Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman

There’s a kind of relationship that makes you question your own sanity.

From the outside, everything looks perfect. The grand gestures. The relentless pursuit. The intoxicating feeling of being the one they chose above everyone else.

And then, slowly, the ground shifts beneath you.

The warmth becomes conditional. The rules keep rewriting themselves. You start walking on eggshells through your own life, making excuses for behavior you swore you’d never tolerate. You cling to who they were in the beginning while bracing yourself for who they’ve become.

That’s the quiet trap of a trauma bond.

And Dr. Nadine Macaluso knows what it feels like from the inside.

The world saw a throne. She lived inside a cage.

From the outside, her marriage to Jordan Belfort looked like a fairy tale printed in the tabloids. Private jets. Champagne-soaked parties. A life most people could barely imagine.

But behind the velvet rope of Belfort’s empire, a very different story was unfolding.

At 22, Nadine was a Brooklyn model when Jordan swept her off her feet. His pursuit was relentless. The attention was intoxicating. She didn’t see danger. She saw destiny. She saw a man who chose her above everyone else.

What started like a whirlwind romance became an eight-year marriage marked by addiction, infidelity, control, and abuse.

The movie gave us the spectacle.

In this episode of the Language of Love Conversations, Nadine gives us what it felt like to live inside it.

Now a licensed therapist, trauma bond specialist, and author of Run Like Hell, she takes us behind the story audiences think they know. We go back to the beginning, when the red flags didn’t look like red flags. They looked like passion. Like devotion. Like someone who couldn’t get enough of her.

She walks us through the slow unraveling, the love-bombing that curdled into coercion, the addiction that consumed everything, and the fear that became her constant companion.

We also get into the psychology of intermittent reinforcement. When affection comes and goes unpredictably, your brain can become focused on chasing that next moment of connection. It’s the same mechanism that can keep gamblers pulling slot machines, and it helps explain why people can stay attached to relationships that are hurting them.

We go off-script from the Hollywood version. We talk about the parts of her story the cameras never captured, the secrets she buried, the panic she learned to silence, and the moments her body knew the truth long before her mind was ready to accept it.

And eventually, there were three “straw moments” that pushed her toward the door.

But leaving was only the beginning.

After the divorce, Nadine had to rebuild her identity from the ground up. She found healthy love, survived two forms of cancer, went back to school, and earned her PhD at 45.

The experience that nearly destroyed her became the reason she became a therapist. Today, she helps others recognize trauma bonds, calm their nervous systems, rebuild their trust in themselves, and learn what healthy love feels like when you no longer have to abandon yourself to keep it.

In this episode, we explore:

You may come to this episode because you know Nadine’s story from The Wolf of Wall Street.

But this conversation goes far beyond Hollywood.

It’s about what happens when love becomes tangled with fear, unpredictability, control, and self-doubt.

And it’s about the moment you stop asking, "How can I make this relationship work?" and start listening to what your body has been trying to tell you.

If Dr. Nae’s story resonates with you, you can learn more about her work, her book Run Like Hell, and her Trauma Bond Recovery community at her website.

Her Trauma Bond Recovery community is $30 per month and gives women a supportive space to work through trauma bonds through education, support groups, expert speakers, and connection with others who understand what they're experiencing. Her website also offers free resources, meditations, and worksheets.

For more resources, tools, and upcoming events, visit my website.

And if something from this conversation stays with you, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

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I've spent more than 30 years as a therapist helping people navigate grief, trauma, and some of the hardest experiences of their lives. But when my 16-year-old son Sammy died, I found myself in a place that all my professional training could never have prepared me for.

Almost six years later, I've written the book I desperately needed back then, Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined. And in this special episode, I want to share some of what I've learned, both from my own grief and from the thousands of people I've had the privilege of working with.

What does it actually mean to cry out loud? It means allowing ourselves to experience grief in all its messy, complicated, sometimes frightening forms. The anger, guilt, jealousy, despair, and even the moments of joy that can make us feel like we're betraying the person we've lost.

I talk about why we can't simply think our way through grief, how our bodies hold what our minds can't process, and why learning to care for our nervous systems is so important. I share the practices that helped me when I could barely function, how my relationships changed, and how I've learned to keep my connection with Sammy alive in ways I never could have imagined.

And I talk about something I believe deeply: grief changes us. I've said before that I didn't survive Sammy's death. The woman I was before he died is gone. I've had to discover who I am now, how to live with this enormous loss, and how to let joy back in without feeling guilty about it.

