You Are Not Crazy

There is a particular kind of loss that doesn't get talked about enough when you leave a coercive relationship, and it isn't the loss of the person. On some level, that was survival. The loss I am talking about is quieter and stranger than that. It's the loss of your own mind, entire summers, thousands of small moments that were technically yours but that you never actually lived. I...

Some healing doesn't come from therapy or from doing the work in the way you expect it to. Sometimes it comes from watching your team win the NBA finals. In this episode, I'm sharing something personalL what the Knicks winning the 2026 championship actually did to me, and why I wasn't prepared for it. This win cracked something open that I didn't know was still there, and I&apo...

You know something is wrong, you just cannot name it yet.  In this episode, I walk through the cycle of abuse — tension building, explosion, reconciliation, and the illusion of calm — and explain why that cycle is exactly what keeps you hooked.  I break down what a trauma bond is, how intermittent reinforcement conditions your nervous system to crave the person who is hurting you, and why your con...

If you have ever felt like you were walking on eggshells, apologizing for things that made no sense, or grieving a version of someone who seemed to disappear, this episode is for you. I am revisiting one of the most listened-to episodes BPD in romantic relationships with two more years of client work, research, and personal processing behind me. I break down what borderline personality disorder ac...

I break down some of the most insidious and subtle ways abusers use language to dominate the narrative and erode your sense of reality. I walk you through five distinct patterns of weaponized communication: emotional manipulation disguised as vulnerability, defensiveness used as a silencing tool, blame-shifting hidden behind false equivalence, coercion dressed up as ultimatums, and silence deploye...

Dr. Christine Cocchiola is back, and this conversation goes deep. Dr. Christine is a coercive control specialist, therapist, TEDx speaker, and author who trained under the godfather of coercive control, Dr. Evan Stark. In this episode, we get into what coercive control actually is: not a form of abuse, but the underpinning of all abuse. That distinction matters more than most people realize, espec...

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything right — showing up, advocating, holding it together — and still somehow ending up as the problem, this episode is for you. Int his episode, I get honest about what it actually feels like to be in the cycle: the exhaustion of defending yourself against false narratives, the way every act of good parenting gets twisted into evidence against...

If you've ever thought "what is wrong with me?" after leaving a toxic relationship — this episode is for you.  I break down why the anxiety, hypervigilance, and panic that show up after you leave aren't signs that you're damaged. They're signs that your nervous system did exactly what it was trained to do.  I walk you through the difference between anxious attachment...

BPD is often misunderstood, reduced to stereotypes of moodiness or drama — but if you've loved someone with unmanaged borderline personality disorder, you know it feels nothing like that.  In this episode, I break down what it actually looks like to be in a relationship with someone who splits, who swings from adoring you to discarding you in an instant, and how you slowly begin to disappear...

People ask me how I healed all the time, and the honest answer is that there is no clean framework I can hand you.  In this episode, I share the specific practices that actually made a difference for me — and they are not always the ones you would expect. I talk about why I stopped healing on everyone else's timeline, how I gave myself permission to grieve on a schedule as a single parent, an...

Before I knew what a trauma bond was, I was hiding my phone under my mattress. I deleted his number, wrote it on a piece of paper, folded it into a journal, and made myself work to find it.  At the time I thought I was being ridiculous. Looking back, I was surviving. In this episode, I talk about what it actually looks like to break a trauma bond when you can't go cold turkey — the messy, imp...

If you've ever felt adored one moment and suddenly on the wrong side of a wall you didn't see coming, this episode is for you. I open with my own experience of being in a relationship where warmth could vanish in an instant — where I replayed conversations trying to find the moment I slipped, and where I slowly became someone whose entire focus was managing another person's emotiona...

If you've ever wondered why the person who hurt you seems completely unbothered — even convinced they did nothing wrong — this episode is for you. I break down why people with personality disorders genuinely don't experience themselves as disordered, how shame avoidance rewrites their reality, and why no amount of explaining, evidence, or emotional appeals will get them to "see it.&...

