Send Gemma a message

In this episode, Gemma unpacks The Sorry Reflex - the automatic urge to apologise, even when we’ve done nothing wrong. Rooted in the subjugation schema, this coping behaviour often begins in childhood, where expressing needs or disagreeing felt unsafe. When our nervous system equates disapproval with danger, “sorry” becomes a way to stay safe and connected.

Gemma explains how this pattern shows up in dating, relationships, and everyday interactions - especially for women conditioned to be accommodating. You’ll learn to identify your triggers (tone changes, sighs, silence), notice the body’s reaction, and experiment with opposite action to retrain your nervous system.

You’ll also hear a real-life success story from one of Gemma’s Love Wisely group members, plus guidance on combining schema therapy and EMDR to heal the deeper beliefs beneath chronic apologising.

If you’re tired of shrinking yourself, over-explaining or feeling guilty for taking up space, this episode will help you shift from “sorry” to self-trust.

Takeaways

• Over-apologising is a safety response, not good manners.
• Driven by subjugation, approval-seeking, and self-sacrifice schemas.
• Triggers: subtle signs of disapproval—tone, delay, sigh, silence.
• Body cues: chest tightness, racing heart, hyper-empathy.
• Short-term relief, long-term self-erasure.
• Opposite action = growth and rewiring.
• You can disappoint someone and still be safe and loved.

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

If you are asking can this improve, this episode gives you a simple lens. Gemma unpacks two essential capacities that predict whether change is possible in a relationship. You will hear why the brain repeats what is familiar, how schemas drive loops and how to assess real readiness for growth in yourself and in someone you are dating.

In this episode

• Why patterns repeat even when you want something different
• The role of schemas in attraction, conflict and coping
• Two essentials that predict change
• Why avoidance blocks growth
• Dating as data, plus a new way to date with self awareness

Are you ready to join Love Wisely? Doors open again in Feb 26. 

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

What limerence really is, why it hooks into our deepest unmet needs and how to gently unhook using a schema-therapy lens.

In Part 2, Gemma explores limerence as a preoccupying, often intoxicating state that’s fueled by unmet needs - with abandonment and emotional deprivation schemas usually at the core. She explains why the brain’s reward systems (hello, dopamine) and a quieted prefrontal cortex can hijack rationality, making red flags easy to miss. You’ll learn practical, compassionate ways to reduce rumination, interrupt mental loops and begin reparenting the vulnerable parts that long for consistent care. Gemma also speaks to when limerence turns into a relationship (and why those tend to be high “schema chemistry”) and offers realistic hope for moving toward grounded, secure love.

Key takeaways

• Limerence = unmet needs + brain rewards. It’s human, common, and often temporary; shame isn’t helpful.
• Schemas under the hood: Abandonment (primary) and emotional deprivation are frequent drivers; attachment style can be a clue, but schemas give the nuance.
• “Schema chemistry” alert: Relationships born from intense limerence often trigger old wounds on both sides.
• Stop feeding the loop: Reduce cues (no social stalking, no photo scrolling). Notice → name → turn your mind.
• Circuit breakers that help: Mindfulness, imagery/rumination interruption, exercise, novelty/learning, supportive people, flow-state activities.
• Reparenting matters: Daily, gentle practices to meet needs consistently will dilute schemas over time.
• When to get help: If limerence becomes distressing, incapacitating or escalates into harmful behaviours, seek professional support.

Practical steps you can try

1. Name it: “This is the limerence loop.”
2. Reduce reinforcement: Unfollow/mute; remove reminders.
3. Shift attention: Choose a grounding task (walk, call a friend, learn something new).
4. Reparenting micro-rituals: Daily check-ins with your vulnerable part; write a brief caring letter to yourself.
5. Track triggers: Note what sparks rumination and plan alternatives.
6. Therapeutic support: Look for schema-informed, experiential work.

Mentioned in this episode

• Coaching spaces now open with Gemma (limited).
• Love Wisely group coaching: next intake planned for late Feb '26 (waitlist in links).
• Reviews really help. Please rate on your podcast app.
• Contact: [email protected]

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight  

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

If you’ve ever been mentally and emotionally stuck on someone - checking for “signs,” fantasising a future and riding waves of hope and anxiety, then you may have experienced limerence.  In Part 1, Gemma explains what limerence is (and isn’t), why uncertainty and fantasy make it so sticky and why the real issue isn’t the person (the “limerent object”) but your unmet emotional needs.  You’ll also hear where the concept came from and why it’s often confused with attachment or “true love.”

