In this solo episode, I’m following up on last week’s conversation because many women reached out with the same exhausted question:

Why is it always me who has to change?

Why am I the one being asked to slow down, soften my tone, regulate my emotions, or communicate better when I already feel like I’m carrying everything?

This week, I want to bring much more clarity to what I meant — because this is not about tolerating disrespect, staying silent, or excusing poor behavior.

It’s about something far more uncomfortable: learning to notice what is happening inside of you before you react to what is happening around you.

So many women are living in a constant state of prediction, problem-solving, mental management, and emotional bracing. You are not simply responding to life anymore — you are trying to stay one step ahead of it at all times.

And while that may feel productive... it is quietly stealing your peace, your clarity, and your relationships.

In this episode, I unpack:

✅ Why constantly focusing on who is right and who is wrong keeps you stuck

✅ The hidden identity many women build around “doing everything”

✅ Why overfunctioning can start to feel safer than slowing down

✅ How anxiety grows when you live mentally in the future

✅ The difference between accepting reality and approving of poor treatment

✅ One grounding question that can completely change how you respond in conflict

✅ Why peace often begins when you stop trying to control everything

This conversation is about much more than marriage.

It’s about the way many of us have been trained to believe that doing more, carrying more, anticipating more, and controlling more will eventually make us feel safe.

But for many women, it’s doing the exact opposite.

If you feel depleted, reactive, mentally crowded, and like life is moving by faster than you can catch it — this episode is for you.

Sometimes strength is not found in holding everything together.

Sometimes strength is found in finally asking:

What is actually required of me right now?

In this solo episode, I'm walking you through something I see every single week in my therapy room — and something I've lived myself: the moment a small, ordinary trigger sends your entire nervous system into protection mode, and why the real problem is almost never what you think it is.

I'll walk you through:

✅ The four-step pattern playing out in your marriage on repeat — trigger, prediction, body response, behaviour — and why most couples only ever see the surface of it

✅ Why the problem isn't your husband sitting down, opening the mail, or not noticing you need help

✅ How the role of "the one who holds it all together" slowly becomes an identity you don't even realise you've built

✅ Why your feelings are not always a reliable indicator of what's actually true

✅ The difference between reacting from a threatened identity and responding from a grounded one

✅ What it actually sounds like to ask for what you need — without the tension, the tone, or the expectation baked in

Whether you're exhausted from carrying everything, stuck in the same argument with different words, or wondering why your husband feels more like a roommate than a partner — this episode will help you see what's actually happening beneath the surface.

🔔 Remember: Your patterns are not your identity. And the path to a better marriage isn't more effort or more control — it's more clarity about the story you've been telling yourself all along.

In this solo episode, I'm being honest about something I don't think we talk about enough: what happens after the spiritual highs. It's the Friday after Easter, and instead of feeling joyful and victorious, I've been waking up with this low-level heaviness—not depression, not anything my family would notice, but something quietly off.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why intensity—whether it's Easter, a long-awaited vacation, or a career milestone—often leaves us feeling drained afterward

✅ The intersection of joy and suffering that the cross reveals (and why we can't escape it)

✅ How women especially get stuck in constant mental movement—planning, anticipating, evaluating—even when sitting still

✅ Why the instinct to "fix" ourselves when we feel off is often the wrong move

✅ The difference between circumstantial problems and deeper misalignment

✅ Why I choose work that doesn't make money (my podcast, my writing) and what that says about fulfillment vs. productivity

Whether you're coming down from a spiritual season feeling flat, caught in the mental gymnastics of trying to do enough and be enough, or wondering why rest never feels like rest—this episode offers permission to stop overanalyzing and start realigning.

🔔 Remember: Not everything that feels off needs to be fixed. Sometimes you're just human. And sometimes the answer isn't more productivity or better circumstances—it's coming back into proper alignment with what actually matters.

#TheLuellaJonkShow #AfterTheHigh #EasterReflection #SpiritualIntensity #JoyAndSuffering #WomenAndExhaustion #MentalLoad #SoulFulfillment #Misalignment #ProductivityVsPurpose #ChristianLiving #LentAndEaster #BeingHuman #InnerPeace #GroundedInGod

In this second conversation with Norwegian psychiatrist Hannah Spier, we're diving into territory that most clinicians won't touch: the rise of personality disorders among women, the feminization of therapy that's made gatekeeping impossible, and why credentials alone won't fix what's broken in mental health care.

Hannah doesn't hold back. After years treating patients in outpatient psychiatry, she's watched the diagnostic manual get diluted, differential diagnosis disappear, and an entire generation of women get labeled with disorders they wear like badges of honor.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why Cluster B personality disorders (borderline, narcissism, histrionic, antisocial) are rising—and what's fueling them

✅ How low agreeableness and high neuroticism create the "weaponized emotionality" we see everywhere now

✅ Why the self-esteem movement of the 90s and participation trophies set us up for narcissistic traits

✅ The feminization of therapy—why 85% female therapists means no incentive to gatekeep diagnoses

✅ How secondary gains (attention, accommodation, identity, redemption arcs) keep people sick

✅ Why feminism has trained women to overemphasize their own suffering and contributions in marriage

✅ The difference between relational aggression (women) and outward aggression (men)—and why both are equally destructive

Whether you're a woman who's been called "too much," a therapist struggling with what you're being taught to validate, or someone watching workplace bullying and campus protests wondering what's happening to our culture—Hannah offers the kind of clinically-grounded, fearless perspective that's nearly extinct today.

