Melany Heger Author and Psychologist

19/09/2026

📚 Books and Being 📚
✨ Book reflections from a psychologist & author
📖 Parents have feelings too by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Juli Fraga

I've had a recent spate of clients with mother wounds, which are often rooted in unmet emotional needs and difficult or painful experiences with their mothers. In this book, the authors directly address some of these origins, including how our own emotional experiences as parents can affect the way we respond to our children.

I can connect these insights and learnings from this book to Jordan B. Peterson's #5 rule in 12 Rules for Life: “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.”

I have a fixation with my daughter showering more regularly. She is 13, and I know I shouldn't be minding her business so much. I see this all the time in my therapy clients: mommies who project themselves to their children. While at it, they can be controlling helicopter moms, unconsciously wanting to live out their dreams via their sons or daughters. Sometimes, it is also about some notion of decorum that has something to do with our own insecurities as parents.

Dirty child = bad mom / bad parenting skills. 💬

Logically, nagging is not helping me build a good relationship with my daughter. When we were teens, we hated our moms nagging too, right? My, my, time has flown. We used to be that teenage girl whose mom constantly reminded her about this small, trivial thing or the other.

The truth about how to be a good (enough) mom is somewhere in between. As parents, especially of teenagers, we need to be good role models. But the foundation of that must be emotional maturity. To get there, we need self-reflection: understanding ourselves, what drives us, and what makes us blow up in unexpected moments as parents.

And yes, teenagers can provoke our anger so easily. How many times have we, consumed in the fire of our anger, said something we regret later? I suspect this quickness to anger happens partly because when parents watch their children reach an age they once were, it can activate a reprocessing of their own experiences at that age. It makes sense if you look at it from the viewpoint of developmental psychology.

To help me deal with my maternal insecurities, I wrote a Mom Guilt SOP. 📝

It helps me stay grounded in what to do. When mom guilt strikes, I refer to it and comfort myself with the conclusion that I am just trying my best every day. And it is a continuous process for as long as I am a parent.

Because this parenting job DOES NOT END. 😅

Also, if you are a parent of teens, I recommend asking for their genuine input in the form of actual feedback sessions. There is also an SOP on how to do that. (Do your own research.)

Just as I am learning self-forgiveness and self-acceptance on my own parenting journey, I have come to accept my real-life mother for all her past efforts. The more I forgive myself, the more I can accept myself as (just) a good enough mom.
Because, as they say, “As above, so below.” What we heal within ourselves is what we pass on to our children." 💖

17/09/2026

📚 Books and Being 📚
✨ Book reflections from a psychologist & author
📖 Shame on You by Amy Heydenrych

I enjoyed this unputdownable psychological thriller! Reading it coincided with a time when I was having FB and IG trouble.

Someone tried to take control of both my accounts, but thank goodness, FB safety was able to intervene, and I recovered my Facebook account. My IG is still in deep doo-doo. However, the bigger issue here is recovering my sanity. 😅

This book helped illustrate to me what it is like to be in the public eye, how heavy it can be. How much fame influences the influencer, so to speak. It also affirmed what I, a hardened Gen Xer, have believed all along: an online persona is not the real person. There difference is as vast as an ocean.

Something about being online enables us to fake things. I have had clients with similar cases, where they communicate with others in ways that are not at all like the people they really are IRL. The online version of them—even in chats (WhatsApp, Viber, etc.)—can be very different. Blame it on the Online Disinhibition Effect. 💬

So, say what you will about LDRs, but I will never be a believer. This belief is based on solid science:

When you sit across from a person IRL, your nervous systems are scanning for safety. If you cannot see the eyes or hear the subtle tremors in a voice, your brain remains in a state of somewhat heightened vigilance. You are essentially interacting with a projection, an avatar, a hologram, rather than the whole being of the other person.

You don't feel their touch. You don't experience their tactile presence. You don't smell them. You don't hear the nuances of their voice. You are there but not really there, it’s just empty air.

