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'll work on myself" and "I'll change if you change," and I explain why trauma bonding is often the real reason it feel...

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 I told him about it, he added a second question that landed even harder: why do I stick around? In th...

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 is happening and how it looks the same as attachment, dependency, or the panic that comes from losing ...

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 explain why the through line in these relationships is power and control, not love or stress or a bad day, and why intermittent reinforcement is what keeps you hooked and doubting yourself. If you have ever felt like you were losing your mind in a relat...

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've been sitting with it ever since. This is a detour from my usual content, and it also isn't, because healing has never...

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 actually is, how it differs from Narcissism even when the lived experience feels nearly identical, ...

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, especially inside a family court system that still does not know what to do with it. We talk about the...

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 and trauma-conditioned hypervigilance, why healing feels worse before it feels better, and what it actually looks lik...