Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

Send us Fan Mail If you have ever listened to a relationship podcast and thought, “Are they talking about me?”, you are not alone. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I made this short, direct explainer to clarify the intent behind my work on abusive relationships, coercive control, personality patterns, addiction, and child mental health. The foundation is non-negotiable: I t...

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Send us Fan Mail “How good is your sleep?” is the question that cuts through every polished excuse. We lean into a raw, lyric driven story about what it feels like to spend years trying to pull someone out of their own mess, only to realize the mess was the point. If you’ve ever dealt with emotional manipulation, chronic lying, or a partner who blames everyone else while keeping their image spotle...

Send us Fan Mail Echoes do not politely fade. They press against the walls of whatever box we build, and they find a way out when we least expect it. That is the tension at the heart of this short, spoken-word episode: hope and fear living side by side, while the urge to remember battles the instinct to stay numb and safe. We follow a voice caught between wanting relief and not knowing how to reac...

Send us Fan Mail Someone reaches for your time, and you don’t negotiate. You don’t audition for approval. You simply point them elsewhere. This short spoken-word style episode is built around one sharp idea: access to you is earned, not assumed, and “try another table” can be the healthiest sentence you learn to say. We talk through what it means to stop living like “damaged goods” and start livin...

Send us Fan Mail “Where do you want to stay this weekend?” can sound caring, but to a child caught between separated parents it can feel like being asked who to betray. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I’m exploring the quiet, unspoken wish many children hold: please don’t make me choose. I break down the crucial difference between giving children a voice and making them re...

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Send us Fan Mail Shouting rarely starts at shouting. We’re talking about the moment before the volume rises, when a child makes a small, easily missed bid for connection and learns, over time, that quiet communication doesn’t work at home. Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist, opens this series with a clear theme: children need to feel noticed in the minds of the adults who care for them,...

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Send us Fan Mail Echoes don’t need a room to bounce around in. Sometimes they live in your head, repeating the same doubt, the same regret, the same “I’m fine” that doesn’t quite hold up under pressure. We lean into that uncomfortable space where you can feel the past still active in the present, and we ask the questions that people usually avoid: how did I get so far behind, why did I leave so fa...

Send us Fan Mail Panic does not always announce itself with a clean storyline. Sometimes it hits like lightning, you do not know where to stand, your body shakes, your heart races, and your mind floods with faces that will not hold still. We start there, in the raw physiology of stress and trauma response, and stay honest about what it feels like when the ground shifts under you.  From that chaos,...

Send us Fan Mail “How good is your sleep?” That question is the thread we pull until everything unravels: the polished surface, the rotten underside, the stories someone tells to stay off the hook. We go straight at the people who take and take, the promise makers who pay you back with another lie, and the exhausting pattern of blame-shifting that leaves you doubting what you know you saw. If you’...

Send us Fan Mail A child rarely walks up and says, “I feel unsafe,” “I feel responsible for you,” or “I’m afraid you’ll leave.” More often, they show it and the message can look like defiance, aggression, anxiety, withdrawal, school refusal, sleep problems, or a sudden need to control everything. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and this is the introduction to my series I Wish...

Send us Fan Mail Silence can look like peace, but for a child living with an avoidant parent, it often lands as abandonment. We take on a tricky, necessary idea: avoidance has a story that deserves understanding, and it also has consequences that can’t be carried indefinitely by children or partners. I walk through the moment where “I’m just overwhelmed” has to become “I’m responsible for what my...

Send us Fan Mail Something can be “fine” on the surface and still quietly break a family from the inside. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I’m widening the lens beyond the child to talk about the other parent the one who stays, tries, copes, and slowly becomes the relationship’s emotional manager when an avoidant parent repeatedly withdraws from emotional responsibility. We...

Send us Fan Mail A child doesn’t need perfect parents to learn emotional health, but they do need emotions to be allowed to exist. When a parent is emotionally avoidant, a child’s fear, sadness, or anger can start to feel like something they must hide, manage alone, or act out just to be noticed. That’s where the phrase “feelings without a home” comes from, and it captures the quiet loneliness beh...

Send us Fan Mail Childhood doesn’t stay in childhood. We carry it straight into our friendships, our romantic partnerships, and eventually our own parenting, often without realizing it. Kim Lee Jardin, adolescent psychotherapist, unpacks how avoidant parenting shapes the internal working model we build early on: a largely unconscious prediction system that decides whether people will be there for...

Send us Fan Mail A child doesn’t just remember how a parent reacted. They build an inner map of what relationships are supposed to feel like and then they live inside that map for years. We talk through how avoidant parenting can quietly train kids to shrink their needs, hide distress, or perform “goodness” that is really driven by fear. Using a clear chess analogy, we show how family systems crea...

Send us Fan Mail A family can look stable from the outside while quietly revolving around one missing center: a parent’s emotional participation. When that absence becomes the organizing force, everything shifts. Hard conversations get postponed, feelings get minimized, conflict stays unresolved, and day-to-day life turns into a constant effort to avoid discomfort. We talk through how “systemic av...

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Send us Fan Mail A child screams, threatens, breaks things, or lashes out and suddenly the whole household revolves around preventing the next blow-up. That can look like “a bad kid” from the outside, but I’m interested in the harder question: how did this child learn they have to create a crisis before anyone responds? I walk through a common avoidant family pattern where a parent delays, dismiss...

Send us Fan Mail A child who never asks for help can look like a dream, calm, capable, and “so mature for their age.” But what if that independence is not confidence at all, and it is a workaround for a home where comfort is unreliable? I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I’m digging into the child who learns not to need when a parent is emotionally avoidant or dismissive avoi...

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Send us Fan Mail A parent can be in the room and still feel miles away. That gap, between physical presence and emotional reachability, is where a lot of quiet damage happens for kids and for the partners trying to hold the family together. I’m Kim Lee, a child and adolescent psychotherapist, and I’m opening this series by getting very specific about what people mean when they call someone an “avo...