Thanks for Sharing

Episode 369: If I Can't Be Loved, I'll Be Needed

I said that in a men's group a few years ago — and the room went silent.

Everyone immediately understood what it meant to organize your life around being needed. What surprised me was what came next: when I introduced the idea of being chosen — freely, without obligation — some of the men weren't just skeptical. They weren't sure relationships like that actually existed.

They had seen duty. Obligation. Dependence. But they weren't sure they'd ever witnessed two fully functioning adults who simply wanted each other.

This episode is about the difference between being needed and being loved — and what it costs us when we confuse the two.

New episode is live. Link in bio.

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

#attachmenttheory #codependency #relationships #emotionalhealth #mentalhealth #therapy #beingneeded #beingloved #securelove #selfworth

Episode 368: All Behavior Makes Sense

"All behavior makes sense. And if it doesn't make sense yet — we keep asking questions until it does."

This is one of the phrases I say most in my work, and in this episode I'm unpacking where it actually came from. Not grad school. Life.

I'm sharing two stories that changed how I see people — one from a cassette tape in my car, and one from a borrowed office and a father who asked me point-blank what he smelled like. Both of them taught me the same thing: behavior doesn't live in a vacuum. It lives inside a context. And once you understand the context, almost everything makes sense.

This one is for therapists, parents, and anyone who has ever written someone off before they understood them — including themselves.

New episode is live. Link in bio. 

#podcast #therapist #mentalhealth #curiosity #allbehaviormakessense #therapy #selfawareness #attachmenttheory #nervoussystem #healing

 

 

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

 

 

 

Episode 367: Beliefs, Values, and the road back to yourself: What if some of the beliefs running your life were never actually chosen by you?

In this episode, we explore the difference between values and beliefs — and why that distinction matters so deeply in healing, recovery, relationships, and identity.

We talk about:
• Survival beliefs formed in childhood
• The gap between who you want to be and what feels possible
• Compliance-based identities
• Emotional reality being deprioritized in families and systems
• Why coping patterns often hide deeper values
• The voices from the past that still shape how we live and love
• And how healing is often the process of finding your way back to yourself

This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered:
“Is this actually who I am… or just who I had to become?”

 Listen now on Thanks for Sharing.

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

 

#healing #traumahealing #attachment #betrayaltrauma #therapy #mentalhealth #selfawareness #relationships #innerchildhealing #recovery #emotionalhealth #psychology #healingjourney #codependency #jackiepack

Episode 366: Friendship, Authenticity and the People Who Stay: Why is friendship — truly lasting, genuinely honest friendship — so hard to find and harder to keep?

In this episode, we explore the quiet loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't really know you, the fear underneath the masks we wear, and what it ttakes to build the kind of friendship that survives time, change, and all the complicated business of being human. Plus: the girls' weekend nobody talks honestly about, a friendship that didn't just fade but detonated, and a personal reckoning with what it means to be a therapist trying to have friends who aren't. No listicles. Just an honest conversation about one of the most important and most complicated things in a life.

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Episode 365: The Boundary Hangover: Why You Feel Worse After Setting Limits (And What's Actually Happening)

You did the hard thing. You said it.

And then you felt worse.

That guilt, that dread, that urge to immediately walk it back — that's not a sign you did something wrong.

It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. Just not for the life you're trying to build.

In today's episode, I'm breaking down the 7 reasons the aftermath of a boundary feels like a crisis:  the grief, the identity disruption, the fear of abandonment, the cognitive dissonance, and what's actually happening in your body when a familiar dynamic gets disrupted.

Because nobody told us the relief doesn't come right away. And that silence has led many people to give up on themselves too soon.

New episode is out now. Link in bio. 

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

 

Episode 364: When Everything You Believed Stops Making Sense

There’s a moment most people don’t talk about.

When what you believed… stops holding.

Not because you’re broken.
Not because you’ve failed.
But because you can finally see.

Disillusionment isn’t the end of something.
It’s the beginning of seeing clearly.

And the people who have the courage to stay in that space—
not rush to fix it, numb it, or replace it—

are often the ones who understand the world the most deeply.

This episode is about:
• What it means to wake up to reality
• Why disillusionment can feel destabilizing
• And how people who go through it can actually help build something more honest and solid

If you’ve been questioning things lately… this one is for you.

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Episode 363: Building Bandwidth in Difficult Relationships

Why do some people still get to you… even after you’ve done the work?

It’s not just about “triggers.”
And it’s not just about setting boundaries either.

Sometimes it’s:
– being around someone you don’t trust
– navigating tension with someone you love
– watching a relationship change in ways you didn’t expect
– or trying to stay grounded when your past and present are both getting activated

This episode is about something deeper than coping:

How we build the capacity to stay connected to ourselves in relationships that feel complicated, unresolved, or emotionally charged.

Because real healing isn’t:
avoiding people
or just getting through interactions

It’s learning how to:
– regulate instead of endure
– stay grounded without shutting down
– protect yourself without abandoning yourself

If relationships have ever made you question yourself, second-guess your reactions, or feel like you lose access to who you are, this one will land.

 Link in bio

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Episode 362: Why We Lie and How to Start Being Honest

Most people think lying is a choice. But for many people, it doesn’t even pass through conscious thought. It starts in the body.

 A flush
 A tightening
 A sense of threat

And the truth doesn’t feel like an option.

In this episode, I talk about something I often say:

 “I came by my dishonesty honestly.”

Not to excuse it—
but to understand it.

Because for many of us:

 

• Truth didn’t always feel safe
• Being fully seen felt risky
• And connection sometimes depended on what we didn’t say

 And for partners?

Dishonesty doesn’t just hurt. It makes you question reality.

 Was any of this real?
 Have they just been telling me what I want to hear?

Wanting honesty isn’t controlling. It’s about trying to build a relationship on something real.

 Here’s what I’ve learned:

As the truth reveals itself, it can be very painful. But it also settles you. It settles your nervous system. Because you’re no longer trying to hold together something that doesn’t quite fit.

If this resonates, this episode is for you.

 

 Link in bio  

Comment “truth” if this resonated 

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Episode 361: Patriarchy, Relationships, and Healing (Guest Appearance on The Wholeness Network)

In this episode, I share a conversation I had as a guest on The Wholeness Network, where we talk about patriarchy—not as a buzzword, but as something that quietly shapes how we love, how we show up, and what we believe we’re allowed to need.

This shows up in my work all the time:
• men who were never taught emotional depth but are expected to create connection
• women who carry the weight of relational responsibility
• couples who personalize patterns that are actually bigger than both of them

And here’s the tension:
even when the system shaped us… healing is still personal.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the same relational patterns and couldn’t quite explain why—this conversation might give you language for that.

 Full episode at the link in bio

 

The Wholeness Network link:  https://www.thewholenessnetwork.com/

 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

Episode 360: When Healing Feels Incomplete

People don’t leave therapy because it’s not working. Sometimes they leave because it’s getting too close to what matters.

And sometimes… they stay. But still feel like something is missing.

You might:

• understand your patterns
• have more awareness
• even be making progress

…but not actually feel different.

That’s not failure. It’s the difference between insight and integration. In this episode, I talk about:

• why “being ready” isn’t enough
• why trauma work requires preparation, not just willingness
• how going too fast can actually reinforce the problem
• why addicts and betrayed partners need different pacing
• and why the relationship—not just the model—matters

Healing doesn’t happen just because you go into the trauma.

It happens when your system can stay open long enough for something new to take hold.

If you’ve ever thought:
“I’ve done a lot of work… so why does this still feel incomplete?”

This episode is for you.

 Link in bio

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links