Heal Your Relationships

Does therapy work?

Yes. But I believe there’s a better question: Is therapy alone enough?

Therapy can be incredibly valuable. It can help us understand our thoughts, process our feelings, reframe old stories, and navigate difficult seasons.

But if you’ve ever thought, “Therapy is helping… so why does life still feel so hard?” this episode is for you.

Because mental health isn’t just about what happens in your mind.

In this week’s episode of Heal Your Relationships, I’m introducing what I call the Tripod Model: a three-pronged approach that brings together top-down, bottom-up, and inside-out tools to help you move beyond simply keeping your head above water and build greater capacity for life.

I’ll also share one of my favorite ways to think about nervous system capacity: the bucket analogy.

Top-down approaches help filter what goes into your bucket, while bottom-up approaches help make the bucket bigger—so everyday stressors don’t overwhelm you quite so easily.

And the third leg?

The often-overlooked inside-out work: sleep, nutrition, movement, attention, breathing, and social connection.

This episode is also the beginning of a new series on modern mental health. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be breaking down these three pillars and giving you practical tools you can begin experimenting with in your own life.

In This Episode:

00:00 Why therapy alone may not be enough

01:34 The question we should be asking about therapy

04:10 The Tripod Model explained

04:29 Pillar 1: The top-down approach

06:33 Pillar 2: Bottom-up nervous system work

09:07 The “bucket” analogy for emotional capacity

11:41 Pillar 3: The inside-out approach

13:09 Moving from surviving to truly thriving

14:49 What’s coming in this modern mental health series

Want to go deeper?

If you’re ready to move beyond simply understanding your patterns and start changing them at the nervous-system level, that’s exactly what we work on inside Untriggerable.

You can learn more, connect with us, and join our community here:

Join us on Circle

Last week, we talked about No More Band-Aids, and the three pieces I believe are essential for deep, lasting healing: mind, body, and relationships.

But knowing what needs healing raises another question:

What does that journey actually look like?

For a long time, I thought I could heal by reading enough books, journaling, learning more, or simply trying harder.

But healing doesn't happen all at once.

And we can't do it entirely alone.

Over the years, both through my own journey and my work with others, I've noticed six distinct phases of healing. We may spend months in one and years in another, but understanding where you are can help you see what you might need next.

It often begins with pain, reactivity, and the moment you finally decide: I can't keep living this way.

From there comes learning and gathering information. Then something many of us miss: community and belonging. Because information may begin transformation, but we also need spaces where we feel safe enough to practice becoming who we really are.

Eventually, healing moves beyond something you understand intellectually and becomes something you embody, in your nervous system, your relationships, and the way you move through the world.

01:53 — The 6 phases of healing

04:16 — Phase 1: Reactivity → personal ownership

08:15 — Phase 2: Gathering information

10:55 — Phase 3: Community & belonging

14:32 — Phase 4: Embodied healing

15:49 — Phase 5: Practicing your true self

17:14 — Phase 6: Reinvention

20:05 — Where are you on your journey?

So this week, ask yourself:

Where am I right now — and what do I need to move forward?

The six phases also reflect so much of what we work through inside Untriggerable: moving beyond information into nervous-system healing, community, practice, and embodiment.

If you're ready to continue that journey with us, join our community on Circle:

Join us inside Untriggerable on Circle

Last week, we talked about following your complaints like breadcrumbs...

Looking beyond the surface problem to understand what might actually be asking for healing underneath.

But once you find the source… how do you actually heal it?

For years, my own approach looked a little like throwing spaghetti at the wall.

A few therapy sessions. Some yoga. Meditation. Self-care. Then something else.

And while many of those things helped, the relief was often temporary.

They were Band-Aids.

I eventually realized that lasting healing requires us to work with more than one part of ourselves.

So in this week’s episode, I’m sharing the framework that came out of that journey: Mind, Body, and Love.

We’ll look at healing the emotional wounds and protective patterns held in the mind, working with the nervous system and the reactions held in the body, and finally bringing that greater sense of safety into our relationships.

Because healing isn’t just about understanding why you are the way you are.

It’s about creating change that reaches deep enough that you don’t have to keep returning to the same Band-Aids.

02:56 — Why I call this “No More Band-Aids”

05:08 — Is permanent healing actually possible?

07:06 — The three ingredients: Mind, Body & Love

08:54 — IFS: protectors, exiles & your Self

13:27 — Accessing the calm, steady part of yourself

14:18 — The body: polyvagal theory & somatic work

17:13 — Why relationships are essential to healing

19:23 — Authentic communication: truth AND connection

20:57 — Why all three pieces matter

You don’t have to spend your life endlessly managing the same patterns.

