You Are Not Crazy

"Will they change?" is the question I get asked more than almost any other. In this episode I give you the honest answer up front: probably not.  I walk through why real change requires rewiring the way someone thinks, not just their behavior, and why most abusive people never even get to step one. I break down the excuses that sound like progress but aren't, including "I'...

I'm sharing a pattern from my own past relationship with a partner who had borderline traits, the slow erosion of any separate identity, where a walk to pick up my daughter became a negotiation and a boundary became proof I didn't love him. I break down why explaining yourself never works in this dynamic, what I call the "fake repair" cycle, and why mapping the pattern on paper...

I've been listening to Stefanos Sifandos for years, long before this podcast existed. I first came across him through Mark Groves during the stretch of my life when I was busy diagnosing everyone around me, and something he said pushed me to flip the question from why this person does what they do to why I keep attracting people like them. I still have the notebook where I wrote it down. When...

In this episode I look at why confusion, not fear, is often the clearest sign that a relationship is built on coercive control. I walk through four patterns that show up again and again: the gap between how someone behaves in private versus in public, the shift from talking about impact to litigating intent, direct distortion of what a person saw or heard, and boundaries that get reframed as emoti...

In this episode, I'm answering a question I get asked constantly: are they trauma bonded to me too? People ask this when the person who hurt them starts falling apart after a breakup or after being told no. The panic, the pleading, the sudden self-awareness. It can look like proof that the relationship was mutual, that maybe both people were caught in the same storm. I will work through what...

Sponsored recommendation: Listen to YogaScussion Sponsored recommendation: Listen to Sacred Grit Sponsored recommendation: Listen to the Maine Responder Podcast This week I'm joined by Anne Blythe, founder of BTR.org (Betrayal Trauma Recovery), an organization that has supported over 9,000 women navigating a partner's lying, gaslighting, infidelity, and manipulation. Anne shares her own...

Sponsored recommendation: Listen to YogaScussion Sponsored recommendation: Listen to Sacred Grit Sponsored recommendation: Listen to the Maine Responder Podcast In this episode I talk about why emotionally abusive and coercive controlling relationships feel so disorienting, and why you end up spending so much time trying to decode behavior that was never actually confusing to begin with.  I explai...

Sponsored recommendation: Listen to YogaScussion Sponsored recommendation: Listen to Sacred Grit This episode is a reframe. If you have already learned what a trauma bond is and how it forms, this is not that episode. This is about the specific pain of healing from one, and why that pain is so often misread as grief when it is actually withdrawal. I walk through the difference between grieving som...

Sponsored recommendation: Listen to YogaScussion Sponsored recommendation: Listen to Sacred Grit Sponsored recommendation: Listen to the Maine Responder Podcast Someone recently asked if I'm dating, and my honest answer was "traumatized." In this episode I talk about why that word fits better than a simple yes or no, why a recent connection activated me so quickly, and why my nervou...

Sponsored recommendation: Listen to YogaScussion Sponsored recommendation: Listen to Sacred Grit Sponsored recommendation: Listen to the Maine Responder Podcast I break down why parallel parenting is a communication strategy built specifically for high-conflict dynamics, not a failure of one. I talk about what it actually looks like in practice: handling your own parenting time independently, limi...

Najwa Zebian returns for a second conversation, and this one picks up exactly where the first left off. Her new book, The One Who Broke You Can't Heal You , comes out August 25th, and we talk through what it actually means to take responsibility for your own healing without slipping into self-blame. We cover why setting boundaries with controlling people tends to make things worse before it g...

In this episode I break down pattern blindness, one of the least talked about reasons survivors stay stuck in self-doubt. I explain why family court and even well-meaning friends tend to evaluate coercive control one incident at a time rather than seeing the system those incidents create together. I talk about my own experience trying to name what was happening in a past relationship, why the cycl...

In this episode, I return to the angry daughter — but this time, I look at what happens when she tries to love someone. The survival skills that kept her intact in her family of origin are the same ones that quietly work against her in relationships. She over-functions. She holds everything together. She mistakes someone's performed pain for depth, and she chases validation in ways she can&ap...

In this episode, I reflect on what it actually means to be the angry daughter — the scapegoat, the truth-teller, the one who names what others refuse to see. Drawing from my own childhood and my experience as a mother, I trace the way systems assign their tension to one person, teach her not to trust herself, and then use her exhaustion against her. This episode is for anyone who has ever been tol...

In this episode, I'm talking about why self-blame becomes almost automatic when you've been in an emotionally abusive or coercively controlling relationship, and why it feels like relief even when it's actually costing you. I get into the nervous system science behind it, specifically how fawning works, how your brain gets wired to connect calm with compliance, and why that wiring d...

If you have ever walked away from a relationship, or a parent, or a childhood, and still found yourself waiting for the person who hurt you to finally acknowledge what they did, this episode is going to reach something in you. Najwa Zebian is a writer, speaker, and the host of the podcast Beyond Words. Her work has reached millions of people around the world, and her new book is called The One Who...

In this episode, I'm talking about something I call the Saturday text. It's never Tuesday at 10 AM when your coffee is warm and you're mentally ready. It's always when you've finally exhaled, and I want to explain why that timing is never an accident. I go deep into the way dysregulation gets used as a delivery mechanism of coercive control, including what the person sendi...

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...