I believe healing is possible, even when the loss itself can never be undone. And I believe we can build meaningful, even beautiful lives while still wishing with every fiber of our being that none of this had happened.

In this episode, I explore:

My new book, Crying Out Loud, brings together what I've learned as a therapist, a grieving daughter, and a grieving mother, along with research, spiritual wisdom, and nearly 100 practical tools to help you find your own way through grief.

I wrote it because I know how desperately we need something to reach for when our world falls apart. And because I want you to know that whatever you're feeling, wherever you are in your grief, there are ways to begin finding your footing again.

Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined, is available now, wherever books are sold.

And The Grief Healing Collective is here for more live support.  None of us are meant to carry this alone.

If something in this episode spoke to your heart, share your story or send your questions to [email protected].

And if you want to explore more of how our brains, bodies, histories and emotional patterns shape the way we love and connect, come find me on my other podcast, The Language of Love. Every week, I talk with leading experts and share what I've learned in more than 30 years as a therapist about relationships, intimacy and healing. You can find The Language of Love wherever you're listening to Crying Out Loud.

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Have you ever looked back at a relationship and thought, How did I end up here AGAIN?

Maybe you keep falling for emotionally unavailable people. Maybe one unanswered text sends you into a full-blown anxiety spiral. Or you find yourself people-pleasing, overexplaining, or chasing someone who isn't giving you much in return.

And the really frustrating part? You KNOW you're doing it. You might even understand exactly where the pattern came from. So why is it so hard to stop?

As a relationship therapist for more than 30 years, I've seen just how stubborn these patterns can be. We develop ways of protecting ourselves and getting our emotional needs met early in life, and then carry those strategies into our adult relationships. Sometimes the very things we do to feel secure end up creating more of the insecurity we're trying to avoid.

My guest on The Language of Love is Sabrina Zohar, host of The Sabrina Zohar Show and author of Why Am I Like This? Sabrina calls the unconscious programming behind our relationship patterns our "bullshit blueprint," and she's refreshingly direct, funny, and occasionally profane about what it takes to change it.

She shares a pretty remarkable story involving 173 unanswered texts. Yes, 173! We unpack what was really happening underneath that behavior, why our nervous systems can hijack our best intentions, and what it actually takes to respond differently when every part of you wants to fall back into an old habit.

We also challenge some popular dating advice and talk about why knowing all the therapy language doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the work. Sabrina shares how she and her partner learned to build trust one hour at a time, and the practical tools she uses when her emotions start taking over.

We also explore:

If you're tired of having the same relationship in a different package, I think you'll get a lot out of this conversation.

You don't have to heal every childhood wound before you can have a healthy relationship. But you do have to start recognizing your patterns, taking responsibility for your behavior, and practicing something different, even when it's uncomfortable.

To learn more about Sabrina and her work, pick up a copy of Why Am I Like This, listen to The Sabrina Zohar Show, and connect with her on Instagram and TikTok.

If something in this conversation sparked something in you, don't stop here. My website offers more content, tools, and upcoming events to keep the conversation alive.

And if a reflection comes up, or you simply want to reach out, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at [email protected].

This episode is for anyone who's ever known better and still done worse, and finally understood why.

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What if some of the things you've spent your whole life beating yourself up about, like being disorganized, procrastinating, forgetting things, or feeling overwhelmed by everyday tasks, were actually signs of ADHD?

For so many women, ADHD goes unrecognized for years, sometimes decades. They grow up thinking they're lazy, scattered, too sensitive, or just need to try harder. And because ADHD doesn't always look the way we've been taught to recognize it, especially in girls and women, many don't get answers until well into adulthood.

And then there's perimenopause, when hormonal changes can make symptoms that were once manageable suddenly feel impossible to ignore.

On this episode of The Language of Love, I'm joined by Dr. Jolene Brighten, a naturopathic doctor, clinical sexologist, and women's health expert. She's the bestselling author of Beyond the Pill and Is This Normal?, and her new book, ADHD and Women: A Guide to Optimizing Your Hormones and Thriving with ADHD, explores the fascinating relationship between ADHD, hormones, and women's health.

We talk about why ADHD is so often missed in women, how it can be mistaken for anxiety, and the ways girls learn to compensate for or hide their struggles from an early age. We also get into the role of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone in brain function, and why perimenopause can be especially challenging for women with ADHD.

