Beyond The Mirror
You learned how to be what your family needed.
Now begin learning who you are.
A live three-hour identity-building workshop for adults raised by narcissistic, emotionally self-focused, controlling or unpredictable parents.
Naming the roles and labels you learned to carry, reconnect with your needs and preferences, and leave with a practical step of your next step.
Created by Katie McKenna. Accredited Psychotherapist, still in practice. Host of 'Beyond Survival' The Therapy Podcast and co-author of the Sunday Times bestseller 'You're Not The Problem'
A structured step towards your own voice
You may be in
the right place
if...
You automatically scan other people's moods before noticing your own.
You are capable in some areas, but unsure what you genuinely want.
You feel guilty, selfish, or unsafe when you have a need or boundary.
You question whether your memories, feelings, or reactions are valid.
IYou have spent years being the peacekeeper, achiever, caretaker, invisible one, or "problem"
You do not need to know exactly what to call your family experience to begin understanding what it taught you about yourself.
You are not bad at knowing yourself
You are not bad at knowing yourself
You may have learned that knowing youself was unsafe. When belonging depended on being helpful, agreeable, successful, invisible, loyal or emotionally available, it made sense to focus outward
You may have learned that
How it can feel now
What we will practice
Keep everyone comfortable
Automatic people-pleasing
Trusting your own internal experience
Do not have a separate view
Doubting your perspective
Name one 1% truth
Do not be a burden
Hiding needs.
Making the invisible, visible
Helvetica Light is an easy-to-read font, with tall and narrow letters, that works well on almost every site.
Three hours. Three core modules.
One clear path back to your own voice.
We begin with an orientation
The Family Operating Code – Spoken and Unspoken Rules that shaped safety, loyalty, and belonging.
The Mirror
What did I learn to reflect back
in order to belong?
Name the emotional climate you learned to monitor, the role you were expected to play – and most importantly – what parts of you had to go quiet.
The Canvas
What was placed on me when I
did not comply?
Separate the labels and stories you received from observable facts, appropriate responsibilities, and your own voice.
The Unwritten Self
What can I begin to choose and practice now?
Reconnect with yourself because you exist and explore
WHAT YOU WILL LEAVE WITH
Not your whole story solved. A clearer map for the next step.
This is not a promise to heal everything in a day. It is a structured space to identify the old rules and labels that shaped you, reconnect with what is true for you now, and leave with tools you can keep using.
"I'm sincere when I say my husband and I have repeatedly said this is the best parenting course we've ever paid for." AnnaLisa
Why Katie
I am not teaching this from a tidy office. I am doing it in the same week you are.
I am Katie McKenna. I am an accredited psychotherapist. I specialise in parentification and emotional abuse, which is the clinical way of saying I spend my days with people who were the adult in the house at eight years old.
I co-wrote You're Not The Problem, a Sunday Times bestseller that may already be on your shelf. I host Beyond Survival, a podcast on healing from dysfunctional family dynamics with more than 100,000 downloads worldwide. I have guided hundreds of survivors through breaking the cycle.
I wrote the book on what your mother is. Now I teach the woman who survived her how to raise their own kids without becoming her.
And here is the part that matters more than any of it. I never left the room. A lot of this advice now comes from people who do content full time. I am still a working psychotherapist, in session every week. So what I teach you is not a take I filmed once and moved on from. It is what I am using with real people, in real sessions, right now.
And I am a mom of four. I know the shame, the triggers, and the fear that you have already done damage, because I have stood in my own kitchen and felt all of them. You do not have to figure this out alone. With compassion, clarity, and zero shame, I will walk it with you.
A clear, contained day.
12.00
GMT+1
12.20
The Family Operating Code
The Mirror
13.00
A quiet break
13.10
The Canvas
14.00
The Studio
Grounding, choice, and the rules that shaped belonging
The role you learned to preform
Step away, regulate, hydrate, or reflect privatley
The labels and stories you learned to carry
You exist. Your values, needs, preferences, and next steps
YOUR SPACE IN THE WORKSHOP
You will not be asked to prove your story – or preform your healing.
No forced sharing
Camera on or off, your choice
No diagnosis required
The focus is the impact on you, not determining a clinical condition
No confrontation agenda
No pressure to confront, reconcile with, distance from, or cut off family
Choice-led participation
Pause, pass, or adapt any exercise to your capacity and circumstances
This educational workshop is not therapy, crisis care, or a substitute for individual mental-health support. If you are in immediate danger, feel unable to stay safe, or need urgent support, please contact appropriate local emergency, crisis, or professional resources.
