Red Flags & Real Love

Send us Fan Mail

Is that feeling in your gut your intuition, or your trauma talking? LCSW and narcissistic abuse recovery specialist Barbara Duchnowski joins Virginia to break down how to tell the difference, and why insight alone isn’t enough to heal.

In this episode

• How to tell a panicky trauma response from steady intuition
• A simple body scan you can do anywhere
• Why a “pit in the stomach” can mean two very different things
• Gentle breathing resets for hypervigilance (5 minutes a day)
• How an intuition log helps you rebuild self-trust
• Why survivors stop trusting their gut, and why seeing the pattern isn’t always enough to leave
• How triangulation and charming partners make you doubt what you see
• Why survivors are not weak. They’re often high in empathy, loyalty, and openness.

About the guest
Barbara Duchnowski is a licensed clinical social worker, narcissistic abuse recovery specialist, EMDR therapist, and clinical hypnosis practitioner. She is also a survivor herself.
🔗 Website: https://newleafpsychotherapyllc.com/
▶️ YouTube: Barbara Duchnowski LCSW - 

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Losing money to a romance scam is one kind of devastation. Being found, months later, by someone offering to recover it for you — and losing again — is another.

My guest today is Susan Schleppegrell, author of Twice Betrayed. She has a background in human development and positive psychology coaching and has spent years as a realtor. None of that protected her, and that's precisely her point: this happens to capable, accomplished, clear-thinking people.

In this episode:

• How a romance scam actually builds — the attention, the trust, the slow handoff into crypto
• Love bombing and manufactured urgency: the same two levers that run bad relationships, aimed at your bank account
• The second betrayal — a "recovery" offer from someone posing as help, and why victims are a target list
• Why being smart and successful makes you a mark rather than a hard sell
• Shame and regret as the part that lingers longest after the money is gone
• Self-forgiveness with accountability — holding both at once instead of choosing one
• Growing Forward, her companion workbook, and why she framed healing as tending a garden

If you've been through something like this and haven't told anyone, that silence is the pattern working exactly as designed.

Find Susan:

• Website, free downloads and resources: Finding growth after betrayal | Susan Schleppegrell
• Twice Betrayed and Growing Forward Book

If this is happening to you: report fraud at reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov. Reporting early matters, and it costs nothing.

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns
• Follow along on Instagram and Facebook @officialvirginiamcconnell

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Ralph Brewer's origin story starts with discovering his wife's affair 14 years ago and becoming a single father to three kids overnight. What followed — years of gaslighting, denial, and eventually a messy dating rebound — became the foundation for Help For Men, a movement that's now reached millions.

In this episode, Ralph gets real about the anxious/avoidant attachment dynamic that drives so many failed relationships, why the "chemistry" that feels most intense early on is often the biggest red flag of all, and how he learned — the hard way — that he kept attracting the same type of partner because of unresolved patterns from his own childhood. We also talk about rebuilding identity after divorce, why solitude is dangerous for men specifically, and why "cooling it" on dating for a full year after a breakup might be the smartest advice no one wants to hear.

Ralph is the founder of Help For Men and the Help For Men Brotherhood, a community of over 800 men worldwide, and the author of five books including his bestseller The Dead Bedroom Fix and his newest, Rebuild.

Website: http://helpformen.com

Book: http://deadbedroomfix.com

Social: search "Dad Starting Over" (his podcast/brand handle across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook)

To find his other podcast appearances: search "Ralph Brewer" on Google

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

You leave the conversation, get in the car, and suddenly the exact words arrive. You didn't get wiser on the drive home. You just got access back.

My guest is Diane McDowell, a therapist and relationship and leadership coach who began her career in a mental health emergency room. She's the creator of a concept she calls Access Lost: the quiet process that pulls us away from the skills we know we have, long before anything looks like a red flag.

In this episode:

• Why "brain hijack" isn't really sudden, and the sequence that happens first: attention shifts, meaning gets made, energy changes
• Why one bad conversation doesn't make you "a poor communicator"
• Giving yourself permission to pause and say "I need a second"
• Why manipulation makes it so easy to believe the problem is you
• Couples counseling when manipulation is in the room, and why individual sessions first can be safer
• Protection versus connection: softening your words, shrinking your voice, making your body smaller
• Why you shouldn't convince your nervous system you're safe when you aren't
• A boundary versus a wall: stonewalling versus "I love you, and I need to stop talking so I don't say something mean"
• Boundaries as what you will do, never what someone else must do

Her closing point: if we were kinder to ourselves, we'd be kinder to everyone else.

