A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my therapist's office with my son. I didn't expect to walk out of the session thinking about myself. But that's what happened.

We were there to talk about my son, about being an empath, about how he absorbs the feelings of everyone around him, about why that can feel isolating when the people closest to him don't experience the world the same way. And in the middle of that conversation, his therapist looked at us and said, "Your mom is the main character in her own life. That's the disconnect."

She wasn't wrong. But I had to sit with it for a while before I understood what it actually meant.

I've spent most of my career as a performer. That's the honest version. I built things, led things, proved things, and a lot of that was driven by a quiet belief that my value came from what I could achieve. Not from who I was. From what I could show. That role worked. It made me successful. It also made me exhausted in ways I didn't fully name until recently.

In this episode, I talk through the archetypes that shape how we show up: as leaders, as parents, as people trying to figure out who they actually are versus who they've learned to be. The performer. The caretaker. The empath. The peacekeeper. The victim. The main character. Each one is real. Each one solves a problem. And each one can become a trap when it stops being a choice.

What I keep coming back to is this: the roles we play aren't the problem. The problem is when they start making decisions for us, when what began as a survival strategy becomes an identity we can't see around.

I'm still working through this. I don't think that's a bad thing.

To learn more, visit http://kerrysiggins.com Her new book, Talk With Trust, comes out August 4th and is available for pre-order now.

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