There's a difference between someone naming a pattern to seek resolution and someone digging up the past to dodge accountability. If you've ever tried to address what's not working in your relationship and ended up defending yourself instead, this episode is for you. We talk about what healthy accountability actually looks like — and how to recognize when someone is rewriting histor...

This month’s Patreon episode dives into a theme that kept surfacing in your questions: When does mental illness explain behavior… and when does it become an excuse? Before answering your submissions, I break down what we actually mean when we talk about pathological abuse — repeated patterns rooted in personality structure, not just “a bad fight” or poor communication. We explore coercive control,...

In this episode, I share what it’s really like to support clients through the chaos of high-conflict divorce — when legal processes, endless emails, and contradictory communication make it nearly impossible to think clearly. I talk about how I help clients slow things down, organize what’s actually happening, and find stability in the middle of emotional and legal overwhelm. I also share how confu...

“No one sees it. They just think he’s nice.” If you are in a high-conflict divorce or co-parenting dynamic, you probably feel this in your bones. One of the hardest parts of covert abuse is that the “nice” isn’t safe. The "helpfulness" isn’t genuine. It’s strategic.  When you are the only one seeing it and reacting to it, you start questioning yourself. In this episode, I talk about what...

One of the most painful and confusing questions survivors ask is this: “If I want them to change… how is that different from them wanting me to change?” On the surface, it sounds the same. Two people. Both asking for change. But it is not the same. In this episode, I’m joined again by Paul Colaianni of The Overwhelmed Brain  and Love and Abuse to unpack the critical difference between wanting harm...

This episode puts words to what a trauma bond feels like before there is language for it. The quiet erosion. The logic loops. The way your needs slowly become “too much.” The way calm, rational explanations are used to invalidate your emotional reality. The way you start rehearsing conversations, monitoring your tone, silencing yourself, and shrinking—just to keep the peace. This is not a story ab...

Leaving a relationship with someone who has untreated borderline personality traits can feel less like a breakup and more like trying to escape a locked room while being told you’re the one causing the fire. In this episode, I speak directly to the people who are rarely centered in these conversations: the partners who have been living inside someone else’s emotional emergency. The ones who learne...

In this episode, I talk about what happens after the fight, the discard, or the emotional explosion, and why the aftermath hits you so much harder than it seems to hit them. I break down a pattern I see constantly in emotionally abusive, high-conflict, and narcissistic dynamics: one person unloads their rage, shame, blame, or dysregulation, and then walks away feeling lighter—while the other perso...

How do you survive—and eventually recognize—the BPD cycle of abuse , especially when you are already exhausted, confused, and questioning yourself. In this episode, I break down the cycle as it actually unfolds in real life: The intense honeymoon phase, the sudden emotional whiplash, the accusations and character attacks, the breakups and reconciliations, and the long stretch of chaos that keeps y...

If you’ve ever been told you “can’t communicate” — especially by someone who constantly twists your words or refuses to take accountability — this episode will help you see what’s really happening. I break breaks down how abusers weaponize communication to destabilize you, create confusion, and control the narrative. You’ll learn why phrases like “you’re too blunt” or “you don’t make sense” are of...

When you’ve been in an emotionally abusive relationship, the need for clarity can feel all-consuming. You want to know why they did what they did — why they lied, withdrew, or turned cold. You believe that if you can just understand their behavior, you’ll finally be able to find peace. Clarity from someone who manipulates and distorts reality rarely exists — at least not in the way survivors hope...

This episode unpacks what happens when speaking your truth gets twisted into a blame game. You finally name the pattern—gaslighting, neglect, constant eggshells—only to have the conversation hijacked. Suddenly you’re defending a mistake from years ago, a text tone, or an unrelated incident. Instead of accountability, you’re trapped in deflection, false equivalency, and emotional erasure. Jessica b...