Priya Chawathe

Emotional Resilience and Parenting Coach for Stressed Moms

Hi, I’m Priya

Lovely to meet you here!

My own life story led to my biggest passion – understanding the world of human emotion and our true nature – particularly in regards to healing trauma, anxiety and depression.

Emotions help us share mutual joys, sorrows, and aspirations and it’s through them that we build relationships, community and feel a sense of belonging. Emotions are also responsible for misunderstandings, hurt, isolation, separation and stress. On any given day, how we feel inside (our inner world) affects our ability to live from a place of worth, calm, courage and experience feelings of joy, pleasure, love and intimacy.

For decades, my inner world was filled with anxiety, shame, and helplessness.

I struggled with ADHD, anxiety, depression and fatigue starting in childhood, but kept pushing myself through life. I believed that all I needed to do was work harder and be more disciplined. I thought that acceptance, belonging, self-worth and happiness would then follow.

As a stay-at-home mom; I regularly felt shame and guilt about not having a career, not being able to keep up with chores, not being organized, not being like the “so-well-put-together” PTA moms. I was very hard on myself. Perhaps because no one really understood my struggle or suffering. Conflicts around housekeeping, parenting, and other family issues were common in our home. These heated conflicts added more pain to my already overwhelmed inner world; increasing feelings of frustration, shame and ultimately a sense of deep helplessness.

These difficult emotions resulted in predictable patterns of coping behavior.

I regularly overate or used my phone as a pacifier. I procrastinated chores to ease anxiety. But the most shameful and heart-wrenching pattern was often losing my cool as a parent: yelling, criticizing and shaming my child when I wasn’t able to emotionally self-regulate myself.

I couldn’t consistently be the calm, compassionate and joyful parent – the parent that I knew I was in my soul – no matter how hard I tried. I loved my daughter dearly, but I didn’t know how to be love.

My personal journey of healing began when I was diagnosed with autoimmune thyroid disorder at age 28.

Addressing gut-brain and hormonal health using functional nutrition transformed my physical and emotional health and launched my career as a functional nutrition coach. You can read the full story here, published in an Amazon Bestseller. But with time, I realized that I was still struggling with difficult emotions and coping patterns. So were many of my nutrition clients. Childhood trauma, family dysfunction and human suffering can’t be fixed by working on body and brain chemistry alone. One has to dive deeper into understanding emotions and understanding our natural state of being (consciousness) that goes beyond even our emotions.

My mental health and the family dysfunction eventually affected my daughter’s mental health.

She was getting increasingly anxious, frustrated and overwhelmed. She had similar procrastination, avoidance and distraction patterns like me. We pass on our generational emotional blueprints and patterns. I longed to put an end to these patterns. For her and for me.

After 3 years of studying my own emotions and state of consciousness experientially, through western psychological and eastern mindfulness practices, teachings and wisdom: I am becoming a different person. More true to my natural child-like state of being – embodying more heart, more soul. I successfully guide clients through this process everyday. Learning the art of being with difficult emotions has been key and is therefore the cornerstone of my coaching practice today.

No one teaches us how to be with difficult emotions. And so we distract, numb or react outwardly to ease our suffering. And we just go on with life. It’s human to use coping patterns to ease emotional pain. It’s how we survive. But there comes a time, when our suffering reminds us to go back to our natural state of being: the child-like easy, curious, delightful way of being. Going inward and learning to hold our own pain with love and compassion allows the body to release stored emotions (childhood trauma) and heal. Coping patterns slowly fall away because we no longer need them. Our inner world changes. We react less and respond more. We move more into our child-like state of wonder and joy. More into presence. Out of our whirlwind of thoughts. Out of our painful past and fear of the future. We start becoming love and compassion. We begin to hold our children’s (and others) emotions the way we hold our own. This brings connection, intimacy and a sense of belonging. Togetherness.

I loved being Mom. I literally lived for those tender sweet kisses, those hugs that made your heart melt; that innocent, unconditional love I received each day from my baby girl. Her love kept me from drowning.