A Conversation With Badass Counseling
Some conversations do not just tell a story, they hold up a mirror. Sitting down with Sven Erlandson from Badass Counseling felt like that. We talked about the lies we absorb as kids, the pain we keep recreating, and the moment you finally say: “enough,” and choose yourself. It was raw, direct, and somehow both heavy and freeing at the same time.
What Badass Counseling Really Is
Badass Counseling is not about fixing your habits. It is soul work. Sven helps people dig out the messages they were given as children, the ones that quietly became their identity. You are not good enough. You do not matter. You are unlovable. Most of us are acting out a script we never wrote. His work is about pulling those old voices out so your real self can finally breathe.
Going Deeper Than Behavior
Traditional approaches often focus on changing what you do. Sven does not. He goes straight to why. If you do not touch the belief underneath the behavior, the behavior always comes back. He has clients write an autobiography, then he looks for what is there and what is missing. The moment you say, I had a great childhood, my dad yelled a lot, but he did his best, he’ll stop you. You are terrified and then you defend the person who scared you. That is where he starts pulling the thread.
Repeating The Past Until It Breaks
One of the hardest truths is that we recreate what we know. Even if it hurts us. I shared how I kept finding myself in relationships that felt like home, not because they were healthy, but because they matched what I felt as a kid. Dismissed. Controlled. Unseen. Sven calls the breaking point the moment you finally say, I cannot live like this anymore. Not as an idea, but as a decision. That is when you begin to choose differently.
Grieving The Parent Who Will Not Change
We talked about a brutal reframe. It is not that a parent is not capable of apologizing or showing up differently. Often, they simply choose not to. If they can say sorry to a boss, a friend, or someone at church, but never to you, that is a choice. Grieving that means accepting that the apology may never come, that the parent you needed may never exist. It hurts, but it also frees you from waiting your whole life for someone to finally give you permission to be happy.
Letting Yourself Feel What You Hate
There is a lot of fear around touching certain feelings, especially hate. Sven described it as baked on grease in a broiler pan. You can wipe around it forever, but if you want it gone, you have to scrub. Hate is a feeling, not a moral verdict. You do not have to act on it to honor it. Letting it move through you does not turn you into a hateful person. It gets you out of the emotional straightjacket someone else put you in.
What Sven’s Mom Taught Him
Some of the most powerful lines he shared, came from his mother and father:
Children want to be heard, not fixed.
You are not a bad person, you did a bad thing.
Those ideas separate identity from behavior. They let a child be corrected and still feel loved. Imagine how different our adult relationships would look if we treated each other that way.
What This Brought Up For Me
When Sven turned the questions on me, what surfaced was my fear of being dismissed as a human. As a kid, I learned to shape myself around what my father wanted, not who I was. That carried into my adult life. Even now, I have only allowed myself to feel my anger and hurt in pieces. But building this podcast, leaving the version of my life that was safe but inauthentic, is creating space to let more of that go. I do not want to look back decades from now and still be carrying the same weight.
The Reminder I Hope You Carry
If there is one thing I hope you take from this episode, it is this: your pain is not random. It points somewhere. You are allowed to question the beliefs you were handed. You are allowed to grieve for the parent who will not change. You are allowed to feel every feeling you were taught to bury.
You do not have to keep reliving the same story. You are allowed to write a new one.
Connect with Sven Erlandson