Find Diane:

• Website: Diane E. McDowell | The Access Framework
• Read chapter one of her new book, Becoming Available to Yourself: Read Chapter One | Becoming Available to Yourself | Diane E. McDowell

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns
• Follow along on Instagram and Facebook @officialvirginiamcconnell

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Content note: this episode includes descriptions of abuse, addiction, and violence. Support is available — the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. Take breaks. Come back when you want to.

Most guests describe one relationship. Today's guest describes three, each of them close to a decade long — and says the red flags were never hidden in any of them. They were visible from the first week. She saw them, picked them up, and carried them anyway.

In this episode:

• One week of love bombing at the start of each relationship — and years spent trying to get back to it
• Gaslighting so complete that he once opened a door and pretended not to know her, while she stood there holding their baby
• What happens when the people around you start deciding the common denominator must be you
• Why she chose partners she thought she could fix, and what that said about what she believed she deserved
• How addiction arrived — first as mockery for not drinking, then as seven years of her life
• The moment her daughter was born and she realised the cycle was about to have a second generation
• Boundaries — the one thing she'd go back and tell herself, and why it matters most for neurodivergent people who were raised believing something was wrong with them
• What ten years single, twelve years sober, and a business built from nothing actually looks like

She says the guilt is the only lasting damage — not the broken nose, not the years. The guilt about what her children saw.

If you're hearing your own life in this, that's not proof anything is wrong with you.

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns
• Follow along on Instagram and Facebook @officialvirginiamcconnell

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Some patterns don't announce themselves. They arrive quietly, build slowly, and by the time you have language for what's happening, years have gone by.

My guest today is Mia Hanks, an author and survivor who spent 29 years inside a marriage marked by covert narcissistic abuse — the kind that leaves no marks anyone else can see. She's written two memoirs about that experience, and in this conversation she shares what those years actually looked like from the inside.

If you've ever wondered why it took you so long to see it, Mia's story is a reminder that the answer is usually built into how these patterns work — not into anything wrong with you.

Find Mia:

• Books and more of her story: https://miajhanks.com 
• Narcissism in Marriage: Understanding the Cycle of Abuse

Ready to go deeper?

More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net

• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Everyone around you can see it. Your sister sees it, your best friend sees it. And none of it moves you an inch. Dr. Eric Williams explains why — and it's not stubbornness.

My guest is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 20+ years of experience, an Army veteran, and creator of the Shared Language Framework, built for couples in their first five years before resentment sets in. He's worked with over 500 couples worldwide.

In this episode:

• Why two people can both be trying and still fail — "clean," "help," and "love" don't mean the same thing to both of them
• The six reasons couples end up in his office
• Why "you've changed" is his biggest pet peeve — and why both of you should have
• Trading right versus wrong for what's working versus what's not
• Can't versus won't — why "you knew how I was when you met me" is a forecast, not a defense
• Taking accountability without taking the blame
• The three questions: Is this relationship meeting your expectations? How long can I do this? What am I willing to do about it?

Nobody can answer those three for you. Nothing moves until you do. It took me a year to answer mine.

Find Dr. Eric Williams:

• Free communication quiz: whywefight.coastalfamilymedia.com/quiz
• Community: skool.com/the-origin-code-project

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns
• Follow along on Instagram and Facebook @officialvirginiamcconnell

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when you leave an unhealthy or abusive relationship, but your body still feels like you're in danger?

In this powerful conversation, Virginia McConnell sits down with Jessy Pearson Cheney, an Emotion Code practitioner who helps women rebuild trust in their bodies after relationships that taught them to ignore their own intuition.

Jessy shares her personal journey through trauma and domestic violence, and explains why healing isn't always about understanding everything intellectually. Sometimes, the body needs to be part of the healing process too.

Together, Virginia and Jessy explore how trauma can affect the nervous system, disconnect us from our intuition, and keep us repeating relationship patterns—even when our minds know better. They discuss self-trust, fight-or-flight responses, emotional patterns, movement, and practical ways to reconnect with your body and begin feeling safe again.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why leaving an unhealthy relationship doesn't automatically erase the patterns it created
How trauma can disconnect you from your body and intuition
Why you may know someone isn't safe logically but still feel drawn to them emotionally
How rebuilding a relationship with your body can help restore self-trust
The role of movement in releasing stress and pent-up emotions
How body-based approaches can complement therapy and other forms of healing
Simple ways to begin listening to what your body is telling you

If you've ever questioned your intuition, struggled to trust yourself after a difficult relationship, or wondered why your body still reacts even when you're finally safe, this conversation is for you.

Listen in and discover what it can look like to stop overriding yourself—and start trusting yourself again.

About Jessy Pearson-Cheney
Emotion Code Practitioner

Jessy works with women rebuilding trust in their own body after a relationship that taught them not to.

Having experienced domestic violence herself, she brings more than theory to this work; she’s walked through it and found her way out.

