Kerstin Anderson-Ridge Psychologist

Kerstin Anderson-Ridge Psychologist Helping you understand what’s yours, what belongs to others and what belongs to time. Psychology for ADHD, mental load and boundaries.

Today Extra, 📺 Sunrise🎬, Mamamia. At the Private Practice Academy I offer online programs and one on one mentoring to help you build your own successful private practice. I can also provide mentoring to help you to support your clients to get the most out of their therapy journey. Email me to find out more [email protected] or visit https://www.privatepracticeacademy.com.au

Some decisions take five minutes.And yet somehow we can spend an hour, a day or sometimes weeks thinking about them.Not ...
04/09/2026

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 pe...
01/09/2026

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 ...
28/08/2026

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 hous...
25/08/2026

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?

There are apologies that repair relationships.And then there are apologies we use to make ourselves less inconvenient.Fo...
21/08/2026

There are apologies that repair relationships.

And then there are apologies we use to make ourselves less inconvenient.

For many women, “sorry” becomes almost automatic.

Before asking a question. Before saying no. Before disagreeing. Before taking up someone’s time.

The interesting question isn’t whether you apologise too much.

It’s what you believe might happen if you didn’t.

Because sometimes the thing we’re trying to manage isn’t our behaviour at all.

It’s someone else’s response to it.

And that’s worth noticing.

ADHD in women doesn’t always look like someone who obviously cannot function.Sometimes it looks like a woman who functio...
18/08/2026

ADHD in women doesn’t always look like someone who obviously cannot function.

Sometimes it looks like a woman who functions extremely well, at considerable cost.

She prepares.
She compensates.
She double checks.
She creates systems.
She works harder.
She worries about getting things wrong.

And when something does slip, she often assumes it says something about her.

Not organised enough.
Not disciplined enough.

Too sensitive.
Too scattered.
Too much.

For many women, these strategies work remarkably well for years. They build careers, raise families, manage homes and become the person everyone else relies on.

And when everyone around you thinks you’re coping, you can become pretty convincing to yourself too.

But appearing to cope and coping easily are very different things.

As life becomes more demanding, the amount of effort required to keep everything going can become harder to sustain.

And for some women, hormonal changes in midlife can add another layer to that experience.

This can be when ADHD is finally recognised.

For many women, the ADHD was there all along. What changes in adulthood or midlife is their capacity to compensate for it.

And one of the most powerful parts of understanding ADHD later in life can be looking backwards and realising:

There were signs all along.

This week I sold my psychology practice.Even writing that feels a little surreal.I became a psychologist in 2001.In 2003...
14/08/2026

This week I sold my psychology practice.

Even writing that feels a little surreal.

I became a psychologist in 2001.

In 2003, I opened my own solo practice.

In 2020, I took what felt like an enormous leap and turned that into a group practice. Around the same time, I started mentoring other psychologists who wanted to build and scale practices of their own.

Somewhere along the way, I became good at building.

Building a practice.
Building a team.
Building something that could grow beyond me.

But there comes a point in a career, and maybe in a life, when the question changes.

It stops being what else can I build?

And becomes what do I actually want now?

I knew it was time to sell Psychwest.

Not because I had stopped caring about it. Not because it hadn’t been successful. And not because I had some perfectly mapped out five year plan waiting on the other side.

I just knew.

And this week, after more than 20 years of private practice, I handed it over.

There is something very strange about reaching this point in my career and realising that, for perhaps the first time in a very long time, I don’t entirely know what comes next.

I know I’ll still be a psychologist.

I know I want to write, speak, and have conversations about the things I’ve spent decades noticing about women, responsibility, identity, ADHD, relationships and the enormous emotional load so many of women carry.

But beyond that?

I’m leaving a little space.

And perhaps that’s the part I’m most excited about.

For so much of my life, the next thing has already been waiting.

This time, it isn’t.

And rather than finding that frightening, I’m beginning to think it might be the whole point.

Here’s to whatever comes next.

Over-explaining can look like being thoughtful.And sometimes it is.But sometimes it’s something else.It’s trying to make...
14/08/2026

Over-explaining can look like being thoughtful.
And sometimes it is.
But sometimes it’s something else.
It’s trying to make sure nobody is disappointed.

Nobody misreads you.
Nobody thinks you’re difficult.
Nobody walks away with the “wrong” version of you.

So you keep adding context.
You soften the boundary.
You explain the reason behind the reason.
And suddenly you’re doing far more emotional work than the conversation actually requires.

There’s a difference between communicating clearly and feeling responsible for how every word lands.

You can be kind.
You can be thoughtful.
You can explain yourself.

But you don’t have to control the other person’s interpretation as well.
Sometimes saying less is simply trusting that your part ends somewhere.

Have you ever noticed yourself over-explaining because you were worried about how someone might react?

There are things we do for so long that eventually we stop seeing them as behaviours.We start seeing them as who we are....
11/08/2026

There are things we do for so long that eventually we stop seeing them as behaviours.

We start seeing them as who we are.
I’m independent.
I’m an overthinker.
I’m the organised one.
I’m the one everyone comes to.
I’m terrible with conflict.
I’m just someone who worries.

But sometimes it’s worth getting curious about the difference between personality and adaptation.

Maybe being incredibly capable became useful.
Maybe reading everybody else’s mood helped you know what was coming.
Maybe keeping everyone happy made relationships feel safer.
Maybe thinking about every possible outcome gave you some sense of control.

That doesn’t mean every behaviour can be traced neatly back to childhood. Human beings are far more complicated than that.

But it can be useful to ask:
Where did I learn this?
What was it doing for me?
And is it still my job now?

Because understanding why you do something doesn’t mean blaming the past.

Sometimes it simply means you get to decide whether you want to keep doing it.

Which one of these did you recognise in yourself?

Some friendships are difficult to understand because nothing actually feels wrong.When you reach out, they’re delighted ...
07/08/2026

Some friendships are difficult to understand because nothing actually feels wrong.

When you reach out, they’re delighted to hear from you.

The conversation flows.

They happily agree to catch up.

The friendship feels genuine.

But eventually you notice something.

You’re nearly always the one who starts it.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t care.

People maintain friendships differently.

Life gets busy. Some people are simply more likely to respond than initiate.

But it can still be worth noticing the role you’ve taken on.

Because there’s a difference between choosing to nurture a friendship and quietly feeling responsible for keeping it alive.

And maybe you don’t need to immediately decide what the friendship means.

Maybe you simply notice.

So ask yourself what’s mine? What’s theirs? What belongs to time?

Sometimes time tells us all we need to know...

Have you experienced a friendship like this?

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