In this episode, you’ll learn

• A plain-English definition of limerence and how it differs from attraction or love
• The two core fuels: uncertainty and intermittent reward (via fantasies and mixed signals)
• How imagery, rumination, and dopamine loops keep the crush alive
• Why limerence can last months or years and why it often doesn’t lead to healthy, secure relationships
• The link with schemas and unmet needs (preview for Part 2)
• Gentle first steps to reduce the hijack (without shaming yourself)

Key takeaways

• Limerence is an internal state - more about your needs than about them.
• Fantasy offers temporary relief but reinforces the loop.
• Clarity ends limerence (rejection, genuine mutuality, or transferring the preoccupation) - but self-understanding is what prevents the next loop.

Try this (starter steps)

• Notice and name: “This is limerence, not reality.”
• Pause the imagery: limit cues, put boundaries around fantasising/daydreaming.
• Reality-check: list what you actually know vs what you’re imagining.
• Re-invest in life: micro-wins, movement, sleep, friend time, creative focus.
• Journal prompt: “What core need am I trying to meet through this fantasy (safety, worth, belonging, soothing)? How else can I meet it today?”

Teaser for Part 2
How schemas (abandonment, emotional deprivation, defectiveness, approval-seeking) wire us for limerence and a step-by-step plan to unwind it, rebuild self-trust, and stop repeating the pattern.

Resources mentioned

• The early research on limerence (originating in the late 20th century)
• Attachment theory (context), schema therapy (dee

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

 A listener asks: “What exactly is narcissism and how can I tell if I’m dating someone with narcissistic traits?” In this episode, Gemma breaks narcissism down into plain English. You’ll learn why it’s best understood as a personality style on a spectrum, how narcissistic coping modes show up through self-absorption and poor tolerance for your subjectivity and the concrete signs to look for in the early dating stage. We also cover boundaries, reciprocity and practical ways to tune into - and trust - your internal radar.

What you’ll learn

• Narcissism 101: spectrum vs diagnosed NPD; why “narcissistic modes” matter
• The central feature: self-absorption (and why it erodes empathy & reciprocity)
• Early dating indicators: shallow interest, interrupting, image obsession, contempt/arrogance, running down exes, boundary-pushing
• Reality-checks for boundaries & differences: how they handle “no,” cancellations and disagreement
• Why narcissistic dynamics chip away at self-worth and how to protect yours
• A calm process for getting to know someone across contexts (and why to go slow)

Try this - self-check prompts on a date

• Do I feel seen, heard and not rushed?
• Can I say “no” or disagree without payback or sulking?
• Is attention reciprocal over time (not just in bursts)?
• Do their words match behaviour when it costs them something?

Resources & links

• Download: Dating With Insight - After-Date Reflection Guide (free)
• Join the Love Wisely priority list for the next round
• Ask Gemma a question for the podcast: [email protected]
  
  
• If this helped, please leave a review on your podcast app - it really supports the show.

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

Enrollments are Open, Doors Close Wednesday 17th 11:59PM (AEST)

In this short bonus episode, I’m giving you a clear picture of what’s inside my 12-week group coaching program, Love Wisely, which begins Wednesday, September 24th.

This program is for women who are ready to break free from old relationship patterns - especially the pull toward emotionally unavailable or narcissistic partners and finally rewrite their Love Template so they can choose relationships that feel safe, secure, and deeply fulfilling.

Here’s what you’ll receive inside Love Wisely:
✨ Weekly 2-hour live group coaching calls (recorded if you can’t make it live).
✨ A private online portal with foundational schema lessons, guided worksheets, and meditations.
✨ A private Facebook group, a safe space for encouragement, connection, and support.
✨ Two powerful bonuses: the Healing Your Inner Child mini-course and the Elevate Your Worth audio lesson & self-hypnosis recording.
✨ A special follow-up session in February to help you stay focused, integrate what you’ve learned and start the new year grounded and clear.
✨ And for the first five women who enroll, a complimentary 75-minute 1:1 coaching session with me.