Deeper healing is possible.

This Mind–Body–Love approach is also at the heart of the work we do inside Untriggerable.

We don’t just teach you how to manage a trigger when it happens. We work with the deeper patterns underneath it; your mind, nervous system, and relationships; so you can create change from the inside out.

Join us inside Untriggerable on Circle

Last week, we talked about the power of language — and I invited you to start paying closer attention to the words you use when you talk to yourself and about your life.

This week, I want to take that one step deeper.

Because there’s one particular kind of language that can tell us so much about what’s happening underneath the surface:

Our complaints.

Think about something you complain about over and over.

Maybe it’s that you’re always the one giving.

Your partner never helps enough.

Work is constantly overwhelming.

There’s never enough time for you.

Or maybe you keep finding yourself thinking, “Why am I dealing with this again?”

What if that complaint isn’t just something you need to stop saying or solve?

What if it’s trying to tell you something?

I like to think about complaints the same way I would think about a fever as a physician.

If you have a fever, of course I want to help you feel better. But bringing down the fever doesn’t necessarily address what’s causing it.

We have to find the source.

Your complaints can work the same way.

They can be little clues — or, as I describe them in this episode, tributaries — that we can follow back toward deeper wounds, unmet needs, and longings we may not even consciously recognize.

And once we stop seeing our complaints as something to simply vent about and start getting curious about what they’re pointing toward, they can become an incredible doorway into healing.

00:48 — Why your complaints can help map your inner world

01:47 — Why venting and validation don't always create lasting change

03:20 — What a complaint actually is

04:26 — How early experiences can become subconscious core wounds

05:16 — Complaints as “tributaries” leading us back to the source

06:39 — The fever analogy: treating the symptom vs. finding the cause

09:00 — When “I'm so busy” may be protecting something deeper

11:12 — How busyness can sometimes protect us from loneliness

12:15 — Why the same wounds can keep returning as different complaints

12:50 — Why healing involves both inner work and the body

So this week, instead of judging yourself when you notice a complaint, try getting curious:

What am I really longing for here?

What feels missing?

What keeps repeating?

And what might this complaint be asking me to finally pay attention to?

Your complaints aren't necessarily the problem.

They may be the breadcrumbs showing you where to look.

Following those breadcrumbs back to the source — and working with what we find there in both the mind and the body — is at the heart of the work we do inside Untriggerable.

Instead of simply managing the latest trigger or putting another band-aid over the surface problem, we work on understanding and healing the deeper patterns that keep bringing us back to the same place.

If you're ready to continue that work with us, you can learn more about Untriggerable and join our community on Circle:

Join the Untriggerable community on Circle

This week, listen to your complaints a little differently.

There may be more wisdom in them than you realize.

🗣️ Oh, and if you have something you're navigating and would love my take on it... You can submit a question or situation for a future episode right here (totally anonymous!):

👉 Submit your question

P.S. Love the podcast? Reviews help us spread these life-changing tools far and wide. 💛

If you leave a 5-star review and submit a screenshot here, I’ll send you my Rapid Relationship Repair mini-course—a short but powerful set of tools to reduce conflict and improve connection immediately.

Quick gut check:

If I recorded your self-talk today, would you want to play it back for someone you love?

Last week, I shared more of my own imperfect healing journey — and how our earlier experiences can continue shaping the way we think, feel, and relate to the people around us.

But sometimes those patterns are hiding somewhere incredibly ordinary:

In the words we use every day.

The words running quietly through our minds.

The things we say when we're frustrated.

The stories we tell about ourselves, our relationships, and what's possible for us.

Because language doesn't just describe our experience.

It can shape it.

And the beautiful thing about language is that it's one of the most accessible places to begin creating change.

So in this week's episode, I'm giving you a simple exercise to uncover some of the hidden patterns in your own language.

You'll free-write for just a few minutes and then come back to what you've written with gentle curiosity — looking at three things: whether your language leans toward yourself or connection, whether you tend toward black-and-white thinking or nuance, and whether your words reflect personal choice or a feeling that you have no choice at all.

No judgment. No trying to fix yourself. Just notice.

Because sometimes changing the way we experience our lives can begin with something as small as changing the words we use to describe them.

01:01 — A quick check-in with your inner world

01:40 — Why the words you use are such a powerful lever for change

03:26 — The simple free-writing exercise

05:00 — Lens #1: “I, me, mine” vs. language of connection

06:06 — Lens #2: Black-and-white thinking vs. nuance

07:24 — Lens #3: “I have to” vs. language of personal power

10:44 — How to assess your overall language patterns

11:39 — The connection between rumination, anxiety, and depression

14:19 — Why noticing these patterns is actually good news

15:50 — Your invitation to try the exercise yourself

When you do the exercise, don't try to change everything at once.