Don't be like Holly in this book, enchanted by equating online with what’s real. If you are doing an LDR or if you are an influencer, put your online persona and online interactions into perspective. These are tools to strengthen real connection, not to replace it. 🌟

15/09/2026

One day, I was in therapy with a client and he mentioned that in the crucial moment when he was about to end his life, One Small Thing saved him.

It was being in the here and now.

You see, my client, let’s just call him Howdy, was interrupted by a song playing on his neighbor’s radio. He noticed the song. It reminded him of something good in his childhood, when he was still innocent.

Paying attention to the music, he was able to exit the dwelling place where the suicidal ideation existed.

He got transported into the present moment.

Around the same time as the psychotherapy session when he recounted this to me, I was reading Philippa Gregory’s Dark Tides.

There were a couple of pages that I couldn’t forget.

The passage featured Wussausmon, a Native American, fictionalized for Gregory’s story. In it, Wussausmon was giving advice to one of the protagonists, Ned. Ned was a new import to America; he was not very good yet at surviving the wilderness that made up most of Britain’s new colony.

Wussausmon cautioned against being lost in thoughts about what has already happened or what might happen next, because doing so can cost one’s life. He tells Ned to be “locked into here, now.”

I was struck by this.

Why would paying such close attention to the here and now have been so important?

Because even if we are not existing in a dangerous landscape like both men, we have beasts inside our minds that can ensnare us.

One thought can snowball into another thought, and then before you know it, you’re catastrophizing. You fall into the trap of your own making called Worst-Case Scenario Land.

And once you are in that tunnel, everything looks bleak, the only escape oblivion.
I had a comparable experience yesterday. Something seemingly trivial made me mad, steam coming out of my nostrils mad.

Unlike the past, in my 20s, I did not immediately act on it. I walked away for ten minutes and took deep breaths. I was not totally ready when I finally spoke about my anger.

But I was able to articulate it.

When I was able to do so, I felt better.

Speaking engages the thinking, logical part of the mind—the prefrontal cortex. So, in short, I got a grip. Was the trouble resolved? Not then and there, and not completely, but that’s not the point.

The point was I was able to reorient myself. I was able to stay in the now and out of Worst-Case Scenario Land.

I got reminded to live in the moment because everything is temporary.

Easy come, easy go. Life goes on and on.

Tomorrow, I might find out something that makes me angry again.

These days in September, which is the Philippines’ Su***de Prevention Month, I find myself continually challenged by perimenopause insomnia and the overwhelming fatigue that accompanies it.

But life goes on.

I notice what I feel, what is in the here and now.

I suggest that if things get too heavy, notice what is here, do your breathing exercises and/or whatever gets you out of Worst-Case Scenario Land.

And then tell someone.

Sometimes staying in the here and now is not something we can do alone.

If your thoughts are moving toward su***de, not just the ordinary garden variety emotional flare-up and descent into gloom and doom, reach out.

Contact a mental-health professional or crisis service, or get yourself somewhere you are not alone.

You don’t have to know what tomorrow or even the next hour will bring.

You only have to get through this moment. Take one step forward.

Then the next, and then the next one. Forward.

Save yourself. One day, one hour at a time.

***dePreventionMonth ***dePrevention

12/09/2026

📚 Books and Being 📚
✨ Book reflections from a psychologist & author
📖 Dark Tides by Philippa Gregory

This book gave me a taste of what it was like to live in Reformation-age England—a time when coffee first became available to the public. One of the main settings of the novel is London. Philippa Gregory describes both the working-class districts and the homes of the moneyed class. Some things, however, remain true in any country, then and now: the class divide, and how a lot of us are just getting by.

