The Unlearning Journal Podcast

Have you ever replayed a conversation in your head… again and again and again?Stressed over something small — like the exact time someone texted back, a slightly different tone, or a delayed reply — while your mind starts building an entire story around it?Changed how you looked, what you said, or acted out of character… just to create a connection you felt you needed?In this episode, we’re unpacking anxious attachment: the patterns that make small things feel urgent, the nervous system wiring behind it, and the insights and research that can help anyone start to recalibrate those patterns.Sometimes you can spend your life chasing connection… only to feel more alone.Often, the harder we try to close the gap of ambiguity, the more unstable connection can start to feel. What looks like “intensity” on the surface is often an activated nervous system trying to find safety in relationships that feel unpredictable.We’ll explore the neuroscience behind this, how these patterns often begin early in life, their evolutionary roots, and the cultural backdrop we’re still navigating — where emotional need is often misread as weakness, even though wanting connection is fundamentally human.Because this isn’t dysfunction. It’s adaptation.Finally, we move into how to begin breaking the cycle: learning to interrupt rumination, regulate the nervous system before reacting, and build tolerance for uncertainty without self-abandonment.Healing anxious attachment isn’t about becoming less emotional. It’s about realizing that closeness doesn’t have to be chased.Since real security isn’t intensity — it’s consistency.Real love doesn’t disappear when someone takes a little space. Get full access to The Unlearning Journal at theunlearningjournalpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

What if being in a relationship doesn’t actually make you happier? Why do some relationships feel intoxicating but unstable, while calm ones feel boring or unfamiliar?In this episode of the Finding Love miniseries, we explore the psychology of attachment — how patterns formed in childhood quietly shape the way we experience love as adults.When caregivers are inconsistent, the brain adapts. Over time, intensity can start to feel like connection, so uncertainty can feel like chemistry. But survival strategies from childhood don’t automatically translate into healthy adult relationships.Together, we start unlearning people-pleasing, the fawn response, and intermittent reinforcement — psychological patterns that attach us to relationships swinging between closeness and distance.This is my personal journey too. I share a story about becoming whoever others needed, only to realize I didn’t know who I was without that role. Being liked isn’t the same as being truly understood.Episode 2 explores difficult truths: tolerance isn’t the same as love. Intensity isn’t the same as intimacy.Instead of chasing reassurance or decoding other people’s behavior, we explore how to build self-attachment — a relationship with yourself grounded in emotional security.When your nervous system stops changing every time someone pulls away or gets too close, love stops feeling like survival.And starts feeling like choice.Follow the Finding Love miniseries for weekly episodes exploring love, identity, and why normal isn’t always healthy. Get full access to The Unlearning Journal at theunlearningjournalpodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Everyone is trying to find the right person instead of becoming the right person.Somewhere along the way, love started to feel less like connection and more like hunting a mythical creature. If we just scroll more, analyze more, optimize more — maybe we’ll finally catch “the one.”But what if that search is the very thing exhausting us?In this first episode of the Finding Love miniseries, I explore the psychology behind modern dating, including:* Why the illusion of endless options fuels anxiety instead of intimacy* The psychology of transference and unmet needs* The difference between attachment and dependency* Why secure love starts withinWe weren’t designed for infinite choice. We were designed for safety, tribe, familiarity. And when the brain feels unsafe, it doesn’t choose — it hesitates.This episode is also personal.I didn’t arrive at these realizations from my psychiatric training alone. They came after heartbreak, because insight doesn’t equal immunity.During a six-month solo backpacking trip, working on a farm in rural New Zealand during Cyclone Gabrielle, a new friend asked me a simple but life-altering question:“Instead of waiting to find the perfect person… why not become the one you’re looking for?”So here’s the truth about the myth of finding “the one”.From scarcity to abundance.From searching to becoming.Since maybe love isn’t about finding someone to complete you.Maybe it’s about becoming whole — and choosing from that place. Get full access to The Unlearning Journal at theunlearningjournalpodcast.substack.com/subscribe