But this conversation goes well beyond understanding the diagnosis. Jolene shares practical ways to support your brain, from nutrition and sleep to navigating medication and hormone therapy, along with some really helpful advice about finding a healthcare provider who understands how ADHD shows up in women.

And we talk about something I think is incredibly important: how much shame women carry when they've spent years struggling with things that seem to come so easily to everyone else. Understanding how your brain works can be a tremendous relief, especially when it helps you stop judging yourself and start getting the support you actually need.

In this episode, we explore:

Whether you've been diagnosed with ADHD, suspect you might have it, or are simply wondering why your brain seems to be working differently as you get older, I think you'll find this conversation both fascinating and reassuring.

Because there's something incredibly freeing about finally understanding yourself, especially if you've spent years wondering why certain things have always felt so hard.

To learn more about Dr. Brighten and her work, visit her website and pick up a copy of ADHD and Women: A Guide to Optimizing Your Hormones and Thriving with ADHD. You can also find her podcast and her ADHD hormone profile quiz for women.

If something in this conversation sparked something in you, don't stop here. My website offers more content, tools, and upcoming events to keep the conversation alive.

And if a reflection comes up, or you simply want to reach out, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at [email protected].

This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered if they've been blaming themselves for something that was never their fault and discovered the answer is yes.

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Serena Kerrigan built a brand around confidence. She became known as the Queen of Confidence, turned her dating life into a live show during COVID, went on 50 virtual blind dates in front of a live audience.

Serena is now the author of Let’s F*cking Date: Become the Prize, Enjoy the Ride, and Never Settle Again, and this book comes from someone who has spent years dating very publicly while also having to take a pretty hard look at her own patterns.

At one point, she asked herself a question that became a turning point: Would I actually want to date me?

She was tired of attracting emotionally unavailable men and having versions of the same disappointing relationship. Eventually, she started looking at what she was bringing into those relationships too, including the ways being fiercely independent and always seeming completely fine could make it hard for someone to really get close to her.

That’s where our conversation starts, but we cover a lot of ground. Serena is funny, opinionated and refreshingly willing to talk about the things she got wrong along the way.

One of the things I liked most about talking with Serena is that she hasn’t abandoned the confidence that made her famous. Her understanding of it has just gotten more interesting.

There’s confidence in knowing your worth and having standards. There’s also confidence in letting somebody see you when you don’t have it all together, admitting that you care, and allowing yourself to receive.

And for someone who built an entire brand around being the Queen of Confidence, that feels like a pretty interesting place to have arrived.

To learn more about Serena, pick up a copy of her book, Let's F*cking Date: Become the Prize, Enjoy the Ride, and Never Settle Again. You can also visit her website, subscribe to her YouTube channel, connect with her on LinkedIn and Instagram, and reach out to Serena directly with your dating questions. 

If something in this conversation made you rethink the way you're approaching love, don't stop here. My website offers more content, tools, and upcoming events to keep the conversation alive.

And if a reflection comes up, or you simply want to reach out, I'd love to hear from you. Find me at [email protected].

Because dating isn't just about finding someone. It's also about learning how to stop abandoning yourself while you're looking.

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You meet someone kind to you.

They’re consistent. They call when they say they will. They make it clear they like you. They actually show up.

And somehow... you’re not sure how you feel about them.

Maybe you start looking for reasons something is wrong. You lose interest. You tell yourself there’s no chemistry.

Then someone else comes along who is inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or keeps you guessing, and suddenly you can’t stop thinking about them.

You wait for their texts. You analyze every interaction. You wonder what they’re feeling. The less certain you are about how they feel about you, the more certain you become that you want them.

And eventually you start asking yourself:

Why am I like this?

Why does healthy love feel boring while complicated love feels exciting?

Why do I keep wanting people who make me feel like I have to earn their love?

I’ve heard some version of this question countless times in my practice. And what makes this pattern especially frustrating is that you may already understand exactly where it came from.

Maybe love was inconsistent when you were growing up. Maybe you had to work for attention, affection, or approval. Maybe you learned very early that love comes with uncertainty.

You can understand all of that intellectually and still find yourself wildly attracted to the person who keeps you guessing.

Because insight alone doesn’t necessarily change what your nervous system has learned to recognize as love.

In this Language of Love Session, I answer a question from Pam, who sees this pattern clearly in herself. When someone is kind and available, she becomes bored or suspicious. When someone is inconsistent, she becomes obsessed.