Most importantly, Love Wisely is heart-centred. It’s designed to meet you exactly where you are. Whether you’re dating, taking a break, or feeling disillusioned, you’ll feel nurtured, supported and guided every step of the way.

We begin September 24th and finish on December 17th - the perfect time to complete the program before the holiday season and walk into the new year with clarity, confidence, hope and a plan!

👉 Doors close Wednesday, September 17th at midnight. Enrolment details are in the show notes.

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

Gemma answers the most common questions she’s received about Love Wisely and widens the lens to address the deeper fears and limiting beliefs that stop women from changing their relationship patterns. You’ll learn how schemas (like abandonment, emotional deprivation, defectiveness/shame, subjugation, approval-seeking and unrelenting standards) quietly shape attraction, tolerance, and your choices and what it looks like to shift from fear-driven decisions to wise, Healthy Adult decisions.

What You’ll Learn

• Why “I want love” is not neediness and why there’s no shame in wanting a partner, the goal is a good partner.
• 5 fears that keep you stuck (and the schemas beneath them):
  1. “What if I can’t change?” → defectiveness, hopelessness; how willingness and skills create traction.
  2. “What if I’m behind everyone else?” → inner critic, comparison traps; using the paradoxical theory of change (accept where you are to move forward).
  3. “I’ve tried before and it didn’t work.” → learned helplessness; why the right framework goes deeper than tips.
  4. “Maybe I’m not meant to find love.” → self-fulfilling prophecy; moving from fate to agency and changing actions that drive outcomes.
  5. “There’s no one for me / no one could love me as I am.” → defectiveness/shame; how this belief warps dating behaviour and tolerance for crumbs.
• Rewriting your Love Template: bringing unconscious maps into the light, strengthening your Healthy Adult, and re-parenting vulnerable parts so they’re not making dating decisions.
• A hopeful reframe: your beliefs are learned, not destiny and learned beliefs can be unlearned.

Key Ideas & Takeaways

• Limiting beliefs are echoes of the past, not predictions of your future.
• Compare yourself only to your own trajectory, not to others.
• No relationship is a waste if you extract the learning.
• Real change is skills + practice: noticing triggers, choosing different responses, and getting out earlier when needed.
• You already have an innate wisdom, schema work helps you hear it again.

Who This Episode Is For

Women who want a healthy, emotionally available relationship and are ready to stop repeating patterns with unavailable or narcissistic partners.

Resources & Next Steps

• Join Love Wisely (12-week transformational group coaching) - doors close Wed 17 September (midnight AEST). First

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

When your heart wants closeness but your “old map” keeps pulling you toward distance, you’re stuck in the Catch-22 of attraction. In this episode, Gemma explains how early schemas quietly shape who you’re drawn to, why “chemistry” so often points you toward the familiar (not the healthy), and what it takes to consciously rewrite your Love Template so you can choose emotionally available partners.

In this episode, you’ll learn

• What a schema is (quick primer) and why it’s more useful than attachment boxes
• How the Abandonment schema fuels anxious preoccupation, magical thinking, and self-fulfilling patterns
• Why Emotional Deprivation normalises giving a lot while rarely feeling seen or nurtured
• How Defectiveness/Shame covertly lowers your standards and tolerates poor treatment
• The role of Subjugation and Self-Sacrifice in silencing yourself early, then staying too long
• Why attraction isn’t random and how your Love Template (old map) picks partners for you on autopilot
• The Healthy Adult shift: moving from familiar chemistry to choosing steady, emotionally available partners

Key takeaways

• Attraction pulls toward what’s familiar, not necessarily what’s good.
• “I’ll just go with the flow” keeps you on autopilot; intentional dating rewrites the outcome.
• Knowledge is power BUT applied knowledge (with guidance) is transformation.
• Your patterns in romance often ripple into career, friendships, and self-worth, change one, and others shift.

Try this this week

1. Name your top 1–2 schemas you hear in this episode.
2. Write one “Healthy Adult” decision you’ll make before your next date (e.g., “If communication is inconsistent in the first 2 weeks, I’ll opt out kindly and early”).
3. List 3 signals of emotional availability you’ll move toward (e.g., follow-through, steady pace, repair after missteps).

