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Monday 11am - 6pm Tuesday 11am - 6pm Wednesday 11am - 6pm Thursday 11am - 6pm

Allie Jayne Reed, LMHC, Seattle, WA (2025)

07/31/2025

What beliefs did you form from traumatic invalidation?

Traumatic invalidation is when someone’s environment repeatedly & intensely communicates that your thoughts, feelings, reactions, & very essence is unacceptable. Frequently, the person’s reaction to the invalidation will also be invalidated, leading to even more suffering.

In Dr. Harned’s research on PTSD in order to build DBT-PE, she found that oftentimes traumatic invalidation occurred after a traumatic event, and many participants in her studies reported that the traumatic invalidation was far worse for them than the traumatic event itself. This is astounding when you think about it.

What it tells us is the importance of connection, community & acceptance.

What Dr. Harned learned was that she had to create a treatment that explicitly targets traumatic invalidation (as many treatments do not) in order to ensure lasting recovery from PTSD.

Traumatic invalidation causes us to form negative beliefs, and this is why DBT-PE works to change beliefs driving your patterns of living that may be accidentally maintaining your symptoms.

If you’re ready to heal your wounds from & change your negative beliefs in order to realign with your Authentic Self, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/28/2025

I also wanna take a moment to shout out the younger siblings of dysfunctional families whose opinions, feelings & wishes are almost never taken seriously & are quickly shut down, cuz you’re just the ‘baby’. I know how dysregulating this can make conflict feel for you too.

If you’re ready to heal your wounds from & approach conflict with hope rather than fear, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/26/2025

You didn’t need a parent who made sure you never felt sad, angry, scared or disappointed... you needed a parent who was able to stay steady with you when you did feel these ways.

You didn’t need a parent who fragilized or coddled you. You needed a parent who could provide guidance & correction with compassion & love rather than judgment.

You didn’t need a parent who sees the world the same way as you do & agrees with you. You needed a parent who encouraged your individuality & embraced your uniqueness, teaching you that differences aren’t threatening.

You didn’t need a parent who rushed to your rescue & attempted to control your decisions in the name of ‘protection’. You needed a parent who gave you healthy freedom & autonomy to make mistakes so you could learn who you are.

Through targeted trauma-therapy, may you heal, grieve your unmet needs, & become the emotionally mature person you need for your own mental health & quality of life, & for your relationships to thrive.

If you’re ready to heal your wounds from & rediscover your Authentic Self, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/24/2025

Among the many ways emotionally immature parents create anxious children & adults, this is a big one.

EIPs fail to regulate their own emotions making it nearly impossible for them to soothe you or prioritize your feelings & needs. They then look to the environment to make them feel better, causing you to believe you're responsible for their emotions. This is where your tendency to monitor everyone else's emotions was born.

So of course you're anxious. You carry a sense of responsibility to regulate everyone around you rather than trusting them to regulate their own emotions or co-regulate. This is your own inadvertent form of emotionally neglecting yourself in the exact ways your parents taught you to. You were programmed to be on edge, directing your attention outside of yourself to others, monitoring everyone else rather than being in your body, noticing your own emotions & sensations, & attuning to yourself.

Your body doesn't feel like the safest place to be when you learned to survive by being hypervigilant of the big scary adults you depended on.

While you can't unlearn this, you can strengthen new learning in therapy. You can learn how to be in your body, attend to your own emotions, regulate them, embody limits with others while also co-regulating with those who are closest to you who merit trust.

If you're ready to heal your childhood wounds from & overcome anxiety, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/21/2025

10 signs you struggle with conflict avoidance as a result of growing up in a dysfunctional home with emotionally immature parents...

1) If you disagree w/ someone, you keep it to yourself to avoid uncomfortable feelings.

2) You feel anxious if you clash with others.

3) You try to satisfy others’ wants & needs.

4) You get quiet & try to remove yourself if disagreements occur.

5) Even if you know someone/ have a relationship with them, you get quiet when their behavior makes you uncomfortable.

6) You try to ease tension by making jokes or sugar coating.

7) You wait until you’re angry about a problem to express/ act on how you feel. You may think something needs to bother you MORE before it’s a good idea to address it.

8) You don’t see the point of expressing your feelings or opinions to others if they might disagree.

9) You feel resentful of people or situations in your life.

10) Conflict scares you because you believe it can/will destroy a relationship, so it FEELS catastrophic.

Conflict avoidance is a very common, normal behavior pattern for daughters of emotionally immature parents. EIPs don’t teach us that conflict is safe & can actually lead to more satisfying connections, because they avoid intimacy like the plague. In a dysfunctional home, conflict meant abandonment, ab*$e, painful invalidation, & feeling isolated.

