That question has been on my mind after two clients asked me to record this episode.

For some of us, touch meant comfort and safety.

For others, it meant obligation, manipulation, or even fear.

Some of us grew up in families that hugged all the time. Others rarely experienced physical affection. And sometimes, it wasn't the presence or absence of touch that mattered most—it was what that touch came to mean.

In this episode, I explore:

One of the ideas I keep coming back to is this:

Children don't just survive their families. They mistake their families for the whole world.

The good news is that our first map doesn't have to be our final one.

I'd love to hear from you:

What did touch teach you about relationships growing up?

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

#Attachment #HealingJourney #TraumaRecovery #Relationships #EmotionalHealth #Therapy #MentalHealth #ChildhoodTrauma #Connection #Boundaries #PersonalGrowth #ThanksForSharingPodcast  

One of the biggest surprises in healing is that being healthier doesn't always feel better, at least not at first. The people around you have learned the old dance just as much as you have. So when you stop over-explaining, caretaking, shutting down, or apologizing for everything, the relationship often wobbles before it finds a new rhythm.

That doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.

It means the choreography is changing.

In this final episode of my four-part series, we explore:

One of the biggest lessons I've had to learn is this:

Being needed isn't the same as being loved.

Changing that belief didn't just change me; it changed the expectations inside some of my relationships. Growth doesn't happen in isolation. It happens one relationship at a time.

 Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episode on YouTube.

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

That's because understanding a pattern and interrupting it are two different skills. And interrupting it and actually replacing it — building something to put in its place — that's a third skill entirely. That's what this episode is about.

The second response isn't a version of you that shows up once you've healed enough. It's a direction. Something small and specific and chosen, built from a value you actually hold, practiced in moments that don't matter so that it's available when they do.

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

That's not a character flaw. It's the difference between insight and integration, and they are not the same thing.

In this episode, I'm talking about why understanding your patterns doesn't automatically change them, what's actually happening in your nervous system when insight isn't enough, and the real mechanisms that create lasting change — including corrective experience, practicing in activated states, and why repair might be the most underestimated part of healing.

If you've ever thought "I know this stuff, so why do I keep doing it?" — this one's for you.

 [link in bio]

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

I said that in a men's group a few years ago — and the room went silent.

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

"All behavior makes sense. And if it doesn't make sense yet — we keep asking questions until it does."

This is one of the phrases I say most in my work, and in this episode I'm unpacking where it actually came from. Not grad school. Life.

I'm sharing two stories that changed how I see people — one from a cassette tape in my car, and one from a borrowed office and a father who asked me point-blank what he smelled like. Both of them taught me the same thing: behavior doesn't live in a vacuum. It lives inside a context. And once you understand the context, almost everything makes sense.

This one is for therapists, parents, and anyone who has ever written someone off before they understood them — including themselves.

New episode is live. Link in bio. 

#podcast #therapist #mentalhealth #curiosity #allbehaviormakessense #therapy #selfawareness #attachmenttheory #nervoussystem #healing

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

In this episode, we explore the difference between values and beliefs — and why that distinction matters so deeply in healing, recovery, relationships, and identity.

We talk about:

This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered:

 Listen now on Thanks for Sharing.

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

#healing #traumahealing #attachment #betrayaltrauma #therapy #mentalhealth #selfawareness #relationships #innerchildhealing #recovery #emotionalhealth #psychology #healingjourney #codependency #jackiepack

In this episode, we explore the quiet loneliness of being surrounded by people who don't really know you, the fear underneath the masks we wear, and what it ttakes to build the kind of friendship that survives time, change, and all the complicated business of being human. Plus: the girls' weekend nobody talks honestly about, a friendship that didn't just fade but detonated, and a personal reckoning with what it means to be a therapist trying to have friends who aren't. No listicles. Just an honest conversation about one of the most important and most complicated things in a life.

 Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links

You did the hard thing. You said it.

And then you felt worse.

That guilt, that dread, that urge to immediately walk it back — that's not a sign you did something wrong.

It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. Just not for the life you're trying to build.

In today's episode, I'm breaking down the 7 reasons the aftermath of a boundary feels like a crisis:  the grief, the identity disruption, the fear of abandonment, the cognitive dissonance, and what's actually happening in your body when a familiar dynamic gets disrupted.

Because nobody told us the relief doesn't come right away. And that silence has led many people to give up on themselves too soon.

New episode is out now. Link in bio. 

Have a question or something you’d like me to talk about in a future episode?

You can call the show and leave a voicemail or send me an email — I love hearing from you, and your feedback helps shape these conversations. 

https://thanksforsharingpodcast.my.canva.site/thanks-for-sharing-links