Simply notice where you tend to lean.

Then choose one of these three areas and experiment with shifting your language this week.

See what happens when “I have to” becomes “I'm choosing to.”

When “this is just how it is” becomes a little more curious.

When certainty makes room for possibility.

Small changes in language can open the door to much bigger changes in how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Changing our language can be a powerful starting point. But sometimes the words we use are connected to deeper emotional patterns and old protective responses that have been with us for years.

That's the deeper work we do inside Untriggerable.

We work with the mind, the nervous system, and our relationships to understand what's underneath our triggers and build new ways of responding — not just when life is easy, but in the moments that challenge us most.

If you'd like to learn more about Untriggerable and continue this work with us, join us on our Circle platform:

Join the Untriggerable community on Circle

And if you try this week's exercise, I'd love to hear what you discover.

What's one phrase you're choosing to shift this week?

I’ve been on a healing journey for a long time.

And I’m still on it.

I still get triggered. I still get suspicious. I still have moments when trusting and letting go are hard. The difference today isn’t that those reactions have disappeared.

It’s that I know what to do when they show up.

In this week’s episode, I want to take you behind the scenes of how I got here — because the way I approach healing today didn’t come neatly packaged in a textbook.

It came through a lot of trial and error.

Honestly, probably more error than trial. 🤣

I love psychiatry. I trained at some incredible institutions and learned so much about the human mind. But even after becoming a psychiatrist, I realized something difficult:

I still didn’t know how to be in relationships.

The tools I needed to create safety within myself, regulate my nervous system, heal old wounds, and stay connected when I was triggered were tools I eventually had to find, practice, and integrate for myself.

And that journey goes much further back than my own adulthood.

In this episode, I’m sharing parts of my family story that shaped me deeply — the trauma my parents carried, the beliefs and survival patterns I inherited, losing my mother, repressing parts of myself, and eventually realizing that healing wasn’t just about me.

It was also about what I would pass on.

One of the biggest realizations I’ve had is that intergenerational healing doesn’t begin or end with one person. Each generation before me, imperfectly and in their own way, passed on a little less pain than they received.

Now I get to be another link in that chain.

And that has become one of the North Stars of my life: the trauma stops with me.

Your story will look different from mine. But the effects of our earlier experiences often show up in three places: how we manage our emotions and triggers, what happens inside our bodies and nervous systems, and how we show up in our closest relationships.

Healing doesn’t mean becoming someone who never gets triggered again.

For me, it has meant learning to recognize what’s happening inside me and knowing how to return to safety, calm, and connection — again and again.

And that’s the work I want to share with you.

00:54 — Why I’m sharing my imperfect healing journey

04:41 — My childhood and the intergenerational trauma in my family

10:28 — Growing up between external privilege and internal chaos

15:54 — Losing my mother and carrying the belief that it was my fault

19:44 — When things began to change

22:21 — Why becoming a psychiatrist still didn’t teach me how to heal my relationships

24:54 — The mission that grew out of my own healing

25:50 — The 3 areas where our earlier experiences show up today

27:13 — I still get triggered — here’s what’s different now

28:12 — The three pieces I believe create a powerful path toward lasting healing

My own healing taught me that insight alone isn’t always enough.

I could understand why I reacted the way I did and still have my body respond automatically when something touched an old wound.

That experience became a huge part of why I created Untriggerable.

Inside Untriggerable, we work with the mind, the body and nervous system, and the patterns that show up in our relationships — so you can learn to recognize your triggers, regulate what’s happening inside you, and respond from a place of greater safety and choice.

If you’d like to learn more about the program and continue this work with us, you can join us on our new Circle platform:

Join the Untriggerable community on Circle

Wherever you are in your own healing journey, remember: it doesn’t have to be perfect.

Mine certainly isn’t.

It just has to keep moving.

Last week, we talked about how to uncover the limiting beliefs quietly shaping your choices.

But recognizing them is only the beginning.

Because you can know exactly what your limiting belief is…

and still find yourself hesitating, resisting, or recreating the same pattern.

I know because I experienced this in my own business.

I knew I wanted to make changes. I knew the way I was working no longer felt aligned with how I wanted my life to look.

But my business was successful.

And underneath all that hesitation was a much older belief I had absorbed growing up:

Money is hard to come by. You have to sacrifice what matters to succeed. And there may not be enough to go around.

Intellectually, I knew I didn’t want to live that way.

But subconsciously? That belief was still influencing my decisions.

