Kerstin Anderson-Ridge Psychologist

If you’ve found your way here, welcome, and let me introduce or reintroduce myself and welcome you into my world.

I’ve spent more than 20 years as a psychologist working with women trying to understand why we become who we become and why we do the things we do.

And what I know is that so much of who we are has been shaped by our relationships, our experiences and what has been expected of us.

But being shaped by something doesn’t mean we have to stay defined by it.

This is the space for helping women understand who they’ve become, so they can choose what they want to be next.

And it’s at the heart of the work I’m doing now as an Identity Coach.

Because understanding why gives us more choice about what comes next.

And if you feel called to connect my DM’s are open.

Kerstin x

I think some people are incredibly good at understanding other people.

Sometimes too good.

Someone hurts them and within minutes they can tell you why the person did it.

“They’re exhausted.”
“They’ve had a terrible week.”
“They didn’t mean it.”
“They’re under a lot of pressure.”

And all of those things might be completely true.

But I’m interested in what sometimes happens next.

Because when you’re very good at seeing somebody else’s perspective, it can become remarkably easy to leave your own out.

They apologise.
You reassure them.
They explain.
You understand.
They feel terrible.
You tell them not to.

And somehow the conversation ends with you making the person who hurt you feel better.

I don’t think the answer is to become less compassionate.

It’s to remember that understanding why somebody did something and deciding how you feel about what they did are two separate things.

You can understand that someone was exhausted and still say, “That wasn’t okay.”

You can believe they didn’t intend to hurt you and still acknowledge that they did.

You can accept an apology and still need something to change.

And perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to rush to make the discomfort disappear.

Sometimes the most unfamiliar thing is simply allowing yourself to stay in the conversation long enough to work out:

What did that actually feel like for me?

Let me know if you relate!

There’s a sentence I hear a lot around ADHD and relationships:

“If they cared, they would…”
If they cared, they’d remember.
If they cared, they’d reply.
If they cared, they wouldn’t be late.
If they cared, they’d listen the first time.

And this is where ADHD can become very misunderstood in relationships.

Because the impact of the behaviour can absolutely hurt.

You can feel ignored, frustrated, unimportant or completely fed up.

But the meaning you attach to the behaviour isn’t always accurate.

Forgetting isn’t necessarily not caring.
Getting distracted isn’t necessarily not listening.

Being overwhelmed by a seemingly simple decision isn’t necessarily being difficult.
And holding everything together all day before falling apart at home doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else gets a better version of your partner than you do.

ADHD can affect attention, working memory, time perception, emotional regulation, task initiation and the ability to shift attention.
And those things don’t stay neatly at work or school.

They come into relationships too.
But understanding ADHD isn’t a free pass either.

Your partner still gets to be affected by what happens.

For me, the useful part of understanding why something happens is that it gives you somewhere better to start.

Instead of:
“Why don’t you care enough to change this?”

Perhaps it becomes:
“We keep getting stuck here. What would actually help?”

And that’s a very different conversation.

I am very good at turning doing nothing into doing something.

Sit down with a coffee?

I’ll just put the washing on first.

Watch television?

Perfect opportunity to answer that message.

Go for a walk?

Might as well make it a decent one and get the steps up.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

We talk a lot about being busy, but I’m increasingly interested in how we feel when we’re not.

Because there’s busy because life is busy.

And then there’s busy because slowing down feels strangely uncomfortable.

That doesn’t have to mean anything dramatic.

Sometimes we’ve simply spent so many years getting things done that productivity has become our default setting.

There’s always something useful we could be doing.

And when that’s the case, rest can start to feel like wasted time rather than part of life.

So instead of another conversation about how to fit more in, perhaps there’s a more interesting question:

What happens inside you when there’s genuinely nothing you have to do?

Can you enjoy it?

Or does your brain immediately start looking for a job?

Let me know in the comments if you can relate.

Have you ever been absolutely fine with saying no…
until you heard the disappointment in someone’s voice?

Suddenly the decision you’d already made starts to feel selfish.

You start explaining.
Offering alternatives.
Checking whether they’re okay.

Maybe even rearranging your plans so you can say yes after all.
And this is something I think we miss when we talk about boundaries.

For many women, saying the word “no” isn’t actually the hardest part.

It’s what comes next.
Someone is disappointed.

They go quiet.
They ask again.
Their text feels a little colder.

And if you’re someone who is very used to noticing and tracking other people’s moods, that change can feel almost impossible to leave alone.

There’s an urge to do something.
Fix it.
Soften it.

Make sure they’re not upset with you.
But someone else’s disappointment isn’t necessarily evidence that you’ve done something wrong.

Sometimes they are disappointed because they wanted something from you and you couldn’t give it to them.

They are allowed to feel that.
And you’re allowed to keep your answer.

You can be kind without changing your no.
You can care without fixing their reaction.
And perhaps the question isn’t:
“How do I stop people being disappointed in me?”

Perhaps it’s:
“Can I let someone be disappointed without immediately making it my job to make them feel better?”

