We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erin McCarthy. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erin below.

Erin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

That’s such a great question! It’s really easy to overlook all the ways our parents do things well but as I work with clients, I get to hear a lot of stories about things that parents are doing well and ways that they might have missed the mark and it makes me so grateful for how my parents raised my siblings and I. When I was six, my dad accepted a job that moved our family from Virginia, where I was born, all the way to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We lived there for seven years before moving to Kansas City. As a kid, our life didn’t seem all that unusual but looking back, I can see how there were so many things happening during those years for us that most kids don’t get. Aside from the obvious benefits of getting to grow up in another country, see the world, and make friends from across the globe, the pace of life in Riyadh was much slower than life in America. The slower pace of life and the lack of entertainment made a lot of room for making our own fun and having more meaningful family interactions. My dad was so good at making up games and playing on the floor and at the pool with us. For my mom, it meant that she was able to think of creative strategies for motivating my brother and I to clean our rooms or do other things that were good for our development as kids. When I was seven or eight she would say she was going to across the street for something and while she was gone the Cleaning Fairy (also known as my mom in a tutu with cat eye glasses and a wig) would sometimes show up to visit my brother and I to check on how clean our rooms were and let us choose a prize from her treasure box if we had done a good job. I have so many examples of things they did well raising us but the Cleaning Fairy is still one of my most favorite memories.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I would love to! I am a trauma and anxiety coach for kids, teens, and adults. When trauma or anxiety occurs, it impacts the whole family system so often I work with younger kids and teens but also work with their parents to equip them with tools and strategies to help them as they support their children. Of course, every situation is a little bit different so sometimes I primarily am working with kids or teens and sometimes I work with just the parents or a combination of the two.

I was a child who experienced some trauma and anxiety and then became an adult navigating trauma as well as a mom navigating how to parent a child through significant early childhood trauma so I have a lot of compassion for families trying to figure out how to get through something really difficult and/or traumatic. Having the perspective and lived experience not only as a child and adult who had trauma and anxiety as part of their story but also parenting a child through some of those tough spaces is something that helps me in my work everyday. I am not a professional who only has a textbook kind of understanding of how difficult trauma and anxiety can be; I have actually had to practice everything I share with my clients as a mom and a human trying to heal. I combine my education along with my own post-traumatic wisdom and experience and am very focused on resources and tools that are realistic to incorporate into daily life as a busy parent or kid.

In my practice I use a lot of different tools that focus on nervous system regulation, emotional awareness, and building resilience in a way that supports the whole person or family unit. Each of the clients I work with is unique with their own strengths and challenges so we work together to figure out what works best for them. For some, we take a more traditional coaching approach where we have a goal that we’re tracking towards while for others we work slowly and gently with the nervous system and incorporate things like somatic EMDR to process trauma and build up positive resources. I love that my work and approach allows me to meet each person where they’re at and be creative in figuring out what would be most beneficial with them.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

I think being present is critical. We live in a world full of distractions and so many things that are geared towards making the world move faster and as a result, our ability to really sit with others seems like it’s really suffering. There are so many things competing for our attention that I think many people wrestle with feeling seen and known or whether the things they’re experiencing even matter to anyone else. Trauma, anxiety, and difficult seasons already feel really isolating but when you add in how distracted we are as a society, those feelings get magnified. I think these feelings are especially true for kids and teens growing up in the digital age with parents who are maxed out from a lot of unfair and unrealistic expectations that get put on them.

Whether I am meeting with a child or a parent, my goal is always to be with them in whatever form they’re in when they walk into my office. Sometimes it’s as simple as just giving them space to share what’s on their mind and showing them that however they feel is okay and that they don’t have to be alone with it. Trauma often occurs within relationship so the healing has to happen there too and I believe that’s only possible when we, show up as humans first with presence and our undivided attention.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.erinmccarthy.co
• Instagram: @erinmccarthy.co