Parents often worry about the teenage years. The term ‘threenager’ is frequently used to describe the toddler tantrums that leave parents tearing their hair out. I used it myself, with an eyeroll and a wry smile, but now that I’ve been through the teenage years I’m apologetic about that. I think it’s patronising, and it doesn’t help our relationships with our teens. Here’s why having a rebellious teenager might not be such a bad thing.
Podcast Ep. 104: Why a rebellious teenager might be a good thing
Katia Vlachos has experienced this from the teen point of view, and it took her until adulthood to realise that her ‘good girl’ behaviour wasn’t serving her. She talks to me about how easy it is to raise a people-pleasing teenager (even when we think we’re on the receiving end of full-scale rebellion), and why it’s not such a good thing to have a teenager who sticks to the rules.
Who is Katia Vlachos?
Katia Vlachos is a coach and author of a new book called Uncaged. Raised in a traditional Greek family, Katia’s early years were spent trying to please others as the perfect daughter and student, but she often found ways to embrace her rebellious spirit – including sneaking out at night and driving off into the sunset on the back of her boyfriend’s Harley Davidson. As she grew up, Katia became more weighed down by this ‘good girl’ persona she’d be trying to live up to until one day, when she was in her 40s, she faced the reality that the life she was living had been designed to make other people happy and not herself.
After a series of life-altering events – including the death of her beloved father and the end of her 17-year marriage – Katia confronts how being obsessed with being seen as ‘good’ has affected her life decisions and sets out on a path of self-discovery and reinvention. Unpicking how she had been conditioned since childhood to chase societal approval and put the needs and desires of others above her own, Katia used her experiences to write a book about her story and inspire other women who are fed up of feeling guilty for wanting more. Uncaged: A Good Girl’s journey to reinvention is available on Amazon (affiliate link).
Podcast transcript Ep. 104
Helen Wills: This is this is a topic that I think so many people are going to be interested in. ah So it’s it was a no-brainer for me to to have this conversation with you. I recognise the good girl thing. That’s how I got validation. That’s how I got attention. And so that’s what I did and I was doing of ah um was doing it all my life and I still have a knee jerk that says do that. And then I’ve learned to have another voice that kicks in and goes, is that really what you want to do? Clearly when you were young, you had that voice because you did those things.
Katia Vlachos: It was a very, very modest voice, right? it would It would just like show up and then go back into hiding. But yeah, it was there. It was there. um and And I’m glad it it stayed there. And I didn’t just rebel in my teens. you know I rebelled way later than I should have, right? Because what happens when you don’t rebel as much in your teens, it it doesn’t disappear, at least from my experience, right? It comes out later.
Helen Wills: Absolutely, I’ve been there too, but we won’t talk about that. Let’s talk about your teenage years. What was it like growing up for you? And then what what did you become aware of for yourself as a teenager?
Katia Vlachos: So I was, yeah, I mean, like you said, I was, I was very good. I learned early on. And of course, I didn’t realize that until like like I write in the book in my 40s that um I just learned that I had to, I had to excel and what to talk about, how you get appreciation and acknowledgement. My meditation teacher, David G has this great expression for it. It was my winning formula, right? It was, I realised that if I did that, you know, I would get certain things and that was my method and it worked at the time. So it just stayed with me and and and I never questioned it. So I had to be you know good at everything. I was the best student. I was, you know, got into you know great university, got the great jobs afterwards. At home, yes, of course I was, you know, I’m sure if you ask my my parents, they’ll say that I, you know, I was difficult as a teenager, but really compared to what was going on around me. I really wasn’t that difficult. Now I was quite, I was understanding and considerate.
And um also where I grew up as as a girl, you’re you know, you get all these, you know, subtle messages to, you know, you have to self sacrifice. You have to put others needs ahead of your own. You have to, um you know, Be everything to everyone and and um otherwise you’re selfish. So, and given that I was called selfish, you know, quite often that that was probably the rebellious side showing up. Then I was called selfish. Then I would kind of be like, oh, it shouldn’t be like that.
Helen Wills: Yeah, well, I’m guessing being called selfish can trigger a little bit of anger and defiance. Is that what happened for you?
Katia Vlachos: Yes, and at the same time, sadly, I owned it, right? I kind of surrendered to that label, so I…
Helen Wills: What did that look like?
Katia Vlachos: Well, you kind of… There’s a lot of self-criticism, I guess.
