Healing Is My Hobby

This summer's Healing Moments series kicks off with one of Jessica's favorite go-to tools: the 4-7-8 breath. In under three minutes, this simple breathing technique can shift your nervous system out of stress mode and into rest and restore. Jessica walks you through it step-by-step, so you can practice it right along with her and start using it anywhere you need a reset. What You'll Learn How the...

It's the Season One finale of Healing Is My Hobby! Jessica takes you on a month-by-month journey through everything we explored together this year — from grounding in October to identity in June. She revisits the biggest reframes, the healing lab experiments, and the tools that mattered most, then sends you into summer with five practical ways to carry your healing forward. Plus, a first look at w...

Are the stories you tell about yourself actually true — or are they ones you inherited, adapted, or took on to survive? This month's Healing Lab experiment is deceptively simple: spend seven days noticing every fixed label you use to describe yourself, and ask one question — is this true, or is this adapted? In this episode, Jessica walks you through the clinical framework behind this experiment (...

You've been going through your life and somewhere along the way, you stopped recognizing yourself. Maybe you feel like you're watching from the outside. Maybe you wake up and wonder if this is actually your life. If that resonates, this episode is for you. In this final episode of June's Identity series, Jessica puts a clinical name to an experience so many people are quietly living: identity disr...

A guided identity workout to help you sort the roles you've chosen from the ones you've just been carrying. Episode Overview This episode is part of the June identity series and follows Episode 1's exploration of where identity comes from. In this Therapy Is My Cardio segment, Jessica guides listeners through a structured, journal-based workout to surface their roles — and honestly assess which on...

Have you ever done the work — named the trauma, grieved the losses, started releasing the shame — and then looked up and thought… who am I? That disorientation isn't a problem. It's actually the beginning of something important. In this episode, Jessica opens the June identity theme by introducing one of the most foundational questions in healing: where did your sense of self actually come from? D...

We close out May with the deepest layer of shame work yet. In this final episode of our shame and self-worth series, Jessica reframes shame not as a character flaw or a belief system — but as a trauma response. One that lives in the body, wires itself into the nervous system, and follows us long past the environments that first created it. This episode unpacks the neurobiology of shame, the connec...

Welcome to the Healing Lab — the episode where we stop talking about the work and actually start doing it. This month’s theme is shame and self-worth, and these experiments are rooted in something deeply personal: the belief that you cannot think your way into self-worth. You have to practice it. In this episode, Jessica shares two somatic and behavioral experiments designed to interrupt the patte...

This is the Therapy Is My Cardio episode for May — which means we're not just talking about emotional shame today, we're doing the reps. If last week's episode gave you the clinical foundation (what shame is, where it comes from, and how it hides), this episode is where you put that understanding to work. Jessica walks you through the specific kind of shame that wraps itself around your feelings —...

May Shame & Self-Worth Series, Episode 1 Shame is one of the most common — and most misunderstood — experiences in the healing journey. It's not embarrassment. It's not guilt. It's the quiet, persistent belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you . In this first episode of our May series on shame and self-worth, Jessica lays the clinical foundation: what shame actually is, where it c...

We're three weeks into grief month, and this episode goes somewhere that doesn't get nearly enough airtime — grieving someone who is still alive. Whether you've had to create distance from a relationship for your own well-being, or you're mourning a version of a person who is no longer who they once were, this kind of loss is real, disorienting, and deserves to be named. In this Therapy Is My Card...

In this final episode of the April grief series, Jessica explores identity grief — the grief that comes not from death, but from losing a version of yourself. Whether it's a milestone birthday, a career shift, a diagnosis, or a life that looks nothing like the one you imagined, identity grief is real, clinically significant, and rarely given the space it deserves. Jessica shares a deeply personal...

Episode Summary In this week's This Might Be a Trauma Response segment, Jessica takes the conversation about grief a layer deeper — moving beyond last week's broad definition of loss into a specific and often invisible form of pain: disenfranchised grief. This is the grief that never got witnessed. The loss that was minimized, dismissed, or met with an "at least" instead of acknowledgment. Jessica...

