The Real Pain of Stress: What to Do When Bubble Baths Won’t Fix It
Last Tuesday you screamed at your kid over something that doesn’t even matter now.
Today they’re in their room avoiding you. Again.
You’ve done the therapy. Read the parenting books. You know what emotional regulation means. You can list your triggers if someone asks.
But knowing doesn’t stop it from happening. When your kid hits that exact button, everything you learned disappears and you react exactly how you swore you wouldn’t.
The bubble baths aren’t working. The meditation apps aren’t working. The self-care tips aren’t working.
Because they’re Bandage Self-Care. They help you cope with stress. They don’t show you how you’re creating it.
This book is the wake-up call I got when my son tried to take his own life.
I thought I had it together. Turns out I was so busy playing the part of a mother that I completely missed my actual child. My stress responses were the reason we all hated being home.
That’s when I realized the hard truth: I wasn’t just stressed out. I was causing a lot of my own stress. And if I created it, I could change it.
The AAAA Framework is what I built to dig myself out.
This book introduces you to a system for Intelligent Self-Care. Not the cheesy predictable self-help stuff. The real work of looking at how you’re behaving in your relationships and deciding to do something different.
After reading this, you’ll have a tool for taking charge of your stress instead of letting it run your life. You’ll see what you’ve been missing. You’ll understand your part in it. And you’ll have a framework to start changing it.
This isn’t the complete solution. It’s the wake-up call and the starting point.
The kind that makes you realize you’re not stuck the way you are. You’re just operating without the right tools.
This book gives you the first ones.