What she sees, again and again, is that leaving the relationship isn’t where the pattern ends. The body often keeps replaying old wiring long after the danger is gone, staying too long, missing red flags, feeling drawn to familiar dynamics that don’t actually feel safe, even when the mind knows better.

Jessy gets to the root of where that wiring started and helps clear it directly, so safety isn’t just something a woman knows intellectually, it’s something her body finally believes.

Women who work with her leave feeling safer in their own skin, more able to trust their own read on people and situations, and less pulled back toward the same pattern again.

Ways to contact; 

[email protected] 
All socials: @jessypearsoncheney

Text: 765-436-0985

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

Most people go into relationships with hope and a good feeling. Anil Gupta goes in with a system — and he's blunt about why: roughly nine out of ten relationships fail, and most people are on their fifth, sixth, or seventh before they marry, still guessing.

My guest today has spoken in 18 countries, shared stages with Richard Branson, Les Brown, and Daymond John, spoken at Harvard, TEDx, and on Fox News, and met the Dalai Lama. He's a five-time international bestselling author. He also built all of it out of the hardest moment of his life, in 2008.

What he brought to this conversation wasn't inspiration. It was homework.

In this episode:

• The happiness formula: giving × gratitude × growth, scored out of ten — and the pickleball fall that took him from 729 to 1 in half an hour, and how he climbed back before the day was out
• The hundred-dollar-note exercise: why your worth doesn't move no matter what's been said about you or done to you
• The moment he stopped me mid-sentence to correct how I described my own past — and what saying "I had none" does to the brain that "I had less" doesn't
• Awareness → clarity → focus → action → results → momentum, and the small daily practice that starts it
• Why "speak less, listen more" is a relationship skill, not a manners rule
• The three-way test every partner has to pass: integrity, being loving to everyone not just you, and being healthy — emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally, and financially
• A-B-C-D-E-F-G: Always Be Collecting Data, then Evaluate, Finalize, and Go. 
• Looking for alignment: the dog question, and how a two-minute exchange tells you whether someone is telling you the truth
• Why he'd tell you not to date at all yet — and why coffee at an awkward hour reveals more than dinner ever will
• The question to ask about their last relationship, and what complaining versus complimenting predicts about how they'll talk about you

If you've ever wondered why the same thing keeps happening, this episode hands you a method instead of a feeling.

Find Anil:

• http://meetanil.com

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.

Send us Fan Mail

There's a moment in dating when the story stops being about them and starts being about you. NK Navarro found hers in a coffee shop, in tears, at 40.

My guest today is NK Navarro, author of When the Bar Is in Hell: Dating at 40. She's an entrepreneur, educator, and single mom with two master's degrees who relocated to get specialized care for her youngest son — and who then spent five years discovering that experience doesn't make dating any less complicated. Her book started as journal entries she'd read aloud to friends, who kept telling her the stories were too good not to publish.

She's not wrong. Wait until you hear about the minivan.

In this conversation:

• The coffee date that unraveled in real time — the makeup on his shirt, the device on his dashboard, and the phone call that explained everything
• Why she kept swiping right on the same kind of man, and what it took to admit the pattern was hers
• "Fire" — the one who didn't fit her checklist, had his life together, and told her the truth she wasn't ready for
• The sentence in the middle of her tears that changed everything: you are single because of you
• Why she didn't chase him back, and what respecting someone's no taught her about respecting her own
• Being a lifelong fixer, and learning that the word no ends with a period
• The three practices that actually hold her together: gym time with no screens, a midday walk with the dog, and a journaling rule her mom taught her — every entry has to end on something good, however small

This one is funny. Genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny. It's also one of the most honest accounts of self-accountability we've had on the show — because the hardest pattern to spot is the one you're choosing.

Find NK:

• Website: nknavarro.com
• TikTok: @authornknavarro
• Facebook: Author NK
• When the Bar Is in Hell: Dating at 40 — available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Books-A-Million, Indigo (Canada), and independent bookstores

Ready to go deeper?

• More of Virginia's story at http://breakthepatterns.net
• Book a complimentary consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns
• Follow along on Instagram and Facebook @officialvirginiamcconnell

Support the show

Red Flags & Real Love is a Break the Patterns podcast, hosted by Virginia McConnell — Dating and Relationship Pattern Coach, specializing in narcissistic abuse recovery.

🔗 Free quiz: breakthepatterns.netlify.app
 🔗 Website: breakthepatterns.net
 📅 Book a free coaching consultation: calendly.com/breakthepatterns

Connect with Virginia:
 📸 Instagram: instagram.com/officialvirginiamcconnell
 👥 Facebook: facebook.com/officialvirginiamcconnell

New episodes every week.