Therapy grounded in DBT-PE works to strengthen your new learning - that conflict is not catastrophic, is actually a good thing for relationships, & even how to approach conflict if you don’t know how.

If you’re ready to heal your childhood wounds from then tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/19/2025

Emotionally immature people reject your emotions because they reject their own. They learned to suppress & avoid their own emotions, and have low tolerance for discomfort. This is why they look at you like you have 5 heads, express rejection or judgment, or even go as far as to pathologize you for normal expressions of emotions.

My practice is in WA, a place where it can be especially common for people to suppress their emotions & lean heavily into intellectualizing. Talk about a culture shock for a girl from MD. But hey, I do get it.

The bottom line is that just because your emotions may be perceived as scary to people who may be emotionally underdeveloped doesn't mean there's actually anything wrong with them. I encourage you to continue working on expressing your feelings genuinely, & talking openly about these things with the people closest to you.

If you're unsure of how to do this, therapy grounded in DBT-PE helps by providing coaching & skills training. If your own shame & fear are too high for you to express yourself genuinely, this is also exactly what DBT-PE driven therapy helps with.

If you're ready to heal your childhood wounds from & feel free from shame & fear, then tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

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07/17/2025

Naming the causes is not the same thing as blaming the causes.

You are not blaming your emotionally immature parents by naming & describing their actions & how they've impacted you.

Identifying the cause(s) is a crucial, unavoidable step toward healing.

If you want to heal, you have to be willing to identify the causes, and it's okay if things get in the way. Like emotions, beliefs, judgments, your own learning...

But next time you fear you're blaming your parents by naming their actions & the harm it caused with honesty & genuineness, remember this - naming it is not blaming it!

If you're ready to heal your wounds from & rediscover your Authentic Self, tap the link in my bio & schedule an intro call w/ me!

Follow for more on & EIPs!

07/15/2025

Emotionally immature parents often respond to vulnerable expressions of their children's feelings about their relationship with, 'well I'm sorry I wasn't perfect'.

But we know no child wants or needs perfection from their parent.

You needed presence, attunement, nurturing, protection, acceptance, accountability, trust, empathy.

You needed a parent who could actually regulate their emotions.

Someone who could apologize & actually mean it.

Someone who could empathize with you & validate your feelings. Maybe even provide soothing.

Someone who could nurture who you are as an individual.

Someone who could actually be physically & emotionally present enough to connect with you.

You needed a parent who could attune to you.

One who could actually see you & get to know you.

One who had relationship repair skills, who could correct & over-correct the harm they caused rather than being like 'sorry, that's just how I am'.

One who could self-reflect instead of make demands from you to change to meet their needs.

You needed a parent who could protect you, rather than the person in the family who's the least likely to change.

One who was curious & understanding instead of presumptuous & judgmental.

One who was tethered to reality rather than lost in their own distorted reality.

One who cared more about your feelings & needs than image.

The list can go on & on & on.

Point is: you never needed a perfect parent. Your needs were never so unreasonable.

If you're ready to heal your childhood wounds from & overcome anxiety, tap the link in my bio to schedule an intro call w/ me!

Follow for more on from EIPs!

07/12/2025

Do your parents use emotions - their own or influencing yours - to try to coerce you into meeting their needs & giving them what they want? Here are 10 signs this may be happening...

1) Guilt-tripping! Making you feel you've done something wrong if you don't give them what they want, & you're responsible for their happiness.

2) Withholding affection, using love & attention as reward.

3) Poking holes in your confidence in your own decisions. You leave questioning if you should change your mind & doubting yourself.

4) Constant criticism & putting you down to erode your self-esteem & make you feel inadequate.

5) Invalidating your feelings & expressions, so you lose trust in yourself & look to others to tell you how to feel or react.

6) Intense angry reactions where they may yell, name call, cuss, act aggressively... & blame you for it. You may be on eggshells as a result.

7) Gaslighting by denying or distorting events causing you to question your own memory or perceptions. They may even question your clear communication in such a way that gets you questioning your own ability to communicate & feel crazy or stupid.

8) Attempts to isolate you by demanding enough of your time, energy & attention that you can't be present with others physically or emotionally. They may even criticize other people you have relationships with to influence you.

9) Sending you money or buying you things so you feel obligated to y'all's relationship & guilty if you don't try to meet their emotional needs.

10) Triangulation as a means to put you in the villain role, where they know you don't wanna be. You don't want everyone against you, so you comply.

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07/10/2025

8 things I tried that I thought would be effective along my healing journey, but actually didn't work. (And what to do instead.)

1) Directly express myself using judgmental language rather than descriptive language. I didn't know I was being nondescriptive - this was something I had to learn. Describe the who, what, when, where - just the facts. Spend minimal time in analysis or the 'why'.