Livia, in this story, is depicted as a manipulative woman. She is not above using her body to get her way with Lord Avery, whom she eventually marries—for love more than money. Yet, being the feminist writer that Philippa Gregory is, she made me feel some empathy for Livia, even though Livia financially victimized one of the protagonists, Alys. 💬

This book is the second in the Fairmile series. I had already read the first one, so when I came across Dark Tides, I couldn't resist finding out what happened to Alys and Alinor. When Tidelands ended, both women were pregnant and had run away to London to become working women, hoping to regain their dignity through honest work. 📚

I would very much love to read the third book in the series, Dawnlands. I'll wait until I find a secondhand copy—wish me luck spotting one at Biblio or Booksale! 🌟 Because I'm a frugal Chinoy, I prefer my books on the cheap. There's just so much good stuff to read that not everything has to be ordered online. Use what you have, as my elders would say, and make the most of it. 💖

10/09/2026

[Intentional Shopping in Middlescence]
Every day, I spin the flashy, neon wheel of Melany’s Perimenopause Symptom Randomizer. One day, the prize is aches and pains; on other days, it's vertigo. Some days, I am possessed by incomprehensible menopausal rage (that or anxiety-laced panic attack).

Coincidentally (or not), I am raising a teenage daughter. She keeps getting her period, while I keep waiting for mine to happen. I face long stretches without a cycle now, but I still get the 'freebie' of constant PMS. Ugh.

In depth psychology, there is a principle that parents develop and mature in consonance with their offspring. When you raise a young child, you are called to heal the wounds of your inner child. At the stage I am in now, the reckoning is with my inner teen.

Fact: Puberty and perimenopause are mirror developmental periods—times where neurological reorganization takes place. Have you heard the term “middlescence”? It's like “adolescence,” but encompassing the age range of the mid-40s to early 60s.

I’m right smack in the center, and if so are you, read on.

[Hormones Matter]
In perimenopause, estrogen levels go completely haywire. Perimenopause is the transitional phase leading up to menopause; after twelve consecutive months without a period, a woman is officially declared in menopause.

But estrogen is a potent neurochemical. Estrogen directly impacts our mood and frustration tolerance because:

• It modulates serotonin – regulating mood stability and emotional baseline. When estrogen drops, serotonin plummets. Boom! Irritability.
• It drives dopamine circuits – fueling our reward, motivation, and energy systems. Sudden hormonal dips can instantly drain your drive. Boom! Fatigue.
• It enhances GABA signaling – acting as the brain's natural Va**um, helping the nervous system downshift. Without enough estrogen, GABA doesn’t work right. Boom! Can’t relax. Anxiety.
• It maintains prefrontal-limbic regulation – anchoring your emotional center (limbic) and your logical brain (prefrontal), preserving impulse control. When this connection is destabilized, boom! Impulsivity.

In short, when my estrogen levels go whacko in perimenopause, it affects everything I do. The end result? Me, like all perimenopausal women, just say, “My moods are all over the place.”

Accompanied by the infamous hot flashes, this hormonal joyride perfectly explains the phenomenon legendarily coined as “menopausal rage.” Some days, I just have a primal urge to burn it all down.

Poetic justice, isn’t it? Some days I just want to get rid of all of it. Plans, perfectly arranged rules, everything. Watch it all burn—my regrets about the past and accumulated frustration along with it.

There’s a charge in the air, electric like lightning, and it makes me feel oh so alive. I hear the words deep inside me: “You go, gurrrrrlllll.” And I take action. But unlike an unruly teen, I know these urges are mere by-products of my hormones, so I apply moderation and discernment—may gigil lang nga.

[No BS]
Perimenopause does not tolerate bu****it—not even my own.

Recently, I rediscovered Chinatown, specifically the chaotic expanse covering the Binondo and Divisoria areas. For many years, I relied entirely on air-conditioned shopping malls for the sake of convenience. Back then, my world was heavily confined; I was limited by the demanding logistics of raising two young children. But now, those aforementioned people are teenagers, and I finally have the time to explore and seek out better, cheaper options.