Resources & next steps

• JOIN Love Wisely - NOW OPEN Enrollment closes 17th Sept ▶︎ Learn more

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

In this episode
I answer a listener Q from “Maddie,” who’s in post-breakup limbo with an avoidant ex. I unpack blurred boundaries after a breakup, why “staying friends” can quietly erode self-respect, how trauma bonds differ from schema-triggered dynamics, and what it really takes to let go when your abandonment schema is pulling you back. You’ll also get a simple Relationship Review exercise to spot your patterns so you can date with clearer self-trust next time.

What we cover

• The self-respect signal: why “staying friends” sometimes keeps you stuck
• Love-bombing vs. real intimacy (and why early declarations are a red flag)
• Trauma bonding 101: replication, familiarity and unmet needs
• Avoidant–anxious dynamics and why they feel magnetic but unstable
• “Hard work” vs. “healthy work” in relationships - a practical litmus test
• How to let go: grief, no-contact, and naming your modes without self-criticism
• The Relationship Review: a step-by-step way to map your patterns

Try this (listener worksheet prompts)

• “Where did I override red flags because of fear, guilt or hope?”
• “Which parts/modes showed up in me (e.g., Pleaser, Angry Protector, Vulnerable Child)?”
• “How did I actually feel most of the time in that relationship?”
• “What does ‘emotionally available’ need to look like for me, specifically?”

Resources mentioned

• Episode 104: The Good, the Bad and the Bond (trauma bonding explainer)
• Free guide: Dating With Insight: A Tune-In After Every Date (reflective prompts to help you notice how you felt in their presence)
• Free live masterclass: The Psychology of Attraction - why chemistry isn’t random and how schema chemistry pulls you toward the wrong partners
  • Live: Wednesday 10 September, 7:00pm AEST
  • Replay available to all who register

Is Love Wisely for you?
If you’re a self-aware woman with a history of emotionally unavailable or narcissistic partners AND you’re ready to rewrite your Love Template™ the next 12-week Love Wisely group starts late September. Warm, structured and practical. 

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here

Send Gemma a message

Why do caring, empathic women end up doing the heavy lifting in love, staying out of guilt and “rescuing” partners at the expense of their own needs? In this episode, Gemma unpacks the unconscious pull to fix others, how childhood patterns (self-sacrifice, subjugation, emotional deprivation) set the stage, and the real cost of over-functioning. You’ll learn how to shift from “fixer” to “feeler,” build healthy entitlement, and make self-supporting choices, even when guilt shouts loudly.

Key Takeaways

• Rescuing often masks self-abandonment learned in childhood; guilt can keep you stuck. 
• “Too much empathy” without objective distance leads to empathic distress and burnout. 
• Ask: Am I a partner or a parent/therapist/saviour in this dynamic?
• Build healthy entitlement: your needs matter and boundaries are an act of care. 
• Shift from fixing them to feeling you: journal, re-parent, seek support, and challenge all-or-nothing beliefs. 

Try This (Journal Prompts)

• “If I weren’t rescuing here, what feelings in me would surface?”
• “What belief equates caring for myself with hurting someone else?”
• “Where did I first learn that love = self-sacrifice?”
• “What would healthy reciprocity look like this week (one tangible boundary)?”

Resources Mentioned

• Free Live Masterclass (Sept 10) – The Psychology of Attraction: Why We Bond with Emotionally Unavailable Men (replay available).
• Work with Gemma – Coaching & the Love Wisely program (for women ready to rewrite their love template).

Rate & Review
If this helped you, a quick review on Apple or Spotify helps other women find the show. Thank you for being part of this work.

Support the show

🎁 Download Free Guide: Dating With Insight

🩷 Love Wisely Priority list for Feb '26

💛 Access Elevate You Worth: Self-Worth Healing Bundle

Connect with Me
📷 Instagram: @drgemmagladstone
📧 Email: [email protected] for 1:1 coaching enquiries
🌐 Website: drgemmagladstone.com

🚩 The Red Flag Project - your ultimate guide to red flags!!
Get instant access to the online course: Access now

🌻 Support the Podcast
Love the show? Help us keep going with a monthly contribution: Support here