Conversations from the Heart
A weekly, soul-nourishing podcast offering psychologically grounded, heart-centered reflections on human relationships, inner healing, and compassion-based communication.
Focused on live mini-coaching moments to help callers shift from reactive, domination-based communication to collaborative, heart-centered connection. Listen for new scripts for stuck situations, new ways of responding to old relationship dynamics and guidance on how to approach these situations with empathy, self-awareness, and effective communication strategies. Here, we emphasize understanding both one's own needs and the needs of others, creating safe spaces for vulnerable conversations, and finding ways to express ourselves authentically while respecting others' boundaries.
Episodes
144 episodes
#142 - Why We Get Defensive, and What to Do Instead
Why do we get defensive in conversations with the people we care about?Sometimes defensiveness looks like arguing or pushing back. But it can also show up in quieter ways—freezing when someone makes a request, explaining ourselves over a...
#141 - Is it Possible to Stay Friends With My Ex?
Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do after a breakup is not to force a friendship too quickly.Because friendship requires emotional neutrality… and if our nervous system still recognizes the other person as home, we have a mi...
#140 - What Matters When the Rules Fall Away
Listen as I sit down with Michaela and Carol for a spacious, grounded conversation about what matters most when certainty falls away.Rather than rushing toward answers, our dialogue unfolds slowly. You’ll hear me modeling deep list...
#139 - Living With Grief That Doesn't Go Away
This week's episode is a conversation about grief as an ongoing, relational experience rather than something to “get over.” In this episode, we explore ambiguous loss, nervous system capacity, and what actually helps when grief doesn’t resolve ...
#138 - The Relational Leadership Field Guide
Relational leadership isn’t people-pleasing and it isn’t weakness.In this episode, we explore how to lead with empathy and clarity in high-stakes professional settings. Through two real leadership scenarios involving negotiation and supe...
#137 - Loving Someone in Crisis Without Losing Yourself
What do you do when caring for someone in crisis starts to cost you your health, your sleep, and your sense of self?Today we explore one of the most painful and complex relational dilemmas: how to stay loving and connected with a family ...
#136 - How to Stay Grounded When Someone Criticizes You
Does your body tighter when someone criticizes you? Do you start apologizing or over-explaining before you’ve even thought it through?In this insightful episode, Jaya brings two powerful stories that reveal how early experiences of conte...
#135 - Caretaking vs. Compassion
What’s the line between loving someone and losing yourself in the process?This week, we explore the subtle differences between caretaking and compassion. Khanyilanga wrestles with how to set loving boundaries with a friend s...
#134 - How to Let Go When You Still Love Them
In this episode of Conversations from the Heart, we explore one of the most bewildering dynamics in adult relationships: when we find ourselves deeply attached to someone who simply cannot meet us where we are. Even when ou...
#133 - How to Help Kids (And Ourselves) Do Hard Things
This conversation invites us to explore one of the deepest lessons in emotional maturity: learning to be in relationship with our feelings without being ruled by them. Through a heartfelt dialogue about parenting, school anxiety, an...
#132 - Reconnecting After Years of Conflict, Criticism, and Emotional Withdrawal
When life has hurt us enough times, our hearts learn to protect themselves.We grow cautious. Controlled. We tell ourselves we’re being “realistic,” when really, we’re just afraid to be hurt again.In this week’s episode, I talk wit...
#131 - When Anger Drives
What if anger didn’t have to be a threat to love, and vulnerability didn’t mean weakness?This week we begin with a moment many of us recognize: a flash of road rage, a surge of intensity, a body flooded with energy. Beneath moments like ...
#130 - Understanding Stigma: How Judgment Replaces Empathy
We all carry invisible stories about what it means to be a “good person,” a “hard worker,” or someone who has truly earned what they have. But what happens when we meet someone who doesn’t fit those stories? Someone living on disabi...
#129 - How to Stay Grounded When Someone’s Coming in Hot
What happens in you when someone comes at you with intensity?Do you freeze, go blank, lose your words, or start doubting yourself?We explore what it means to stay grounded when another person’s energy feels too hot to handle by ta...
#128 - How to Interrupt When They Talk Too Much
Ever find yourself trapped in a conversation that feels endless, feeling your energy draining as someone keeps talking and talking? Today we explore how to stay kind, connected, and honest while trying to interrupt.We unpack ...
#127 - What to Say When Fear is Reading Rejection (that may not be there)
Fear loves to make up stories, especially about rejection.In this episode, Jodi and Jen bring us into real moments of reaching out, risking love, and meeting old anxieties with new courage. We explore how fear distorts realit...
#126 - Want Someone to Be More Emotionally Available to You?
If you’ve ever found yourself wishing your partner would just open up, this conversation will speak directly to your heart.In this intimate episode, Nina brings forward a question many of us quietly wrestle with: What do I do when I ...
#125 - When Saying "No" Brings Up Old Fears
Why does saying no make your heart race?Why can honesty feel like risk?This episode explores what happens when boundaries stir up the old fear of losing love. Paul learns how a simple process check can bring kindness to endings, w...
#124 - When You’re Doing All The Emotional Labor
In this week's conversation, Vanessa brings forward the pain of a friendship that feels increasingly one-sided. Together, we explore the difference between situational limits and structural limits in relationships, how to trust the “data” we re...
#123 - They Took Out the Line About Me
When Nancy learned that her niece had removed a single sentence from a family speech, one that acknowledged Nancy’s marriage and presence, it triggered a wave of old pain. What may seem like a small omission unearthed decades of erasure, advoca...
#122 - When Correction Feels Like Criticism
What do you do when someone corrects you publicly, and their tone stings more than their words?In this episode, Tarjia brings a deeply relatable dilemma: how to respond in the moment when someone interrupts, “clarifies,” or subtly shames...
#121- How to love a parent who rejects your help
What do we do when the person who raised us is now emotionally volatile, resistant to help, and unintentionally casting us as the villain when we try to care for them?In this heartfelt conversation, Diana brings forward the tender, painf...
#120 - It’s Not About the Chocolate: How to Stay Whole When You Feel Talked Down To
In this episode, Sarah brings a heartfelt and tender question: How do I talk to a friend who shifts from playful connection to subtle moralizing which often causes me to feel infantilized and shut down?What follows is a rich, layered exp...
#119 - How to Talk to Your Emotionally Unsafe Parent
What do you do when every conversation with a parent leaves you feeling erased, criticized, or shut down, but walking away feels like betrayal?In this raw and tender coaching session, we meet Suzanne, who’s struggling to navigate contact...
#118 - How to Talk About Your Partner’s Driving (Without Starting a Fight)
In this intimate coaching conversation, Colleen brings a familiar dilemma: her husband drives too fast for her nervous system to handle. She doesn’t want to control him, but she does want to feel safe. Together, we unpack how to name her limits...