When I visited last week to buy a new mobile phone, drawn by rumors of bargains at 168 Mall, it was as if the scales suddenly fell from my eyes. Everything truly is cheaper in good old “Devi’s Park” (my father’s term) everything all in one place.

I recall what I have known for years as a third-generation born Chinoy: standard mall merchants capitalize on this direct source. They curate it, place it in a visually appealing storefront, market it, and jack up the price—by at least 20%, and sometimes it even goes up to 100%, would you believe?!

Seeing what I saw, I call my own bu****it. For a few years now, I have been working to transition from impulse shopping to intentional shopping.

In the past, I accumulated stuff to try and fill an internal hole. I thought it was the right way—the only way. But being in the thick of **The Source of All Goods—Wholesale! Bargain! Lowest Price!—**drove the message home: material things are plentiful, cheap, and easily replaced.

The purchases made me feel good for an instant, for a very short time, and then the feeling waned. All that stuff is thrown away now or nakatambak lang, binubulok, walang pakinabang.

What is actually valuable is how I put meaning into things. What was valuable then and what is valuable now is how I construct meaning in my life.

Entering this midlife transition means reckoning with this old version of me: Ms. Shopping Addiction. I regret all that money wasted in convenient malls and convenient groceries—what I once saw as instant solutions to my pain. I find myself furious with that old me in my thirties, that struggling Baby Mama who tried to find her meaning in life scoring retail highs.

But it is not all a waste. And I am not a waste, nor am I wasted.
When I look closer, this potent concoction of anger and regret is actually just non-acceptance. The truth is, I can’t do it all. I was not able to do it all.

As always, I do my best with what I can do and what I have at the moment. This is the constant hum of my being. I could give myself a lot more credit than I do.
I will melt the negativity! I will turn it into self-acceptance!

To do this, I will practice 和自己和解. The literal translation is "to make peace with oneself." But if you parse into the etymology and philosophy, the character 解 (jiě) means "to separate, to untie, to deliver out of bo***ge."
I watch this ancient philosophy play out on my doorstep.

Every day around eleven in the morning, a Lazada delivery guy makes his rounds. He unfastens parcels from his delivery vehicle—goods originating from Divisoria, Binondo, 168, or 999 Mall, destined for my neighbors who shopped online.
Package delivered! Items received!

In this simple exchange lies an analogy: I, too, am in transition. I must untie myself from the heavy cargo of my past regrets.

A Chinoy like me survives different iterations. It is part of the vicissitudes of life. Commerce changes forms, adapting to the endless shifts of the market—so why can’t I?



Full Blog Here: https://melanyheger.com/intentional-shopping-in-middlescence/

08/09/2026

Earlier this year, in May 2026, I had the privilege of serving as a guest speaker for a mini talk show on eating disorders organized by Behavioral Science students from the University of Santo Tomas for their Abnormal Psychology class. I joined the event online.

The students invited me because of my lived experience with anorexia nervosa. They also invited a licensed psychologist who discussed the clinical and professional understanding of eating disorders. My role was to share what recovery looks like from the inside.

As the other psychologist discussed the facts of the disease, I was struck by how much of my time and energy are eaten by anorexia. At the same time, I acknowledge that as far as eating disorder and trauma survivors go, I consider myself to be in an OK place.

In the framework of Tedeschi and Calhoun’s Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) theory, this reflects the integration phase. It means that I live a fulfilling life within my, admittedly, limited capacity. This is why I joined the talk online: I did not have the energy to attend physically.

My life experiences so far have shown me that a mental diagnosis can describe patterns, but it cannot contain the richness, complexity, contradictions, and overall meaning of a human life—an examined, deliberate, and intentional life.
Perhaps that is why my story mattered.