🔔 Remember: Not every struggle is a diagnosis. And a diagnosis you've incorporated into your identity can never be treated. Real compassion doesn't remove truth—it holds both.

Connect with Hannah Spier:

📰 Substack: https://substack.com/@psychobabblewithspier

📷 Instagram: @psychobabblewithspier

Recommended Videos from Hannah:

▶️ How Dark Traits Express Themselves in Women — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOmG62tyl0

▶️ Why Women Get Away With Narcissism (3 Patterns You'll Recognize) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCRI6u1bl8

▶️ Still Selling Feminism: Our Response to Diary of a CEO — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIys5zTk-xs

In this episode, I share my reflections after listening to a recent Chatelaine podcast on weight, identity, and responsibility.

This is an important and, at times, uncomfortable conversation.

As a therapist, I work with women every day who feel exhausted, disconnected from their bodies, and unsure of what is actually within their control. While modern culture often emphasizes external factors such as media influence, hormones, and environment, we risk removing something essential in the process, personal responsibility.

At the same time, I want to be clear that this conversation does not apply to individuals facing legitimate medical or hormonal conditions that significantly affect weight regulation. Those situations are real and deserve proper care and attention.

What I explore in this episode is something different: the everyday patterns I see in my practice, where chronic stress, lifestyle habits, and disconnection from the body quietly shape a woman’s health.

True compassion does not remove truth. It holds both.

This episode is an invitation to reflect, not react, and to consider where responsibility can become a source of empowerment rather than shame.

🎧 Listen to the Chatelaine podcast episode discussed here:

Chatelaine's Group Chat Podcast: Listen here

In this episode, I'm sitting down with Kate Christie—Australia's top time management expert and the woman who bought a palazzo in Sicily as her midlife manifesto. After losing her ex-husband to pancreatic cancer while raising three teenagers solo, Kate discovered that waiting for "someday" is the biggest trap we fall into. She created what she calls a Life List—not a bucket list for when you're old, but a guide for living audaciously right now.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why tragedy taught Kate that "later might be too late" and how it transformed her entire approach to time

✅ The "24 out the door" parenting philosophy that empowers adult children to thrive independently

✅ How to break down audacious goals into 90-second moments of action

✅ Why empty nesting should be celebrated, not mourned—and what that says about healthy relationships

✅ The three types of Life List goals: Go Big (palazzo dreams), Go Small (daily joy), and Go Now (spontaneity)

Whether you're stuck in survival mode, convinced you need to wait until retirement to live your dreams, or struggling to prioritize yourself after years of giving to everyone else, this conversation offers the framework and permission you need to start living now. Sometimes the path to fulfillment isn't through more planning—it's through taking that first brave step.

🔔 Remember: This isn't about abandoning responsibility or being selfish—it's about recognizing that you've earned your turn. Life is precious, and the relationships we build with our children, partners, and ourselves are strongest when we model what it means to live intentionally.

Connect with Kate Christie:

Website: www.katechristie.com.au

Instagram: @katechristieloves

Facebook: Kate Christie

LinkedIn: Kate Christie

Email: [email protected]

Kate's Book: The Life List: Master Every Moment and Live an Audacious Life

There's a version of conviction that looks a lot like control. And most of us have been living there without realizing it.

This week I'm coming to you solo — and honestly, a little vulnerably — because something came up in my own Faith Formation group that I wasn't expecting. I got defensive. I got reactive. And somewhere in the middle of trying to defend the faith I love, I stopped actually living it.

So let's talk about that.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why defensiveness is one of the most honest signals you'll ever get — if you know how to read it

✅ The difference between standing in truth and standing in your wound

✅ What St. Joseph shows us about how to hold your convictions without becoming loud, harsh, or reactive

✅ Why correcting the people you love the most is probably making things worse — not better

✅ The moment a client told me she just wanted her husband to understand her — and what she actually meant

✅ Why truth never panics — and what it means for the way you show up in conflict

✅ What living your faith quietly actually looks like — because it's not silence and it's not a doormat

Whether it's your marriage, your kids, your politics, or your faith — most of us are trying to force what only presence and consistency can build. We explain more. We get louder. We leave the book on the bedside table and wonder why nothing changes.

St. Joseph never argued. He never convinced anyone of anything. He just lived it — steadily, faithfully, quietly. And it was enough.

It can be enough for us too.

🔔 Remember: Truth doesn't panic. It doesn't need to win. It was here before the argument started — and it'll be here long after it ends.

Connect with Luella: 🙏 Faith Formation Group — reach out to join! Message me through @luellajonk on IG. 💑 Ongoing Conjugal Love Course — now with monthly additions!