The CALM Method
Supported
€697
or 3x €232.33
Everything in Solo, plus six live group calls with me. The calls run every week, on an ongoing basis, and your access starts the week you join, so you are never waiting on a group to catch up to you. A small room, capped at twenty-five women, so you are known, not lost in a feed. This is for the woman who has done the hardest thing she ever has attempted on her own.
Enrolment closed. Next cohort November
Whichever you choose, you are learning from a psychotherapist who is still in practice, using this every week with real clients. Not a course someone built once and walked away from.
What you're probably wondering
"Is it too late? My kids are older now."
No. I am going to be blunt about this, because the fear that you have missed your window keeps good parents frozen. Children do not have an expiry date on feeling safe with you. Whether yours are tiny, deep in the teenage years, or grown and gone, the thing that changes the relationship is the nervous system you bring to it, and that can change at any age. Repair done at five lands. Repair at fifteen lands. Repair at thirty-five lands. You have not fucked them up beyond saving. That fear is the cycle talking, and it is wrong.
"Is this just gentle parenting with a new name?"
No. Gentle parenting hands you the words. This rewires the part of you that cannot reach the words when you are triggered. We start with you, because you are the one person in the room you can actually regulate.
"I have tried things before and they did not stick. Why would this be different?"
Because the things you tried were aimed at your behaviour, or your child's. This is aimed at the nervous system underneath both. And if you choose Supported or Private, you are not doing it alone in a course tab. You are doing it live, with people who get it, while real life is happening
"I am exhausted. Do I even have the capacity for this"
It is built for women running on empty. The course is on demand and yours to keep pace with, so you cannot fall behind. The whole point is to give your energy back, not take more.
Annalisa
I'm sincere when I say my husband and I have repeatedly said this is the best parenting course we’ve ever paid for.
This course was FABULOUS.
The first day, we all chose a word for how we wanted to feel by the end of the course.
I chose peaceful, but I didn’t expect to attain it. I’ve taken similar parenting classes that didn’t work when new situations arose or when the needs of my family changed.
This was structured enough to have a solid framework while being broad enough to grow with my children.
By the end of the six weeks, I’ve been able to implement and stick to the CALM Method.
I’ve made lasting positive changes in the way I relate to myself, my spouse, and my children. And I was pleasantly surprised in a group setting to receive such individualized parenting support from Katie.
I’m truly grateful because my home is finally peaceful, and I feel empowered with the skills to keep it that way!
Nicola
Doing The CALM Method was absolutely invaluable.
The breakdown of the 6 weeks made it so manageable to implement changes in our home that actually worked.
I grew up in a home with a narcissistic parent so looking back once I became a parent I was finding it hard to decipher what parts of our experience was normal and OK parenting and what wasn't, or even knowing what was wrong but having no gauge on where to start on what was the right thing to do.
Katie was amazing, so supportive and gave everyone on the course their own time to ask questions that applied to our individual circumstances.
Thank you, Katie. I can say with confidence our home is getting calmer everyday as we continue to learn and rewire our old habits.
Eimear
I started the course because I felt that I was becoming an angry parent and I really struggled to regulate myself while parenting my young children.
I regularly felt irritable and overwhelmed.
I didn't want to be an authoritarian parent but still heard myself losing patience and shouting when deep down I knew I was overreacting.
This course fundamentally changed not only how I parent but how I view myself and my emotions.
I thought I was signing up to a course that would help me control my emotions. I absolutely did not expect that those heightened emotions would no longer be an everyday part of my life.
Orla
This has been a game changer, I wish I had known about it sooner.
I feel I could have saved my children a lot of the chaos. It is so wonderful to see my eldest child actually regulating and the meltdowns have almost disappeared, this is from constant to now and again.
I can’t explain the difference this course has made, not only to me and my child but my husband and my other 3 children.
Crystal
This course helped me recognize my own dysregulation and the ways in which I was parenting from fear.
Unlike other resources I've tried, Katie's course has changed something fundamental in my parenting.
I know I will still yell sometimes, but I feel such intense relief from the shame and fear I had about repeating harmful patterns from my childhood.
Anonymous
I feel stronger in myself and my parenting choices and able to communicate the choices without the sense that I need to defend myself
Bridgid
Our house is genuinely a different place since doing it