That’s a very different kind of boundary…

Can you relate?...

Have you ever caught yourself saying
“I don’t mind” when, actually, you do?

Or explaining why you bought something when nobody asked?

Apologising for something that wasn’t your fault?

Saying yes and then immediately thinking…

Why did I agree to that?

These little things are interesting because they don’t necessarily look like a problem.

Quite the opposite.

They can make you the person everyone describes as:
So helpful.
So easygoing.
So capable.

Always there when you need her.
And maybe you genuinely are all of those things.
But sometimes it’s worth asking:

Do I actually WANT to do this?
Or am I so used to considering everyone else that I don’t even check in with myself anymore?

There’s a big difference between being caring and automatically putting yourself last.

Between choosing to help and feeling unable to say no.

Between genuinely not minding and being afraid that someone else will.

So perhaps this week, catch yourself when you say:

“I don’t mind.”
And just check…

Do you?

Because you’re allowed to have a preference too.

Some decisions take five minutes.

And yet somehow we can spend an hour, a day or sometimes weeks thinking about them.

Not necessarily because we don’t know what we want.

But because somewhere between “What do I want?” and making the decision, everybody else enters the conversation.

What will they think?
Will they be disappointed?
Will they understand?
Do I need to explain?
What if they think I’m selfish?
What if they’re upset with me?

For people who have become very used to noticing and anticipating other people’s needs, this can happen almost automatically.

You’re not simply making the decision.

You’re trying to predict and manage the emotional consequences of making it.
And there’s an important difference between considering other people and making yourself responsible for their response.

Of course other people matter.
Relationships require consideration, compromise and sometimes sacrifice.
But their feelings don’t automatically get the deciding vote.

So when you notice yourself going around and around, try coming back to the question you started with.

What’s mine?
What do I actually want, need, feel or believe?

What’s theirs?
What might they think or feel about my choice that belongs to them?
And sometimes…

What belongs to time?
The discomfort of not knowing exactly how everything will turn out.

Because someone else being disappointed with your decision doesn’t necessarily mean you made the wrong one.

Sometimes it simply means two people wanted different things.
And you are allowed to be one of them.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly trying to work out how to say something so another person can hear it.

You wait for the right moment.

You soften the language.

You rehearse what you’re going to say.

You make sure you don’t sound angry.

You explain what you don’t mean before you even get to what you do mean.

And if they become defensive, shut down or get upset, somehow you find yourself managing that too.

Over time, something interesting can happen.

The person who is more comfortable with reflection, repair and emotional discomfort starts doing more and more of the emotional work.

And because they’re capable of doing it, it can take a long time to notice just how much they’ve taken on.

So here’s where it’s useful to come back to three questions:

What’s mine?

My feelings, behaviour, communication, boundaries and choices.

What’s theirs?

Their reaction, defensiveness, willingness to listen, reflect, take responsibility and repair.

What belongs to time?

Whether the pattern actually changes.
That last is  more important than you think.

Because sometimes we keep trying to find a better way to explain something that has already been explained many times.

At some point, the answer may not come from explaining it again.

It comes from watching what happens next.

Noticing something doesn’t mean you have to do something about it.

But when you’re used to feeling responsible for other people, those two things can become very closely connected.

Someone seems quiet and you wonder what’s wrong.

Their energy changes and you start thinking about what happened.

They pull back and you find yourself putting in more effort.

Something feels uncomfortable and you start looking for a way to make it better.

It can look like being thoughtful.
Caring. Emotionally aware.
And sometimes it is.
But sometimes it’s over-responsibility.

It’s the belief that because you’ve noticed something, you’re somehow responsible for resolving it.

You’re not.

Other people are allowed to have moods you don’t fix.
Make choices you don’t understand.

Be disappointed in you.
Take less initiative.
Even get you wrong.
And you’re allowed to wait.

You don’t always have to rush into the space somebody else has left open.

Sometimes the question is simply:
What’s mine?
What’s theirs?
What belongs to time?

Because not everything needs a conversation today.

And not everything needs you.

You can tell a lot about someone’s mood without them saying a word.

A door closes differently.
Someone walks into the house and puts their things down a little harder than usual.
Their answer is slightly shorter.
Their face changes during a conversation.

You notice.

And for a long time, you probably would have described that as being intuitive. Being good at reading people.

And it can be.
But there’s a difference between noticing other people’s emotions and constantly tracking them.

Because when you’re tracking, you don’t just take in the information.

You start adjusting.
Should I say something?
Should I leave them alone?
Did I do something?
Do I need to make this better?

And that’s where it can become connected to something I talk about a lot: feeling responsible for other people.

If you’ve learned to pay very close attention to how everyone around you is feeling, it makes sense that you might also have learned to respond to those feelings.

To anticipate.
To accommodate.
To smooth things over.
To keep everyone okay.

Eventually, it becomes so automatic that it doesn’t feel like something you do.
It feels like who you are.
And perhaps that’s the interesting question:

How much of what you’ve always called your personality was actually something you learned to do?