Something has to change.

I spent the start of her secondary school years researching like a maniac.

Was it the long days? Her dyslexia? Slow processing? Why did the world seem so hard on her when she was such a beautiful, sensitive soul?

Every night she'd download. Streams of heartbreak that took me straight back to my own childhood I could feel the visceral teenage pain cut through me to the core. And my response every single time it's on me to find the answers. Why is she like this. What can I try next. How do I fix this. I'm her mum. She needs my advice.

The more I tried, the more fragile she became. Disappearing in front of my eyes. The bright, funny, confident girl from primary school - gone.

It must be the hormones. Cue: research hormones.

Maybe ADHD. Cue: research ADHD.

Or ASD. Or both at the same time. Cue: every assessment, vitamin, mineral, PMT cure on the planet and hundreds of pounds later.

The answer arrived during EFT training. Suddenly I became aware of what I was doing.

I was repeating my mother's patterns.

My mum was a world-class rescuer. She rescued me through my entire childhood every difficulty anticipated, smoothed, solved before I had to face it. It came from love. Complete, unconditional love.

It also left me, as a teenager, quietly convinced I was broken. Because if I needed that much rescuing, what did that say about me?

Here I was doing the same thing to my daughter. And the reason I couldn't stop? It felt sooooo good. Rescuing calmed something in me - the urgency drops, I feel needed, useful, like the ground is solid again. Biologically my stress response was finding its most familiar exit.

And my daughter, sensitive, perceptive, emotionally attuned, was reading every bit of it. Not my words. My biology. My low-grade panic, my need to fix things, my underlying message that her pain was a problem to be solved.

Which meant she was playing the role I had unconsciously cast her in. My desperate need to rescue had unknowingly cast her as my victim.

There is a model called Karpman's Drama Triangle. It maps the three roles that lock together in any high-conflict dynamic: the Rescuer, the Victim, the Persecutor. Everyone has a default. A place their body goes first under stress.

Mine is Rescuer. Has been since I was small.

The sad reality is the Rescuer role doesn't actually help. It looks like the good guy but it maintains the dynamic. Because a Rescuer needs a Victim, and a child cast as a Victim learns, slowly and completely, that she cannot cope without one.

When I stopped rescuing, she had to step forward. Find her own answers. Walk into her secondary school life with her own map, her own solutions. It wasn’t easy but awareness was my first step - you cant not change something that you can’t see.

Maybe you recognise yourself in the Rescuer. Or maybe you don't maybe your default is somewhere else on the triangle entirely. The Persecutor, who controls and criticises without meaning to but believes they are holding high standards. The Victim, who feels powerless no matter how hard they try. Most of us rotate between all three without realising it.

The question worth asking is: what role are you unconsciously casting your child in at home?

To help you see it,  really see it, Laura and I are running a two-hour live session on exactly this.

A working session. You bring a real scenario from your life, we map it on the triangle together, and you leave knowing your default role, why your body goes there, and how to actually step out of it.

If you recognise the cycle and the exhaustion that goes with it, join us. CLICK HERE for more details.