In this episode, Catholic educator Ester Munt-Brooks returns for a deeply honest conversation about what it really means to love — not as a feeling, but as a decision. From her years as a free-spirited musician in Spain who wanted nothing to do with commitment, to becoming a daily communicant, devoted wife, and mother of three, Ester unpacks what shifted — and why it took so long to look in the right place.

We'll walk you through:

✅ Why the women you're comparing yourself to might actually be leading you away from peace

✅ What St. Thomas Aquinas can teach us about emotions, free will, and why love is never "just a feeling"

✅ How staying home with her children felt both wrong to her intellect and completely right in her heart — at the same time

✅ Why putting your children first might quietly be destroying your marriage

✅ The small, unsexy acts of love that bring warm feelings back when they've gone cold

✅ Why original sin was — at its root — a trust problem. And why yours probably is too

✅ What it means to be both a strong woman and a receptive one — and why you don't have to choose

Whether you're a high-achieving woman who's starting to feel the weight of all that striving, a wife who has slowly drifted from her husband somewhere between school drop-offs and career deadlines, or someone who has always kept faith at arm's length — Ester speaks your language. Because she used to speak it too.

🔔 Remember: Peace is not the absence of chaos. It's the sign that you're finally loving in the right direction.

Connect with Ester Munt-Brooks:

🌐 Website: https://fevaloryalegria.org

📱 Instagram: @faithwithjoytalks

In this eye-opening episode, Norwegian psychiatrist Hannah Spier joins us from Zurich to share what she discovered after years of treating anxious, depressed women in outpatient clinics — and why she ultimately walked away from a high-flying career to become a stay-at-home mother of three. Hannah is the voice behind Psychobabble with Spier, where she analyzes the psychological patterns in our culture that quietly incentivize dysfunction.

What started as a conversation about her clinical work turned into something far more personal — and far more powerful.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why so many women in their 30s are flooding therapists' offices — and why it's not a psychological problem

✅ How modern therapy (including CBT) has drifted toward endless validation instead of real behavioral change

✅ The moment Hannah realized she was on the same path as her most struggling patients

✅ What happened when she put her daughter in daycare at 7 months — and what it cost her family

✅ Why she calls feminism "an ideology of resentment" — and how she broke free from it

✅ The surprising statistics on Norwegian mothers extending maternity leave at their own expense

✅ How Cluster B personality disorders are rising — and what's fueling them

Whether you're a woman questioning whether your career ambitions are truly yours, a therapist wondering if your sessions are actually helping, or someone who senses that our culture's prescription for female fulfillment just isn't working — Hannah offers the kind of honest, medically-grounded perspective that is rarely heard today.

🔔 Remember: Anxiety and depression are often your body speaking to you. The solution isn't always found on the therapy couch — sometimes, it's found in how you're choosing to live.

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Hannah's relevant links:

Substack (Psychobabble with Spier): https://substack.com/@psychobabblewithspier?r=1rqrel&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile&shareImageVariant=image

Instagram: @psychobabblewithspier — https://www.instagram.com/psychobabblewithspier/

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🎥 Noteworthy Videos from Hannah — Recommended Watching:

▶️ How Dark Traits Express Themselves in Women — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOmG62tyl0

▶️ Why Women Get Away With Narcissism (3 Patterns You'll Recognize) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXCRI6u1bl8

▶️ Still Selling Feminism: Our Response to Diary of a CEO — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIys5zTk-xs

In this episode, I sit down with Father Joseph de Viveiros, a priest of the Congregation of the Resurrection and chaplain for the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board. Father brings decades of pastoral experience—from directing liturgy for World Youth Day 2002 with John Paul II to now caring for his 94-year-old mother with dementia—and his insights on Lent cut straight through the surface-level stuff we've been getting wrong for years.

I'll walk you through:

✅ Why Lent is about transformation, not willpower—and why the palms that become ashes hold the secret

✅ The two types of fasting nobody talks about—and why one of them you should never stop doing after Easter

✅ Why giving up chocolate is fine—but only if you're filling that emptiness with what actually matters

✅ How fasting from evil (gossip, harsh words, judgment) is the real fast God wants from us

✅ Why Pope Francis is calling us to "disarm our language" this Lent—and what that looks like in practice

✅ The difference between suffering we create and suffering that just comes our way—and how both can be redemptive

✅ Why showing up matters more than you think—and what Father's 94-year-old mother taught him about presence

✅ How we've become isolated in a hyperconnected world—and why getting to Mass is about becoming who you were made to be

Whether you're trying to figure out what to give up for Lent, struggling with discipline in a world of endless comfort, or wondering why showing up to church even matters anymore, Father Joseph offers wisdom that's grounded in real life, real suffering, and real transformation. This isn't about perfection. It's about conversion.

🔔 Remember: Fasting from things that are good creates space for God. But fasting from evil? That's the fast you keep forever.

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Fr. Joseph de Viveiros's relevant links: Instagram: @fr.josephcr Location: North Bay, ON Canada