So how do you change what you’re attracted to?

How do you stop sabotaging something healthy because it doesn’t give you the emotional highs and lows you’ve learned to associate with chemistry? And how do you teach your mind and body that calm, consistent love doesn’t mean something is missing?

We talk about how those early patterns get wired into us and what it actually takes to begin changing them, including therapy, somatic work, self-love, and sometimes simply staying long enough to give a healthy person a real chance.

Because if your internal compass was calibrated around inconsistent love, following your instincts can keep leading you back to the very relationships you’re trying to stop choosing.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

If this resonates, subscribe to The Language of Love on your favorite podcast platform. If someone you know needs to hear this, send them this episode. You can reach me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com, and your question could be answered in a future session. For additional support, you can find somatic experiencing practitioners at traumahealing.org, and EMDR therapy and talk therapy can also help you work through the patterns we talked about today.

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Your relationship is going well. The bills are paid. Good sex is there. The laughter comes easily.

You love your partner.

You’re building a life together that looks good on paper.

And often feels good in real life, too.

But every so often, a quiet ache shows up.

A wish for more adventure.

More affection.

More of something you can’t quite name.

Maybe you’re the one who wants spontaneous weekend plans.

They’d rather curl up with a book.

Maybe you’re reaching for more touch, more depth, more play.

They seem perfectly content.

And then the question slips in.

Soft but relentless.

Did I choose wrong?

Am I asking too much?

Or am I settling for too little?

I’ve sat with that question more times than I can count.

And I’ve learned that it rarely means what people think it means.

If you’ve ever loved someone deeply and still felt a little alone in the life you’re building together, this episode is for you.

In this Language of Love Bite, I share a framework I use with clients that completely reframes what’s "missing" in a relationship, and it has almost nothing to do with your partner's shortcomings. It has everything to do with something modern life has quietly stolen from all of us.

Because somewhere along the way, we stopped leaning on friends, community, and connection outside our relationship, and started expecting one person to be all of it. Our best friend. Our therapist. Our adventure buddy. Our spiritual guide. Our everything.

No relationship was ever built to carry that much weight alone.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Why “am I asking too much?” is often the wrong question

The hidden pressure we put on one person to be our everything

How to tell the difference between a relationship problem and a life problem

What your quiet frustration might be trying to tell you

The one question I ask that can turn resentment into clarity

How to protect what matters most in your partnership while building a life that feels full again

If this hits home, follow The Language of Love wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

If someone came to mind while you were listening, share this episode with them.

You can also email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com to have your question answered in a future session.

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Something is happening to our children, and most of us are not paying close enough attention.

The algorithm is reaching them. Predators are reaching them. Drugs are reaching them through the phones we thought were keeping them connected and safe. And for many parents, the first time they realize what is happening is when it is already too late.

If you are a regular listener, you probably know how my son Sammy died. He bought a counterfeit pill laced with fentanyl from a dealer he met on Snapchat. I thought I had done everything I could to keep my home safe. I never imagined that a drug dealer could reach my son through his phone.

But that is the reality parents are facing now.

You may be doing everything you can. Monitoring social media. Limiting screen time. Talking to your kids about strangers, drugs, and online safety. But what happens when the algorithm is reaching them anyway? And what happens when it is reaching their friends, the kids they sit beside at school, play sports with, or spend the night with?

We cannot monitor every conversation. We cannot see every screen. And while all of this is happening, many of us parents are distracted too. We are busy. We are exhausted. We are scrolling.

So how do we raise conscious, grounded daughters and sons in a culture that is constantly competing for their attention?

Dr. Shefali Tsabary joins us  on The Language of Love, and this conversation goes straight into the heart of that question.

Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. For decades, she has challenged parents to look at themselves before trying to fix their children. Now, she is taking on two of the biggest conversations in parenting today: what is happening to our girls, and what is happening to our boys.

Her response came in the form of two books, released at the same time and written in just five and a half months because she believes the moment demands urgency.

In this episode, Dr. Shefali explains why the algorithm targets children differently based on sex, and why it is so effective. We talk about why simply banning social media can give parents a false sense of security, why taking a teenager's phone away overnight can backfire, and what parents can do instead.

Her answer comes down to something that sounds simple, but is incredibly hard to practice: connection.

Real connection. The kind that requires us to put our own phones down, pay attention, and actually be present with our kids.

