The Author Within

Breakups and divorces often pull us back into the oldest beliefs we hold about ourselves, like "I don't matter" or "I'm not lovable." In this episode, Vicky Truong talks with marriage and family therapist and newly certified conscious uncoupling coach Erin Steele about how to separate with awareness instead of reacting from our youngest, most wounded parts. Erin shares her own story, the five stages of the conscious uncoupling process, and why healing after a rupture works better in community than alone.

• Erin Steele's website: erinsteeletherapy.com, with a link to her coaching site

• What's True About You by Katherine Woodward Thomas

• Conscious Uncoupling and Calling in "The One" by Katherine Woodward Thomas

• The Absent Father Effect on Daughters by Susan Schwartz

• The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

• Modalities mentioned: narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), EMDR

• Tonglen meditation (a practice Katherine Woodward Thomas encourages)

• Heartbreak Club (working name): a planned virtual group for women, limited to six to eight participants, launching next year

1. Notice which part of you is reacting. In a breakup, our younger, wounded parts often take over. Practice returning to your "wise adult self" before you respond.

2. Name your source fracture story. The original wound (for example, "I do not matter") shapes how we see ourselves, others, and life. Naming it loosens its grip.

3. Flip the script with a power statement. Turn the old belief into a daily mantra, such as "I do matter," and repeat it morning, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

4. Ask "What's my 3%?" without self-blame. Look at what you tolerated or overlooked, with accountability and compassion rather than shame.

5. Shrink the timeline. Grief doesn't follow a deadline. Ask "Who do I want to be tomorrow?" or "What does she need before five o'clock today?"

Erin Steele is a California-licensed marriage and family therapist and a newly certified conscious uncoupling coach. She works primarily with women navigating relationship struggles, heartbreak, grief, job stress, and major life transitions. Her therapy work integrates narrative therapy, Internal Family Systems, and EMDR. She is developing the Heartbreak Club, a group program based on the five steps of conscious uncoupling.

To work with Erin, visit erinsteeletherapy.com, where you'll also find a link to her coaching practice.

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Resources & ReferencesKey TakeawaysAbout the Guest

At 84, Ottis has lived through segregation-era South Carolina, the Vietnam War, addiction, and incarceration, and emerged as one of the most joyful people you'll ever meet. In this conversation, he shares how choosing happiness, radical self-acceptance, and service to others rebuilt his life from the ground up, and what he's learned helping other families do the same.

Key Takeaways

Trust is a gift, not something earned.  You choose to extend it, while boundaries protect you within that choice.

"Nothing changes if nothing changes." Real transformation requires changing your environment, your inner dialogue, and who you surround yourself with, not just your mindset.

Happiness is a daily choice, independent of circumstances, sustained by a consistent gratitude practice.

Service heals both directions. Helping others, especially for men taught to equate worth with productivity, rebuilds self-worth and breaks isolation.

Family change starts with the individual. You can't control or fix other people; you can only change how you show up.

Guest Bio

Ottis is a coach, motivational speaker, and counselor with over 40 years of experience helping people build meaningful, purpose-driven lives. A Vietnam-era Air Force veteran who overcame addiction and incarceration, he now works with individuals and families navigating recovery, self-worth, and transformation, drawing on his own journey of radical self-acceptance and service to others.

Connect with Ottis: [email protected]

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Steve spent over 20 years as a one-person traffic engineering firm while secretly discovering he could write. In this episode, host Dr. Vicky Truong talks with Steve about his winding path from broadcasting school to screenwriting classes to finally getting his short film, The Camera, a fictional story inspired by his mother's experience in a Japanese-American internment camp during WWII. Along the way: three years of grant rejections, a hard lesson from martial arts about relaxing into power, and what it means to create without needing anyone's approval.

- Steve realized he was in the wrong field only after seeing genuine passion in colleagues who loved their work.

- Three consecutive years of grant rejections eventually led to funding on the third try.

- Despite glowing feedback on an acting role, Steve chose to keep pursuing writing because it was the thing he couldn't walk away from.

- Steve reflects that if his earlier screenplays had succeeded, he might never have written his most meaningful story.

- A martial arts lesson in using internal energy over muscle taught him a principle he later applied to creative problem-solving.

Steve grew up in the Chicago suburbs, moved to California after earning a civil engineering degree, and spent over 20 years running his own traffic engineering firm. Alongside that career, he trained as an on-air radio broadcaster in Los Angeles, appeared as a supporting actor in a feature film, and eventually turned to screenwriting. His short film, The Camera, inspired by his mother's experience in a WWII Japanese-American incarceration camp, is now headed to film festivals. He lives in Laguna Beach with his wife and two sons.

Connect with Steve: www.mariwwalker.com

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In the debut episode of The Author Within, host Dr. Vicky Truong sits down with her close friend and fellow therapist, Nhu Truong, to explore a relationship that rarely gets therapeutic attention: friendship. They dig into narrative therapy, why friendship deserves the same depth of conversation as romance, and how presence, curiosity, and honest disappointment shape the friendships that last.

Key Takeaways

- Friendship deserves the same intentional, therapeutic attention typically reserved for romantic and family relationships.

- Curiosity, staying interested in who your friend is now, not just who they were, is the antidote to friendship stagnation.

- Being explicit about what you can and can't offer a friendship (time, presence, frequency) builds more trust than trying to meet every expectation.

- Disappointment is inevitable in long-term relationships; how you sit with it, rather than avoiding it or cutting someone off, determines whether the friendship survives.

- Presence often matters more than advice: "we don't want to be taught, we just want to be seen."

Guest Bio
Nhu Truong is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist based in Orange County, California, who recently transitioned to full-time private practice. With eight years of clinical experience, including community mental health work with teens and young adults, and training in narrative therapy at Pepperdine University, she now offers friendship therapy alongside more traditional individual work.

Connect with Nhu: https://www.nhutruongtherapy.com/

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Connect with me: https://drvickytruong.com/

Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvickytruong/

Dr. Vicky Truong sits down with Mitch, her friend of 15 years, a 40-year husband, father, grandfather, triathlete, and 30+ year CPG industry veteran, for a wide-ranging conversation on staying centered in a chaotic world. They dig into the five unconscious beliefs that once ran his life, how he learned to talk honestly with his wife about money and fear, and what it really means to lead, sell, and love from a place of service rather than ego.

Key Takeaways

• Identify your unconscious limiting beliefs before you can change the behavior they're driving - Mitch names five that shaped decades of his life.

• A consistent morning routine (reading, writing, prayer, meditation, breath work) can act as "armor" for how you show up in a chaotic day.

• Money and fear go unspoken in a lot of relationships - naming them out loud, even awkwardly, can dissolve most of the pressure around them.

• In both relationships and business, ask "is this about me, or about serving the greater good?", it reframes decisions from leadership to sales.

• Progress doesn't require having it all figured out - faith plus consistent, disciplined action compounds over time.

Guest Bio
Mitch has spent over 30 years in the CPG beverage, snack, and nutrition space, working across startups, Fortune 100 companies, and family-owned businesses, including as company president. He's a husband of 40 years, father, grandfather, and triathlete.

Connect with Mitch: [email protected]

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