2) Attempted to heal my trauma independently & over-use of self-help instead of going to targeted trauma therapy, like DBT-PE. This was the game changer. Talking about my trauma did very little too - behavioral experiences were what created change.

3) Sporadic, inconsistent exposures instead of consistent ones 3x/week at minimum.

4) Had unrealistic objectives in interpersonal situations that were dependent on the other person & out of my control instead of realistic ones centered around myself & doing what I needed for me.

5) Allowed anger & judgmental thinking cloud my sadness instead of radically accepting the reality of my situation or the person.

6) Tried to force grief & experiencing sadness before getting the feelings of shame, guilt & fear to come down that I had associated with the situation or person.

7) Tried focusing on doing exposures that weren't distressing enough but SOMETHING. Instead I was completely honest with my therapist & prioritized the emotionally potent exposures I had been putting off or saying 'hell no' to in my mind.

8) Ignored my body telling me not to do something/ go somewhere instead of listening to my instincts, giving them space & observing my limits with honesty. I don't have to do something just because someone else wants me to. I also started doing things I actually want to do instead, which was uncomfortable at first due to fear of how others would perceive me prioritizing myself & my wishes.

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07/07/2025

Emotionally immature parents tend to confuse enmeshment with connection & see their children as extensions of them, not unique individuals with their own opinions, feelings & needs who need nurturing, acceptance & support.

For the EIP, seeing past themselves is extremely difficult. They lack attunement & capacity to take interest in their children.
To the EIP, individuality threatens their emotional needs being met & their control over you & the family system.

It’s common for EIPs to place expectations or characteristics onto their children based on their own wishes or fears, without considering who their children really are, or asking what their child wants / how they feel. As a result, the child is emotionally neglected.

Since EIPs are too emotionally avoidant to face their own issues, this kind of projection from a parent keeps them from self-reflecting, causing them to blame their emotional reactions on their child’s behavior - whether or not the child does/ gives the parent what they want.

When a parent only sees their child as an extension of them, they may justify being judgmental, critical, emotionally negligent, disrespectful, controlling, or otherwise mistreating the child, leading to the child forming negative beliefs about themselves, others & the world.

This may cause the child to learn to suppress their own feelings & wishes to prioritize others’, feel out of touch with their own values & dreams, and feel chronic anxiety, shame & guilt. They may constantly be monitoring others’ emotions & shape-shifting their behavior accordingly to meet the needs of others.

This is where people-pleasing, self-doubt, perfectionism, fear of being seen, and so much more is born. This doesn’t just go away in adulthood - that’s the power of learning, and our parents are our primary teachers because they are who we depend on for survival from birth.

What you needed as a child was for someone to be able to regulate their own emotions enough to actually see you & attune to you, rather than treat you like their emotional support animal who was responsible for making them happy.

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07/05/2025

This is entirely anecdotal, but hear me out. I've noticed a pattern that I can't deny, where people who were raised by emotionally immature parents, when discussing a problem or solutions, start their sentences off (repeatedly) with 'I just need to ____'. Then the change never happens. Is this you?

I've realized this is a red flag that you're approaching healing & changing ineffectively, & the causes make perfect sense.

Children of EIPs were often questioned, told what to do, punished for not doing it, & never taught how to do the behavior that's being asked of them. Heck, being told to 'stop crying' counts. This is invalidation & depending on its frequency, intensity, & your experience, it may have been traumatic.

'I just need to ___' may not only be a sign that you're invalidating & shaming yourself the ways your EIPs did, but it may also be a sign you're intellectualizing & trying to think yourself into new ways of acting, which doesn't work. This is a common avoidance behavior due to trauma.

We cant think ourself into new ways of acting, we can only act ourself into new ways of acting & thinking.

If you catch yourself talking to yourself by saying 'I just need to ___', try pausing & seeing if there's a new behavior you can actually take action towards. Try to avoid thinking about it & VALIDATE yourself that change is hard. Ask for in-session coaching from your therapist & be honest if willfulness is getting in the way- that's normal!

The bottom line is that change isnt possible without adequate support, coaching, & trying new behaviors repeatedly to override old learning.

What doesnt work is talking about problems, awareness alone, intellectualizing, & invalidation.

What does work is repeatedly trying new behaviors to replace old ones, experiencing the discomfort & emotions that arise (because change can be uncomfortable & even painful), coaching from a professional, & validation.

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Allie Jayne Reed, LMHC

07/31/2025

07/28/2025

07/26/2025

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07/21/2025

07/19/2025

07/17/2025

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07/05/2025

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Monday	11am - 6pm
Tuesday	11am - 6pm
Wednesday	11am - 6pm
Thursday	11am - 6pm