Helen Wills: okay okay yeah sounds like some shame
Katia Vlachos: Like, the inner critic is really strong, right? If you do this, you’re selfish. If you put your needs… ah first you’re selfish if you do something for yourself. So there’s always this kind of um second guessing myself or comparing myself to others and and Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That’s what it was. And I mean, I say that, and of course, I’m not, you know, I’m not angry at my parents, or I’m ah blaming my parents for that, you know, as parents, we do we do what we can, given where we are, given our level of consciousness and and our own baggage. But the outcome was that that I really internalized all these beliefs about what I needed to do to to be acknowledged and appreciated, to be good, yeah to to get people to pay attention to me and all that.
Helen Wills: Yeah. And it’s so easy as parents to do that with kids, right? And and it’s not just us, actually, because where as soon as our kids go to school, they’re being told they don’t have to be perfect, but they have to try their hardest every time they do something. Even that is ah is an extreme form of performance anxiety that kicks in. Did I try my hardest? Oh, no, I didn’t. Oh, right. OK, then I’m a bad person.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah. Yeah. and And like you said, as parents, we, we often reinforce that. I mean, to do their best.
Helen Wills: And we because we want our kids to to do well, to be able to live independently, to have a good job, and so they’ve got to be successful in their studies. And we set them up for it right from the beginning. what I mean, I’m jumping right ahead to the bit that I do next, and we still haven’t finished this bit, but I’m going to do it anyway. What what should we be doing? What is the best way to support our kids to do their best but not feel terrible about themselves when for some reason they ah choose not to.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah. Well, let let me let me preface this by saying, ah we are doing our best as parents. And there are a multitude of ways that we can mess up our kids. and And I, you know, I think I tick several boxes here, despite best intentions, right?
Helen Wills: Yeah, and we feel guilty about that as well. So the whole thing is a snowball.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, because if you let go, you’ll be like, Oh, my God, this is gonna be even worse if I’m not aware of all the ways.
Helen Wills: Yeah. Oh, I’m ah such a bad parent.
Katia Vlachos: So we need to be alert all the time in our minds. There’s what we tell our kids and there’s this what we do. And and we know that that what we do is even more powerful. It’s like, it’s how we behave. if If my kid comes in and sees me at my computer after dinner, you know trying to you know finish something because I have a deadline or or preparing something for the next day, what are they gonna think? They’re gonna think this is okay. Right. And I, you know, I can’t say I don’t do that ever. So, so this is, you know, this is what we’re modeling. If, if our kids see us, you know, um, being stressed about work or, or being stressed about missing a deadline or, um, working on weekends. I mean, all these, these, you know, they’re not so little things, right? So, so how can we help that?
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: I mean, we can start with ourselves and, and question our own behaviour and our own beliefs about what’s required here.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: Like you said, when the voice comes up, it’s like, “Is this good for me? Is this really mine, or is this just the remnants of things we’ve absorbed?” We’ve moved beyond that, but they’re still there. They still occasionally show up.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: I certainly feel that, and I wrote the book about it. There are moments when I’m like, “Are you going back in the cage right now? What’s going on?” At least we get better at catching ourselves, right?
Helen Wills: Yeah. So, we were talking about this before we started recording, that this isn’t a realisation or a fix and then we’re done. This is with us for life. It’s how we were trained to be as young people, not because of anyone’s fault, but just the way people are. None of us is perfect, but we’ve inherited this way of being. It’s with us for life. So, is it about awareness? Just noticing what we’re doing, asking if it’s serving us, and shifting ourselves a little bit?
Katia Vlachos: Yeah. The part about reflecting on ourselves is definitely about awareness. I say it a lot: we have to be constantly alert to potential cages, the ways we limit ourselves that aren’t really ours. They’re the external beliefs and patterns we’ve absorbed.
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: Even if you feel like you’re the most uncaged person there is, there will still be moments in your path where you’ll notice. So, it’s better to be alert, to always question and ask, “Is this mine? Is this serving me? Am I limiting myself here for no reason? Is this aligned with what’s important to me, with my values?” Just being constantly aware really helps.
Katia Vlachos: Because it interrupts this autopilot way of functioning.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: These are very deep patterns and beliefs, so it’s hard to get rid of them. But that’s okay. The point is to know when they show up and to be able to choose differently. That’s in our power. Making a different choice is in our power.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: That way, we’re also showing our children how to do it.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, go ahead.