And then the conversation takes us somewhere many parenting discussions avoid.

We talk about the impossible messages we are sending our boys. Be strong, but do not be domineering. Be vulnerable, but do not appear weak. Be confident, but never intimidating.

Dr. Shefali explains why shaming boys does not teach them to become safer men. It can teach them to hide the very parts of themselves they need to understand.

We also talk about masculinity and femininity, and what it could look like to celebrate these qualities without turning them into rigid boxes. There is room for strength and softness, confidence and vulnerability, masculinity and femininity, and for the many ways those qualities can show up in our children.

This is a conversation about parenting, technology, identity, connection, and the kind of world we are creating for our kids.

And it starts with a question we all need to ask ourselves: Are we really paying attention?

In this episode, we talk about:

If Dr. Shefali’s work resonates with you, you can learn more about her, her two new books, Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons, and the Conscious Parenting Movement at her website.

Her website also offers resources and tools for parents who want to go deeper, including guidance on conscious parenting, connection, and raising emotionally healthy kids. Whether you have daughters, sons, or both, her work meets you where you are and helps you begin with the most important relationship of all: the one you have with yourself.

For more resources, tools, and upcoming events, visit my website.

And if something from this conversation stays with you, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected].

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You know that feeling when something inside you says, Don’t do this. Get out. Something’s wrong.

Sometimes that feeling is your intuition picking up on something before your conscious mind has caught up. But sometimes it’s anxiety. An old wound gets activated, your nervous system goes on high alert, and suddenly everything in you is saying danger even when you’re not actually in danger.

So how do you tell the difference?

A listener named Angel wrote in with this question, and it’s such an important one because once you’ve been hurt, especially in relationships, trusting your gut can get complicated. Maybe there have been times when your instincts were absolutely right. And there may have been other times when fear convinced you something terrible was happening when it wasn’t.

In this Language of Love Session, I talk about how I distinguish intuition from anxiety and, more importantly, what to do when you genuinely can’t tell which one you’re feeling.

One of the biggest clues is how the message arrives. Anxiety tends to be loud, repetitive and urgent. It wants an answer right now. Intuition is usually quieter and clearer. But when your nervous system is activated, even intuition can get tangled up with fear, which is why I don’t recommend making an important decision from that state.

I walk you through a few simple somatic practices to settle the fear enough that you can listen to what’s underneath it. I also show you how to begin learning your body’s own language of expansion and contraction, including a surprisingly easy exercise you can practice with something as simple as foods you love and foods you hate.

In this episode, I talk about:

If you’ve ever thought, I know something feels wrong, but I don’t know if I should trust that feeling, this episode will give you a way to slow things down and get clearer about what your body is actually telling you.

If you'd like to ask a question or get some advice, email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at drlauraberman.com to have your own question answered in a future session. And if you want to go even deeper into somatic work and regulating your nervous system, check out my book, Crying Out Loud, where I dive into even more techniques to help you come back to your body and trust yourself again.

Because you deserve to trust the voice inside you, but first, you have to learn which one is actually yours.

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Butterflies or Red Flags: How to Tell the Difference with Laura Berman

You meet someone and the chemistry is immediate. You can’t stop thinking about them. You’re checking your phone, rereading texts, analyzing what they said, and wondering when you’ll hear from them again.

It feels exciting. Maybe even a little intoxicating.

But is that chemistry? Or is your nervous system getting activated by something that feels very familiar?

In this Language of Love Bite, I’m talking about one of the easiest mistakes to make in dating: assuming that the intensity we feel around someone tells us something about how right they are for us.

Sometimes butterflies really are excitement and attraction. But sometimes what feels like incredible chemistry is uncertainty, anxiety, or an old attachment pattern getting stirred up. And that may also explain why a kind, consistent, emotionally available person can initially feel a little... boring.

So how do you tell the difference?

I’ll show you how to pay attention to what happens after the date, not just during it. Do you leave feeling grounded, open, and more like yourself? Or do you leave preoccupied, anxious, and trying to figure out where you stand?

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Chemistry matters. Attraction matters. But neither one can tell you whether someone is capable of building the kind of relationship you actually want.

And sometimes the person who doesn’t send your nervous system on a roller coaster deserves a second look.

If this conversation resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at languageoflovepod.com.

Like to learn more about how to call healthy love into your life and be a match for it, check out my book Quantum Love

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