitutional rights when interacting with law enforcement, especially immigration officers. If you have a private business, you shouldn’t be penalized for disseminating these, and I think it’s a moral obligation to do so. (If you receive government funding you also shouldn’t be penalized but that’s not a safe bet these days). Will post a link to print your own in my stories.

01/28/2025

Don’t read this as me saying “blame other people for your problems.” it’s important to hold yourself accountable for your mistakes. But if you feel angry at yourself most of the time, my sense is, somewhere in your history, you were angry at someone else. It was not emotionally safe to be angry at this person, so you turned it on yourself. Feeling better will require some research on who this person was, and what you felt/feel toward them.

12/11/2024

This is obvious, but not easy to remember for everyone. Dichotomous self-evaluations such as “I’m either exceptional or I’m pond scum” kick up at stressful times of year and I just want to bring good tidings: most of life is in the in between. Today I accept I am a novice at certain things I wish I was mastering by now. And it’s a gift to learn.

11/04/2024

In a fight/flight state, humans go to this “us” and “them” mentality - or a “you vs. me”. The goal is to win.

Sometimes there IS a clear victim and perpetrator. But often what’s actually happening is that both parties are just experiencing fear and pain and protecting themselves in ways that aren’t effective and sometimes even harmful. Growth then becomes about moving from an antagonistic stance to one of: “we are both scared. How can we do this differently?” And maybe even, “how can we do this together?”

My client has cancer, and her mother pressures her to stop crying about it. This, as you can imagine, creates quite a chasm between the two. When we look closer, we find that her mother is so torn up about the diagnosis that she can’t handle her own pain, let alone her daughter’s. So her criticism is a form of self preservation. This is not an excuse, but when we agree that we’re all suffering and can “do this differently,” we can drop the importance of “being right.” We can enter into relationship with one another and perhaps even traverse the unimaginable.

This feels powerful to me during this election season. Now, there IS actually a perpetrator running for office, but I’m not thinking about the actual candidates in this dichotomy but rather the factions of Americans that have emerged. Even though I am firmly situated on one side of the chasm, I believe there is suffering on both sides. Fundamentally we all want to protect ourselves. And sometimes we protect ourselves in ineffective and deeply harmful ways. I long for a future in which we can do this differently. I hope we elect the candidate who can help us. But I think we all play a role in that growth moving forward.

08/29/2024

This is what attachment experts advise you to say to your kids when they say hurtful things to you. It has occurred to me that I have never uttered this sentence before, to anyone, nor has it been said to me. I’ve certainly never said it to myself.

I try not to take personally what my 4-year-old says to me out of anger. I know he doesn’t mean it. But sometimes it does get to me, and when it does, I have a tendency to feel weak. I say to myself “Buck up and be a grown up. Be a good mom who says the right things, no matter the circumstances.” Like I expect myself not to be human.

This is literally the opposite of what I’m supposed to be telling my son when he’s having a meltdown. What I’m essentially communicating to myself is: your feelings are silly. And this actually ends up making me feel worse and behave more reactively — NOT the Zen mom I aspire to be.

I don’t think I got the message growing up that my feelings mattered more than how I expressed them. No offense to my parents, they probably didn’t get that message either. Maybe I can shift this generational pattern by starting with myself.

When our loved ones say hurtful things (as I’ve learned kids so often do) it can make us feel younger than we are. When we feel small, maybe that is the perfect time for us to say to ourselves the compassionate stuff we’re supposed to be saying to our kids. Maybe we’ll all soften a little bit more together.

P.s. I betcha this doesn’t just apply to relationships with children!