You Are Not Crazy

Before I knew what a trauma bond was, I was hiding my phone under my mattress. I deleted his number, wrote it on a piece of paper, folded it into a journal, and made myself work to find it. 

At the time I thought I was being ridiculous. Looking back, I was surviving. In this episode, I talk about what it actually looks like to break a trauma bond when you can't go cold turkey — the messy, imperfect, sometimes embarrassing strat...

If you've ever felt adored one moment and suddenly on the wrong side of a wall you didn't see coming, this episode is for you.

I open with my own experience of being in a relationship where warmth could vanish in an instant — where I replayed conversations trying to find the moment I slipped, and where I slowly became someone whose entire focus was managing another person's emotional state.

In this episode, I break dow...

If you've ever wondered why the person who hurt you seems completely unbothered — even convinced they did nothing wrong — this episode is for you.

I break down why people with personality disorders genuinely don't experience themselves as disordered, how shame avoidance rewrites their reality, and why no amount of explaining, evidence, or emotional appeals will get them to "see it."

Understanding this isn't a...

There's a difference between someone naming a pattern to seek resolution and someone digging up the past to dodge accountability. If you've ever tried to address what's not working in your relationship and ended up defending yourself instead, this episode is for you. We talk about what healthy accountability actually looks like — and how to recognize when someone is rewriting history to keep you stuck.

Support the sho...

This month’s Patreon episode dives into a theme that kept surfacing in your questions: When does mental illness explain behavior… and when does it become an excuse?

Before answering your submissions, I break down what we actually mean when we talk about pathological abuse — repeated patterns rooted in personality structure, not just “a bad fight” or poor communication. We explore coercive control, gaslighting, intermittent reinforce...

In this episode, I share what it’s really like to support clients through the chaos of high-conflict divorce — when legal processes, endless emails, and contradictory communication make it nearly impossible to think clearly. I talk about how I help clients slow things down, organize what’s actually happening, and find stability in the middle of emotional and legal overwhelm.

I also share how confusion becomes one of the main weapons...

“No one sees it. They just think he’s nice.”

If you are in a high-conflict divorce or co-parenting dynamic, you probably feel this in your bones.

One of the hardest parts of covert abuse is that the “nice” isn’t safe. The "helpfulness" isn’t genuine. It’s strategic. 

When you are the only one seeing it and reacting to it, you start questioning yourself.

In this episode, I talk about what it’s like to live inside a pattern tha...

One of the most painful and confusing questions survivors ask is this:

“If I want them to change… how is that different from them wanting me to change?”

On the surface, it sounds the same. Two people. Both asking for change. But it is not the same.

In this episode, I’m joined again by Paul Colaianni of The Overwhelmed Brain and Love and Abuse to unpack the critical difference between wanting harm to stop… and wanting control.

We talk a...

This episode puts words to what a trauma bond feels like before there is language for it. The quiet erosion. The logic loops. The way your needs slowly become “too much.” The way calm, rational explanations are used to invalidate your emotional reality. The way you start rehearsing conversations, monitoring your tone, silencing yourself, and shrinking—just to keep the peace.

This is not a story about explosive fights or obvious crue...

Leaving a relationship with someone who has untreated borderline personality traits can feel less like a breakup and more like trying to escape a locked room while being told you’re the one causing the fire.

In this episode, I speak directly to the people who are rarely centered in these conversations: the partners who have been living inside someone else’s emotional emergency. The ones who learned to scan tone, timing, silence, and...

In this episode, I talk about what happens after the fight, the discard, or the emotional explosion, and why the aftermath hits you so much harder than it seems to hit them.

I break down a pattern I see constantly in emotionally abusive, high-conflict, and narcissistic dynamics: one person unloads their rage, shame, blame, or dysregulation, and then walks away feeling lighter—while the other person is left carrying it.

I explain why ...

How do you survive—and eventually recognize—the BPD cycle of abuse, especially when you are already exhausted, confused, and questioning yourself.

In this episode, I break down the cycle as it actually unfolds in real life: The intense honeymoon phase, the sudden emotional whiplash, the accusations and character attacks, the breakups and reconciliations, and the long stretch of chaos that keeps you hooked through intermittent relief...

If you’ve ever been told you “can’t communicate” — especially by someone who constantly twists your words or refuses to take accountability — this episode will help you see what’s really happening. I break breaks down how abusers weaponize communication to destabilize you, create confusion, and control the narrative. You’ll learn why phrases like “you’re too blunt” or “you don’t make sense” are often not about clarity at all — they...

When you’ve been in an emotionally abusive relationship, the need for clarity can feel all-consuming. You want to know why they did what they did — why they lied, withdrew, or turned cold. You believe that if you can just understand their behavior, you’ll finally be able to find peace.

Clarity from someone who manipulates and distorts reality rarely exists — at least not in the way survivors hope it will. The search for answers beco...

This episode unpacks what happens when speaking your truth gets twisted into a blame game. You finally name the pattern—gaslighting, neglect, constant eggshells—only to have the conversation hijacked. Suddenly you’re defending a mistake from years ago, a text tone, or an unrelated incident. Instead of accountability, you’re trapped in deflection, false equivalency, and emotional erasure.

Jessica breaks down how this tactic shows up ...

In this episode, I talk about a communication pattern that so many people experience in emotionally abusive and high-conflict relationships—but rarely have language for.

It’s the moment when a message sounds reasonable on paper, calm in tone, even “child-focused”… and yet your body reacts immediately.

I walk through what’s happening when someone says all the right things while doing the opposite—hiding control behind concern, and con...

After leaving an abusive relationship, it’s common to find yourself stuck in an exhausting loop of self-doubt. You replay conversations. You question your memory. You wonder if you overreacted—or if maybe it wasn’t that bad.

In this episode, I break down why second-guessing yourself after abuse isn’t a flaw—it’s a survival response. I talk about how abusers train you to distrust your own perceptions and why that confusion lingers ev...

This episode is about why everything feels harder, louder, and more urgent during the holidays when you’re navigating high-conflict divorce or co-parenting with a controlling or volatile person. Why situations that felt barely manageable in October suddenly feel explosive in December. Why your body feels like it’s bracing for impact every single day. And why so many parents reach a breaking point and say, “This can’t wait until Jan...

I unpack a viral TikTok that has been shared hundreds of thousands of times—and why its message is far more dangerous than it first appears.

On the surface, the video presents itself as “relationship advice” about how women can keep men happy. In reality, it reinforces coercive control, sexual entitlement, and the idea that women are responsible for regulating men’s emotions, egos, and loyalty—often at the expense of their own bound...