Meeting Everyone Else’s Needs, but Not Your Own with Julie Bjelland, LMFT
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Have you spent so much of your life anticipating what everyone else needs that you often don’t even know your own?
Maybe you feel guilty resting, automatically say yes when you’re already exhausted, or don’t recognize how much you’re carrying until you have nothing left.
In this episode, Julie Bjelland, LMFT, explores how sensitive and neurodivergent people can learn to focus so much attention on others that their own needs go unrecognized. This conversation may feel especially familiar if you’re discovering your autism, ADHD, or AuDHD later in life.
We explore:
How childhood messages, masking, and expectations placed on women can shape our relationship with our needs.
Why disappointing someone can feel harder than pushing past our own capacity.
How everyday demands accumulate and leave little room for recovery.
The grief and possibility of understanding ourselves later in life.
Simple bathroom check-ins to begin noticing how we feel.
How to look back on an overwhelming day with curiosity and self-compassion.
Making room for joy, interests, connection, and support.
You deserve the same curiosity, compassion, and understanding you’ve offered everyone else.
Julie also shares her new life coaching offering and invites you to continue the conversation in the Sensitive and Neurodivergent Community.
Links mentioned in this episode
About Julie Bjelland, LMFT
Julie Bjelland, LMFT, is a licensed psychotherapist, adult autism assessor and life-coach supporting those with high sensitivity, late-discovered autism, ADHD, and AuDHD, She is also highly sensitive, late-diagnosed autistic, a self-identified AuDHDer, and queer, Julie brings professional and lived experience to helping people understand and honor their needs.