Helen Wills: I think that’s what I was trying to say in a much less eloquent way than you just said. And that’s probably because I skipped ahead. So let’s skip back. You talked about cages, and the book is called Uncaged. Where did that come from? Tell us a little bit about the cages, what they are, and how they mean to you.
Katia Vlachos: Cages are in our minds. They’re rarely external limitations. They’re more how we see the world, how we interpret the world, how we apply winning formulas in our minds that influence how we show up. Cages are all the ways we limit ourselves, and the good news is that we have the power to choose differently.
Katia Vlachos: As long as we realise what those cages are. They’re very old and solid, but we can dismantle them. It is possible.
Helen Wills: Right, I think that’s the key. I’m imagining a cage where someone else has the lock and key to it, but that’s not it, right?
Katia Vlachos: That’s not it. We have the key. But if you don’t know there’s a cage around you, what are you going to do about it? Many of us go through life not realising what the cages are, not realising when we’re on autopilot or behaving in patterned ways, or holding certain beliefs that influence our behaviour without us even noticing.
Helen Wills: Okay, right.
Katia Vlachos: I see it all the time in my work. When I ask people to identify a belief and we question it, asking, “Is this really true? Do you still believe that?” Where’s it coming from?
Helen Wills: Yes.
Katia Vlachos: These kinds of questions are really useful.
Helen Wills: Yeah, and I’m imagining that cages are different for different people.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, as you notice.
Helen Wills: What did they represent for you?
Katia Vlachos: Well, they’re the bars of the cage. You can see it as that. There are many bars.
Helen Wills: What were the key ones that stood out for you?
Katia Vlachos: As we discussed, everything around being good—self-sacrifice, false modesty. Not prioritising yourself. Another very common cage is not feeling good enough, smart enough, capable enough—all the “enoughs.” These are common cages. I speak to women’s cages because that’s my experience. But since the book came out, many men have reached out saying this resonates with them too. Men have their own cages, maybe not as extreme as ours, but they’re still there. For men, there’s the cage to always be strong, to always support, and to control emotions.
Helen Wills: Yes.
Katia Vlachos: There’s a lot around control and strength, all those stereotypes. Those can be very limiting for men as well. I don’t want to exclude anyone. We all have them. Any belief you’ve been raised with—always work hard, do your best, be the best—there are so many beliefs.
Helen Wills: Yeah. Not having feelings, not crying, not complaining. There are so many.
Katia Vlachos: Not complaining. That’s such a good one.
Helen Wills: Okay, so I guess the trick is for people to identify what the bars in their cage are, first of all, and then what they do about it to escape the cage and be uncaged. I guess I’m going to tell people to read your book, but can you give us a bit of a flavour?
Katia Vlachos: Sure. The book is my story, but there’s also a way you do this. It’s a practice, and it takes time. It starts with being aware. This is my list. These are the things that don’t serve me, that don’t belong to me, and I don’t want in my life because they’re limiting me. They’re holding me back from being and achieving what I want and being aligned with what’s important.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: The next step is just noticing when they show up, when they influence what you do. For example, when you want to go away for a weekend with your friends but feel guilty about leaving your family. Guilt is a really good indicator, especially for us women.
Helen Wills: Okay, that’s good to know because that was one of my questions—how did you realise that this wasn’t serving you, that it wasn’t yours, and that it was something external that you could let go of? But guilt is a key thing.
Katia Vlachos: What am I telling myself?
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, guilt is key. I can give you a very specific example. I had a lot of guilt as a parent because I had this idea of what a good mother does.
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: And when I went away for a weekend, it didn’t fit that image. There’s a scene in the book where I talk to my now husband before we were married. I was reflecting on my divorce and the guilt I had around that. I thought, “What am I doing to my children?”
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: Then he said, “But you’re such an amazing parent. You’re such a good parent.” And I was like, “How do you see that?” He started telling me why, and I thought, “I hadn’t thought about it this way.” He said, “You’re always present with your children. They have a secure base. They always know they can come to you.”
Katia Vlachos: It doesn’t matter if I go away for the weekend. My kids know I’m there for them. Even when I’m away, they know they can reach out. My kids are studying abroad, and they call me for things where I feel so far away. I don’t know how to help, but I’m here for them.
Helen Wills: That’s another bar in the cage, isn’t it? Not being able to see what’s good about ourselves, only picking out the things we can criticise.
Katia Vlachos: Right.
Katia Vlachos: Maybe we learned that the way to improve is by focusing on what’s wrong. If we give ourselves credit, we think it will make us lazy.