In this month's opening episode, Jessica introduces April's theme: grief — and challenges the widely-held belief that grief only belongs to death. Drawing on clinical definitions and her own therapeutic lens, she explores how grief shows up across a wide range of losses, why unacknowledged grief doesn't disappear, and what it means to finally name what you're carrying. She also introduces the conc...

This Might Be a Trauma Response: High-Functioning Trauma Healing Is My Hobby | This Might Be a Trauma Response Series What if the most common sign of trauma isn't falling apart — it's having it all together? In this installment of the This Might Be a Trauma Response series, Jessica breaks down high-functioning trauma: what it is, why it's so easy to miss, and the four ways it most commonly shows u...

Your nervous system isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. But when the danger has passed and the responses stay — the numbness, the sleeplessness, the reactions that feel way too big for the moment — that's when it becomes important to understand what's actually happening inside you. In this Healing Lab episode, Jessica Colarco, LCSW, takes you deep into the world of Big T a...

What if your triggers weren't signs of weakness, but proof your nervous system is working exactly as designed? In this Therapy Is My Cardio workout, Jessica walks you through a four-step real-time regulation practice for mild, everyday triggers: the critical email, the tense conversation, the racing heart in traffic. You'll learn to identify what's activating you, notice where it lives in your bod...

What if trauma isn’t defined by the event — but by how your nervous system experienced it? In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby , Jessica Colarco, LCSW, breaks down one of the most misunderstood topics in mental health: trauma . Many people believe trauma only applies to extreme, life-threatening events. But trauma is actually about nervous system overwhelm — when experiences exceed our capacity...

What if your overwhelm isn’t weakness… but your nervous system trying to protect you? In a world that feels loud, fast, and often unsettling, it’s easy to assume something is “wrong” with us when we feel numb, reactive, exhausted, or on edge. In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby , Jessica Colarco, LCSW, invites you to consider a gentler truth: many of your reactions to current world events aren’...

What if staying informed is actually dysregulating you? And what if protecting your peace isn’t avoidance… but wisdom? In this month’s Healing Lab , Jessica Colarco, LCSW, tests real-life nervous system practices to answer one question: What actually helps us stay regulated in a dysregulated world? Not perfectly. Not as a productivity hack. But as an experiment. This month’s lab included: A 48-hou...

Is Doom Scrolling a Bad Habit… or Your Nervous System Asking for Help? In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby, Jessica Colarco takes a compassionate look at doom scrolling —not as a lack of discipline or willpower, but as a nervous system response to uncertainty, fear, and information overload. We’re living in a time of nonstop headlines, constant alerts, and a lingering sense of urgency. When the...

What happens when the world feels overwhelming—and your nervous system won’t settle? In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby , Jessica Colarco explores what it really means to stay regulated in a dysregulated world. Through personal reflection and therapist-informed insight, Jessica shares how our nervous systems respond to stress, uncertainty, and perceived threat—even when danger is indirect. Usi...

Chasing Brighter Season 5 Trailer: Reset, Rest, Reconnect What if every season of life deserves to feel brighter? Chasing Brighter began as a guide for women in midlife—but this season, we’re expanding the conversation. Because no matter your age, your season, or your story, you deserve joy, growth, and connection. In Season Five, Jessica and Kelly invite you into a deeper, more honest space—one t...

What if your anxiety isn’t a sign that something is wrong with you—but proof that your body learned how to survive? In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby , Jessica Colarco explores how anxiety often comes from past trauma, not just present-day stress. She breaks down how the nervous system learns to stay on high alert, why collective stress can amplify those responses, and how to gently support y...

Can something as simple as tea, slow movement, or tapping shift your nervous system? In this episode of Healing Is My Hobby , Jessica Colarco steps into the Healing Lab to test gentle, accessible tools for calming anxiety—Tai Chi, herbal tea, and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) tapping. She shares honest reflections on what felt grounding, what surprised her, and what truly helped regulate her n...