There’s a seasonal shift happening—one that brings more daylight, backyard dinners, and sticky popsicle fingers. But for many parents, summer doesn’t feel light and breezy. It feels like pressure. The kids are out of school, routines are gone, and parental personal space evaporates. And in that wide, echoing void, a different presence rushes in: the illusion that you should be savoring every second. That illusion doesn’t soothe, it suffocates. It whispers that if you’re not loving every moment, something must be wrong with you.

In our practice, summer often brings a wave of quiet desperation. The kind of desperation where you find yourself fantasizing about a silent cabin in the woods. The kind where you dread making yet another camp lunch, feel overwhelmed by the logistics of pickup times that change weekly, and beat yourself up for not being more grateful for the chaos.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the truth: Loving your children and feeling claustrophobic around them are not contradictions. They are co-existences, which is a part of life’s gray space.

In the human experience, it’s tempting to reduce life into binaries: good or bad, right or wrong, love or hate. These cognitive shortcuts, which you might call dichotomous thinking or black-and-white thinking, can appear to provide clarity. But they actually distort our reality and strain our relationships.

We love our partners yet feel deep frustration over their quirks or behaviors. We eagerly anticipate hosting the holidays but quietly dread the emotional labor involved. We adore our children, yet still feel bored, overwhelmed, exhausted, or even resentful of them.

This does not mean we’re broken. It means we’re human.