So in this week’s episode — Part 2 of our Limiting Beliefs series — I’m sharing the three tools I used to begin shifting those beliefs from the inside out.

We’ll start by replacing that exhausting inner debate with thoughts that are simply grounded in facts. Then I’ll show you how I began practicing the identity of the person I wanted to become — and how collecting small “confirmations” helped that new identity become more natural over time.

Because changing a limiting belief isn’t about forcing yourself to think positively.

It’s about slowly giving your mind a different experience to believe.

And for me, after about six to eight weeks of practicing these tools, something shifted.

The changes I had spent months resisting began to happen with far less force. I restructured my business, changed how I spent my days, and created something that felt much more aligned with my values — without sacrificing the financial stability I had been so afraid of losing.

00:48 — Picking up where we left off in Part 1

02:10 — Why changing a successful business felt so scary

03:28 — The limiting belief about money I uncovered

06:24 — How subconscious beliefs kept me recreating what I wanted to change

08:25 — Tool #1: Replace resistance with fact-based thoughts

12:42 — Tool #2: Start practicing a new identity

16:19 — How I used “abundance walks” to notice what was already around me

20:40 — Tool #3: Collect confirmations of your new identity

22:07 — What changed after practicing these tools for 6–8 weeks

24:14 — What my life and business look like on the other side

If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode, 3 Ways to Uncover Your Hidden Limiting Beliefs [Part 1], I recommend starting there first.

Part 1 helps you uncover what may be running beneath the surface.

Part 2 helps you begin changing it.

And as you listen, don’t try to tackle every limiting belief at once.

Choose one.

Get curious about it.

And start giving yourself evidence that another way of thinking, feeling, and living is possible.

Sometimes the patterns we intellectually understand are also tied to deeper emotional reactions that continue showing up even when we know better.

That’s exactly the deeper work we do inside Untriggerable — learning how to work with those patterns from the inside out so they no longer have to keep running the show.

And we now have a new home on Circle where you can learn more about Untriggerable and join our community:

Join the Untriggerable community on Circle

I’d love to see you there.

Have you ever known exactly what you wanted to change…

but somehow kept doing the same thing?

Maybe you want to change a pattern in your relationship.

Make a move in your career.

Take better care of yourself.

Or finally go after something you’ve been thinking about for months.

You know what you want.

And yet… you keep postponing it.

I’ve been there too.

There was a season when I knew exactly how I wanted my personal life and business to feel.

I had my North Star.

But for six months to a year, I kept putting off some of the very decisions that would take me there.

Why?

Limiting beliefs.

And the tricky thing about limiting beliefs is that we often don’t even know we have them.

They hide underneath the complaints we repeat, the conversations we have with our friends, and the stories we’ve told ourselves so many times that they simply feel like facts.

In this week’s episode, I’m sharing three practical ways I use to bring those hidden beliefs to the surface, including a journaling practice that can help you move beyond the story you already consciously know and begin uncovering what may be sitting underneath it.

Because before we can change a limiting belief…

we have to be able to see it.

00:53 — My own “North Star” and the beliefs that kept me from moving toward it

03:18 — Why limiting beliefs keep us stuck in the same patterns

04:56 — Start here: choose one specific area where you feel stuck

06:58 — Tool #1: Listen to your recurring complaints

09:05 — The difference between a circumstance and the belief you attach to it

10:16 — Tool #2: Pay attention to what you and your friends vent about

12:23 — Tool #3: Use journaling to uncover what’s beneath the surface

13:51 — The journaling trick that takes you beyond your conscious story

15:49 — Putting all three tools together

17:38 — What’s coming in Part 2

And this is only Part 1.

This week, your job is simply to find the beliefs that may be quietly running the show.

Don’t rush to change them yet.

Use these three tools, get curious, and write down what you uncover, because we’re going to use exactly what you find in next week’s episode:

3 Tools to Remove Limiting Beliefs From Your Subconscious Mind [Part 2]

That’s where I’ll show you what to actually do with these beliefs once you’ve brought them into the light.

So do the exercises from today, keep your notes somewhere close, and meet me back here next week for Part 2.

Sometimes the beliefs we uncover aren’t just thoughts we can talk ourselves out of. They’re connected to deeper emotional patterns, old wounds, and reactions that can keep showing up even when we intellectually know better.

That’s exactly the kind of deeper work we do inside Untriggerable.

And we now have a new home on Circle where you can learn more about the program, access resources, and join our community.

Join us inside the Untriggerable community on Circle

I’d love to see you there.

