The Patrauma Party

People keep telling Maggie to write gratitude lists to help her while she's struggling emotionally. But every time she tries to do it, she feels worse and sometimes even cries, which makes her feel like there's something wrong with her. Is there a part of her that's resisting happiness? or is there a problem with gratitude? The contents of this podcast are provided for

Anyone else feel like they're not good enough for people to stand up for them? Anyone else get a hit of unworthiness when people don't have your back? In this episode, LCSW Sydney Linden joins to talk about the different ways it can look to go unprotected in childhood, what core beliefs it creates for us in adulthood, and what it looks like to heal. The contents of this po

Chloe's father is a malignant narcissist, but now that he's dying, she's deeply wrestling with her decision to go no-contact. How can she truly be a loving, forgiving person if she refuses to be in contact with him? In this episode, we talk about healing the wounds of being in relationship with a narcissistic parent and redefining what "love" means when it's time to go no-contact.

We think of empathy as always being a good thing, but like everything else, too much of a good thing can be toxic. I call "toxic empathy" (not a clinical term, BTW, just my term), the phenomenon that occurs when we empathize with others to the point that we can't feel our *own* feelings. We can't feel anger when people hurt us, or we order a cocktail we don't want because our frien

Teal grew up being super parentified by her addicted mother. The house was dirty, there wasn't food, her mom was at the bars, and she was in charge of her siblings. In this episode, we dig into the self-limiting beliefs around self-worth that resulted from Teal's struggle (the people pleasing, resentments, and lack of self-knowing) and look at what it means to heal. The contents o

A lack of encouragement in childhood leaves a deep mark on us—it can impact our sense of self-worth, of safety, of resiliance—you name it. Sometimes it's easy to see that we weren't encouraged, but for many of us, we don't even realize that it's at the root of many of our struggles. In this episode, I welcome writer and therapist Solasta McIntyre back to the show to talk us th

There are so many ways to approach healing the mother wound, and what works for one person won't necessarily work for someone else. That's why I was SOOOO excited to have hilarious comedian, internet star, badass feminist, daily meditator, mental health advocate, and sweet baby angel Toni Nagy on the show to talk about what her process has looked like in working through the mother

Never heard of limerence? You know that feeling when you don't know if someone's into you, but you can't stop thinking about it, you get stuck in daydreams about them, and you're just waiting with bated breath for the next time they talk to you? It's that feeling of romantic obsession that keeps you stuck on people who don't reciprocate, and turns out—it's a trauma response. In t

Lucy writes in about being "discarded" by her ex-boyfriend who struggles with addiction. She wants to figure out why he's acting this way—she wants it to make sense. How do we navigate relationships like these? The contents of this podcast are provided for informational purposes only. None of the material presented is intended to be a substitute for psychotherapy, counseling, pr

It's not something you can slap a dinner party on and call it good. Chronic loneliness is often carried into adulthood from childhood—usually due to neglect. In this episode, I talk to psychotherapist Zara Neukom about how chronic loneliness starts, how it impacts our lives, and what it can look like to change from a lens of hyper self-reliance to one of mutual support. The