Emotional Badass

High sensitivity can become an extraordinary instrument, but only if you learn how to play it. I explore what actually makes a therapist effective, and it has nothing to do with how much you have suffered. The real work...

Toxic relationships train you to distrust the parts of you that already know something is wrong. This episode looks at how survivors confuse guilt with wrongdoing, lose access to clean anger, and slide into an automatic...

Hayden Panettiere was performing before she could speak, and the applause taught her something dangerous, that praise felt like being loved. This episode traces the mother wound I kept seeing beneath her public...

Toxic relationships don't just drain our energy or violate our boundaries. They change our relationship with ourselves. For those of us who are highly sensitive, toxic dynamics condition our nervous systems to believe...

Turning 46 means listening back to the woman I was at 39, before she knew what was coming. I trace how the emotional muscles built through years of healing changed the way hard things land, and how grief and grace can...

Stress has become so normalized we call it smart, even loving, when it is actually wearing down every organ in the body. Learn how stress hormones move through the body with every unresolved worry, and why highly...

Waking up to the toxic load built into lives we were told are common, safe, and totally normal can feel frightening. Everyday microplastics, seed oils, and even toxic people quietly drain your energy. Learn the small...

Healing was never meant to mean I feel calm all the time. In part two, I take apart the misconceptions that keep sensitive people stuck, starting with the belief that a trigger tells me something true about someone...

Nervous system advice has become mental health fast food, quick slogans that teach you to flee every uncomfortable feeling. But sometimes discomfort is danger, and sometimes discomfort is growth. Wisdom is learning the...

Most people walk out of a psychiatrist's office with a prescription and not much else. Dr. Arwen Podesta works differently, looking under the hood for root cause instead of just managing symptoms. We get into the gut...

Shame is the swampy, cracked foundation underneath every boundary that keeps crumbling on you, and most people have no idea it's there. Understanding where your shame came from, even knowing it belonged to the people...

Shame rarely walks into the room and introduces itself. It hides as anxiety, hypervigilance, the survival mode that lingers no matter how much work you've done. We sensitive types get exceptionally good at noticing...

Highly sensitive nervous systems take in far more than a fair share, and overwhelm slowly becomes a groove we practice until it feels like who we are. I keep coming back to one idea: overwhelm is an invitation, and...

Why do some highly sensitive people grow while others stay stuck for years? After two decades of holding space, I've come to see that readiness matters more than suffering. So many of us have read every book and saved...

What if a stubborn, snack-loving donkey named Bonita could teach me more about my own anxiety than years of overthinking ever did? I entered a mountain burro race as a complete novice, and my anxious parts ran a full...