Helen Wills: Yeah, we just have to keep impressing people and being the good girl, like you said.
Katia Vlachos: Right. It’s good to see this because it helps us recognise it in our children. I’ve definitely seen this in myself and thought, “Okay, I need to do something here.”
Helen Wills: Sure, yeah.
Katia Vlachos: We don’t put pressure on our kids anymore. I think most of us are aware of what pressure can do, but they put pressure on themselves very often.
Helen Wills: They do, they really do.
Katia Vlachos: That’s a tougher one, I think. You can stop doing it, but they are.
Helen Wills: Yeah, well, I blame myself for that because I must have got it wrong somewhere along the line. I’ve got two academically very strong kids, and I see them getting stressed trying to meet deadlines and be the best they can be.
Katia Vlachos: Same. Yeah.
Helen Wills: And I think, “Oh, did I create that?” But I remind myself that they are also individuals with their own temperaments and ways of doing things in the world.
Helen Wills: And we’re going to do some of those things regardless of how we parented them because it’s in their personalities and their genes.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah.
Helen Wills: But then that’s my fault too, because they’ve got my genes.
Katia Vlachos: Okay, definitely not your fault. I don’t think you can control that.
Helen Wills: Hello, isn’t it mad?
Katia Vlachos: Yes, but there’s a part that belongs to us and then the personality and the external influences. What we see these days is scary.
Helen Wills: Exactly. Yeah, well, they’re connected. They’re online, they see a lot, but also their teachers aren’t perfect, and their friendships aren’t perfect. That’s normal.
Katia Vlachos: There’s so much pressure. Their teachers, the schools, Yeah, and they’ll have to find their way and we’ll do our bit, right? We can do our bit if we’re aware of what’s going on from our side, but they can’t control everything. But there are things we can do if we…
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: So, I remember a piece of advice that I thought was great from a child psychologist because one of my sons, we were doing some sort of assessment for school and we got the message that he’s putting a lot of pressure on himself. And we were like, okay, what can we do? Well, you know what really helps is you have one day a week where you try something new and you fail, like all of us, all of us in the family. We will try something new where we’re not super comfortable with it, not something we know how to do well, but something we don’t know how to do. And that increases the likelihood of us failing. And then, you know, it normalises failure for them, also teaches them resilience, how to bounce back.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: So, it was kind of an artificial situation where they feel like they don’t have to be perfect. Right? Because it’s hard to do that at school. You can’t tell them, “I didn’t study for this exam, it’s okay.”
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: I think we’d find that really hard to do. I would. But so I try to be more vocal. When I mess things up, and I do, right, I talk about it, like, “Oh, what did I do here?” How did I do? So, you know, before, maybe I wouldn’t have made it such a big deal. Now I can amplify it. And I’m not very good about the boundaries; I need to work on that one, like having clear boundaries between when I finish work and when it’s really family time. I think that would help.
Helen Wills: All right, okay. Showing your kids that you rest and you prioritise yourself.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah. So I do rest, but I’m definitely not where I want to be with that.
Helen Wills: Mm-hmm.
Katia Vlachos: So that would be another one. That’s one of my goals.
Helen Wills: Well, even just admitting that and saying that out loud, you know, I’ve still got things that I’m not perfect at, and that’s okay.
Katia Vlachos: That’s a good one. Yes. Thank you, Helen. I will do that. Thank you. Thank you for my own medicine. Yes, absolutely. So just showing… Also, in my case, my kids have seen how I had to reinvent myself. I talk about that. I had a very successful first career, had to drop everything and start over, and really be a beginner and learn. They see me, and they see how it’s not always easy to build something new. There’s frustration, and there’s celebration also.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: So I’m hoping that that’s also a role model of, you know, growth mindset, learning, and evolving. And you know, you’re not there from day one. Because in the first career, they were young and I was already doing well. They didn’t see me go through the whole process.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: So anything that shows you starting, learning, and growing, I think is a good model. But because they compare so much to external perfection, like what you see on social media… They compare people who are already somewhere. They don’t always see the backstory.
Helen Wills: What the struggle was and the striving to get there.
Katia Vlachos: No.
Helen Wills: And the failures. There’s this great podcast… I don’t think she runs it anymore, but Elizabeth Day, do you know her? She’s a British journalist, and she used to have a podcast called How to Fail, and what she says in the introduction is…
Helen Wills: Learning how to fail actually means learning how to succeed better.