🗣️Oh, and if you have something you're navigating and would love my take on it... You can submit a question or situation for a future episode right here (totally anonymous!):

👉 Submit your question

P.S. Love the podcast? Reviews help us spread these life-changing tools far and wide. 💛

If you leave a 5-star review and submit a screenshot here, I’ll send you my Rapid Relationship Repair mini-course—a short but powerful set of tools to reduce conflict and improve connection immediately.

Last week, we explored a powerful idea:

You are not your thoughts or your feelings.

So the next question becomes...

If I'm not my thoughts, then how do I actually begin to heal the part of me that still gets triggered?

Many of us try to change our reactions by talking ourselves through them.

We promise we'll stay calm next time.

We'll communicate better.

We'll be more patient.

And sometimes it works...

...for a day or two.

But if your emotional reactions keep returning, it may be because there's a younger part of you that's still waiting to feel safe.

In this week's episode, I want to introduce you to one of my favorite healing practices—using your imagination to access four powerful inner resources that help bring calm, wisdom, protection, and comfort to your nervous system.

It may sound simple, but there's fascinating neuroscience behind it: when we vividly imagine an experience, the brain begins creating new neural pathways almost as if it had happened in real life. That's one of the beautiful foundations of neuroplasticity.

00:48 — Why communication tools aren't enough when your inner child is hurting

02:19 — Why imagination can literally help rewire your brain

04:42 — Resource #1: Creating your Safe Space

07:51 — Resource #2: Finding your Wise Counsel (yes... Dumbledore counts!)

09:31 — Resource #3: Discovering your Protector

11:45 — Resource #4: Choosing your Comforter

12:25 — A guided practice to install these four resources within you

Healing isn't about becoming someone different.

It's about giving the parts of you that still feel scared, alone, or overwhelmed the experiences they never received.

Sometimes, the resources you've been searching for aren't outside of you at all.

They're already within you—just waiting to be discovered.

The four inner resources I shared today are just one small piece of the work we do inside Untriggerable.

In the program, I guide you through a complete step-by-step process to heal emotional triggers at the root, regulate your nervous system, and create lasting change—not just better coping strategies.

If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to experience that kind of transformation, I'd love to support you.

You can learn more about Untriggerable by joining our free physician community here:

https://www.skool.com/relationshipmastery4physicians

Or simply reply to this email or reach out to my team at [email protected], and we'll be happy to share all the details.

🗣️ Oh, and if you have something you're navigating and would love my take on it... You can submit a question or situation for a future episode right here (totally anonymous!):

👉 Submit your question

P.S. Love the podcast? Reviews help us spread these life-changing tools far and wide. 💛

If you leave a 5-star review and submit a screenshot here, I’ll send you my Rapid Relationship Repair mini-course—a short but powerful set of tools to reduce conflict and improve connection immediately

Last week, we talked about how unresolved trauma can keep our nervous systems stuck in a constant state of alert, even when we're no longer in danger.

So the question naturally becomes:

What can we do in those moments when we feel our stress or anxiety taking over?

The truth is, stress itself isn't the enemy.

Life will always bring deadlines, difficult conversations, and unexpected challenges.

The problem is when our bodies never get the chance to recover.

Instead of completing the stress response, many of us simply distract ourselves, with our phones, food, work, or endless busyness, while our nervous system remains switched on. Over time, that chronic stress can affect our physical health, cloud our thinking, and make it harder to show up well in our relationships.

In this week's episode, I'm sharing one of my favorite practical tools: a simple breathing technique called the physiological sigh. It takes less than 90 seconds, can be done almost anywhere, and helps calm your nervous system by completing your body's stress response. I'll also share a simple framework for understanding stress so you can begin responding to it with more confidence, rather than just reacting to it.

00:50 — Why stress is normal (and why chronic stress isn't)

01:27 — A simple technique to calm your nervous system in real time

03:10 — What animals can teach us about completing the stress response

04:17 — Why distractions don't actually reduce stress

05:20 — A simple framework for managing stress anywhere

07:12 — The science behind the physiological sigh

09:06 — How to practice the breathing technique correctly

10:40 — When to use it in everyday life

The goal isn't to eliminate stress.

It's to give your body the chance to recover from it.

Sometimes, creating more calm doesn't require changing your circumstances, it starts with taking one intentional breath.

The physiological sigh is one powerful tool—but it's just one piece of the puzzle.

Inside our free Relationship Mastery for Physicians community on Skool, we share practical tools to help you regulate your nervous system, strengthen your relationships, and become less reactive to life's everyday stressors.

If you'd like to continue learning alongside us, we'd love to have you join.

Join the community here:

https://www.skool.com/relationshipmastery4physicians

I hope to see you there.