The Unmentionables Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Your kid’s meltdown might be real, exhausting, and scary, but it may not be the real problem. We sit down with Heather, one of our clinicians, to challenge the “fix my nine-year-old” request and explain why child behavior so often functions as the loudest symptom of a stressed family system. When we treat the child as the sole culprit, we miss the negative interaction cycle that k...

Send us Fan Mail A mother with three small kids reports that something is deeply wrong, her sleep collapses, her mood and cognition shift, and her fear escalates and the system responds with appointment fragments, screeners, and a revolving door of prescriptions. We’re following the Lindsay Clancy trial, but we’re not here to play lawyer. We’re here to look at postpartum depression, severe perinat...

Send us Fan Mail A therapist tells a 42-year-old woman to cut off her mother in the second session and she does it. That story hit the Wall Street Journal, lit up the internet, and quickly turned into a bigger accusation: trauma therapists are “detachment brokers” who use their authority to dissolve guilt and obligation and, in the worst case, break families apart. We don’t dodge the heat. We name...

Send a text If chemistry has ever fooled you into thinking you’ve found closeness, this conversation offers a new map. We break down intimacy into a sequence that actually works—know, trust, rely, commit, then touch—and unpack why flipping that order can feel amazing at first and empty soon after. Along the way, we add the missing layers: emotional safety that makes honesty possible, and intellect...

Send a text A quiet morning catch-up turns into a charged exploration of where therapy ends and state power begins. We dig into Colorado’s HB 19-1129 and the case of a licensed, faith-based counselor challenging the state’s ban on “conversion therapy” for minors, asking whether the law polices harmful conduct—or polices words and beliefs in the treatment room. Along the way, we read the statutory...

Send a text The shouting match on Capitol Hill wasn’t just a bad day at work—it was a mirror. We open on the chaos, then follow the ripple effects across the culture: public glee at a political killing, campus protests that blur into crime, and media ecosystems that reward the most dehumanizing lines. Along the way, we draw the crucial boundary between consequences and censorship, showing why comm...

Send us Fan Mail What happens to a free society when speech goes quiet? We open the Equalizer Series by tracing the moral, historical, and legal roots of free expression—from “Let there be light” to the First Amendment—and make the case that words don’t just describe reality; they create it. Evan lays out his worldview shaped by faith, family, service, technology, and firsthand political experienc...

Send a text Shame can feel endless—like a tunnel with no exits. We unpack why it grips so hard, how it colonizes your thoughts and body, and what it actually takes to climb back to steady ground. With Melissa’s trauma therapy lens and our lived experience, we separate guilt from shame, map the nervous system states (ventral safety, sympathetic fight/flight, dorsal shutdown), and show how those “tu...

Send a text What happens when a child who once embraced their biological sex suddenly announces they're transgender following a traumatic experience? Is this genuine gender dysphoria or trauma manifesting as identity fracture? These are the questions we're not afraid to ask in this thought-provoking discussion. The statistics are startling—3.3% of American teenagers now identify as trans...

Send a text The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk has forced America to confront an uncomfortable reality: our societal disconnect has deadly consequences. Kirk, who believed passionately that "when people stop talking, really bad stuff starts," was murdered by someone who embodied the very isolation and detachment from reality that Kirk sought to combat. What drives people to such ex...

Send a text The word "narcissist" gets tossed around constantly these days, but what does it really mean? When does ordinary selfishness cross the line into something more sinister and destructive?  In this revealing conversation, Melissa draws from her specialized training under Dr. Ramani Durvasula to explain the clinical reality of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Far from simply be...

Send a text The emotional rollercoaster of back-to-school season affects every family differently, yet the mixture of excitement and anxiety remains universal. Parents rejoice at the return of routines while simultaneously worrying about their children's safety and success. Meanwhile, kids bounce between enthusiasm for seeing friends and fear of the unknown challenges ahead. This episode dive...

Send a text Have you noticed how quickly people dodge responsibility these days? From workplace mishaps to personal relationships, it seems like accountability has become an endangered skill. In our debut episode, we dive deep into why personal responsibility feels increasingly rare in modern society. We break down the crucial difference between responsibility (having a duty) and accountability (o...