Katia Vlachos: 100%.
Helen Wills: Because figuring out what we did that didn’t work just sets us up to do it differently next time, and eventually, you’re going to hit the way that works.
Katia Vlachos: That’s so true. That really hits home because I was told I never failed. I never failed until my divorce, really.
Helen Wills: Wow.
Katia Vlachos: That was like my biggest failure. And I remember, I think it was my therapist who told me, “Oh, you never, like, you don’t know how to fail.”
Helen Wills: Yeah, yeah.
Katia Vlachos: And that can be scary. And we all want our kids to not know how to fail. Like now when they mess up, I’m so happy because I know they’re going to learn from it. And I know I didn’t have that.
Helen Wills: Yes, they’ll learn how to do better, and they’ll also learn that it’s not the end of the world if they don’t succeed the first time.
Katia Vlachos: Exactly. Yeah.
Helen Wills: I remember someone saying, well, lots of people have said this actually, that sometimes the first time a child fails—well, the first time they’re aware of failing—is when they fail their driving test, which happens to a lot of people, right? Not many people pass the first time around. I did.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah.
Helen Wills: But my daughter failed her first driving test, and it was devastating because she’d always been so good at school. She always got a good grade. She did fantastic. But of course, if you go back to the classic one that everybody recounts… If you go back to a baby learning to crawl and then walk, they didn’t succeed the first time. They have failed hundreds of times at learning to walk before they eventually got it.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, exactly. That’s why they learned to walk, right?
Katia Vlachos: I mean, that’s the reason. Yeah. I think the earlier they fail, the better. But yeah, I couldn’t agree more. The driving test is a really good example.
Katia Vlachos: And you know, when there’s an incident like that, I will be like, “So, what did you learn?” And they’ll be like, “Mom, leave me alone.”
Helen Wills: Is there anything else in the book that you’d like to highlight that’s worth telling the listeners? Or should we reach the point of saying, “Where do people go to get this book?” Tell us the full title.
Katia Vlachos: So look, the book is… You described it so eloquently, and I need to get you to give me your description because I really like it. It gives a really good picture. It starts from zero, actually, because I wasn’t caged when I was really young. And then it shows the process of how I entered the cage, how I internalised all these different patterns.
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: It doesn’t explain why, but it will explain in the end. There’s a reason why I did. There’s usually a reason why we adopt our winning formulas when we get in the cage.
Helen Wills: Okay.
Katia Vlachos: So, and it shows how that set of beliefs and patterns really influenced all my choices going forward because it didn’t stop at school or work, it was also in my first marriage. It was how I did everything in life, my friendships—everything. And then it shows what was the breaking point, the turning point, and how I realised how I had taken on so much from the outside and how I took the leap. And the way this happens is like, it doesn’t have to be one giant bold move. It’s you take one decision and then you see, “Oh, okay, nothing devastating happened. I could handle it.”
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: Like you said, you know, you fail and realise it’s not the end of the world.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: You take the decision, and then you take the next one, and the next one, and they build up. You build confidence, then you take bigger steps. And that’s how you get out, right? And it’s also really about the mindset of “I can do this, it’s my choice.” I have the choice. Very often, we think we’re powerless, and we get into this victim mindset, and I was very much a victim for a long time.
Helen Wills: Okay.
Katia Vlachos: And just realising that and deciding not to be a victim anymore—deciding I’m not going to blame others anymore for what’s happening here.
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: I’m going to own it, and I’m good, but that also means I can get out and do my thing because I’m owning that as well.
Helen Wills: It’s a brave decision, isn’t it? Because blaming others is easier, but it keeps you shut away, locked down, stuck.
Katia Vlachos: Once you decide, like… Once you see that, I don’t think you can unsee it. I don’t think you can fall back into that pattern ever again. And then you start seeing it in others.
Helen Wills: Right.
Katia Vlachos: It gets very irritating.
Helen Wills: Yeah.
Katia Vlachos: But once you realise you’ve been a victim and get out of it, the good news is you don’t go back. Because you’ve seen how different life is.
Helen Wills: Yeah, you take control of all the things that happen to you and choose how to deal with it.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah, you see what you can control and what you can’t. It’s very liberating because you can focus on that, and the stuff you can’t control, you can accept and let go of.
Helen Wills: Let it go.
Katia Vlachos: Yeah.
Helen Wills: Katia thank you so much for your time, this has been a really important conversation.