Thank you to the UST Behavioral Science students for the opportunity to share my story. I hope I contributed to promoting awareness and compassion for beings like me who live with eating disorders. 💙

05/09/2026

📚 Books and Being 📚
✨ Book reflections from a psychologist & author
📖 Home by Harlan Coben

Myron Bolitar stars in this fast-paced novel. The sports agent, doubling as a detective together with his friend Win, is able to solve the mystery of two missing boys. I think Win comes across as someone with psychopathy (that's up for debate). Anyway, they were effective in finding the truth about the boys, one of them being Win’s nephew.

I think I read this book in reaction to the last fiction book I finished, Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon, because that last book was, well, too female, and this rock-and-roll of a novel is very, very masculine. 💬

As usual with Coben's books, expect the twist at the end: it is not what you expect it to be! ✨ I also appreciated that Coben brought back Esperanza and Big Cyndi, recurring characters from the books featuring Myron and Win. It is like watching the continuation of your favorite sitcom... or a new season of your favorite crime TV series.

I will always love a Harlan Coben book, no matter how baduy or campy they say it is. We should read for pleasure! 📚 Speaking of which... don't get too hung up on whether it is the "right" type of novel one should read. When was the last time you read something by an author you admire, even if they don't win accolades or aren't part of the literary elite? Cultivate your own unique taste, because it is your life to live and no one else's. 💖

As I finished this book, the last scene was a wedding, signifying new beginnings. 🌟 Well, this is the last book I am reading before my PhD classes start again. I'll still be reading fiction, as I always do, but maybe not at the same rapacious pace as before.
Wish me luck for this new semester! 👉📝

03/09/2026

📚 Books and Being 📚
✨ Book reflections from a psychologist & author
📖 Attached by Dr. Amir Levine

It is my fervent dream that one day soon I will write a book as impactful as this one.
Much has already been written and shared about Dr. Levine’s Attached. I’ve found many of my psychotherapy clients using terms such as “securely attached,” “anxiously attached,” and “avoidantly attached,” but none have yet mentioned “disorganized attachment.”

So, let me hone in on that: disorganized attachment, particularly among child abuse victims and survivors.

A quote I often encounter in psychology and personal growth spaces says: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” I think this connects beautifully with attachment theory. Our attachment patterns may have been shaped in childhood, but that does not mean they define us forever.
In an interview, Dr. Levine shared that attachment styles can be amended—that new patterns of relating can be built through healthy, ongoing relationships. This reminded me of one of my clients who had a secure attachment as a child but, after entering a relationship with an abusive and serially unfaithful partner, developed PTSD. She is now with a truly wonderful man and is in therapy, rebuilding her sense of inner safety so she can once again feel secure within a relationship.

I remember one session in particular. Following a disagreement with her partner, she immediately felt unmoored. Her attachment system became activated. She spiraled, becoming hypervigilant and assuming betrayal was imminent. Levine offers a hopeful perspective: she does not have to eliminate every fear before she can feel good. Instead, she needs to lean into her secure partner's consistency. He explains that being in a relationship with a securely attached partner can gradually help an insecurely attached person develop greater security over time—a process often referred to as earned security.

Rather than accusing him, withdrawing, or silently panicking, she can express her vulnerability directly and honestly.

Levine suggests that a truly secure partner is unlikely to become defensive, angry, or emotionally unavailable in response to such vulnerability. Instead, they are more likely to offer reassurance and respond with consistency and care.

A word to the wise: secure partners are Works-in-Progress, too. None of us arrive fully formed. Sometimes, we grow secure together.

💬 Just look at me and my husband. We've been married for over twenty years, and yes—we still know exactly how to push each other's buttons. The difference is that we're skilled in distress tolerance.

I only truly began feeling securely attached when I found what I now call the rock of my salvation: being at home in myself. From the inside out, that is how it should be.
My healing did not happen in isolation. Trusting others more is my next challenge, just as I am learning to trust my inner voices more.

Related blog post: https://melanyheger.com/breaking-the-trauma-habit-loop-as-a-mom/

01/09/2026

I'm pleased how this turned out. Took 2 bots and some word editing from me. OK, Robot(s), pasado ka for this.

29/08/2026