The Deeper Thinking Podcast

May 1, 2025

The Patterns We Made to Survive - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

The Patterns We Made to Survive The Deeper Thinking Podcast What if the habits you now resent were once the very strategies that kept you safe? In this episode, we explore how emotional survival strategies—like perfectionism, dissociation, or compulsive care for others—begin as intelligent responses to fear, chaos, or invisibility. But what happens when they outlive their purpose? When the same patterns that protected us become the ones that keep us distant, small, or exhausted? This is not an essay about transformation as triumph. It is a meditation on return—on meeting the younger self who built those patterns, not with critique, but with companionship. With quiet references to Donald Winnicott, Bessel van der Kolk, Judith Herman, and Melanie Klein, we explore therapy not as cure, but as the slow undoing of shame, the repatriation of grief, and the gentle practice of coherence in place of performance. What if your sadness made sense? What if your reflex to withdraw was once wisdom? And what if healing isn’t about becoming someone new—but about becoming someone less edited, more met, more whole? This episode isn’t a solution. It’s a small, spacious field where permission lives. A place where presence replaces perfection, and the self is welcomed, not fixed. Why Listen? Reframe self-sabotage and grief as intelligent adaptations, not dysfunction Explore therapy as a relational, non-performative act of emotional repair Engage with contemporary psychoanalytic and relational theory without jargon Experience a spacious, gently recursive reflection on the long arc of healing Listen On: YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts Bibliography Winnicott, Donald. The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. Hogarth Press, 1965. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books, 1992. van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score. Viking, 2014. Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude. Tavistock, 1957. Laing, R.D. The Divided Self. Penguin, 1960. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press, 1982. Bibliography Relevance Donald Winnicott introduces the concept of the “true self” protected beneath compliance—supporting the essay’s motif of invisible survival logic. Judith Herman reframes trauma as a structural reality, grounding the essay’s recursive grief arc. Bessel van der Kolk reveals how the body archives what the mind cannot narrate—echoing the physicality of dissociation and reflex. Melanie Klein offers insights into ambivalence, envy, and projection—aligning with the essay’s ethical ambiguity around healing and resentment. R.D. Laing explores fractured identity in systems of control—mirroring the internal division of the adapted self. Carol Gilligan reframes moral development through relational voice—affirming the essay’s central ethic of listening over solving. #SelfSabotage #GriefAndHealing #TherapyAsReturn #Winnicott #VanDerKolk #Klein #EmotionalRepair #RelationalTrauma #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast

April 30, 2025

About The Deeper Thinking Podcast.

April 30, 2025

What Boys Become When No One Stays - The Deeper Thinking Podcast

What Boys Become When No One Stays The Deeper Thinking Podcast What if the most fragile structure in a boy’s life wasn’t failure, but the absence of someone who stayed? In this episode, we explore how masculinity is shaped not through strength or ideology, but through vacancy. From silent fathers to algorithmic mimicry, from emotional suppression to disappearing mentorship, we trace how disconnection becomes a blueprint—and what it takes to unwrite it. This is not an argument. It is a quiet cartography of presence, return, and the soft work of becoming someone who stays. With quiet references to Scott Galloway, Hannah Arendt, bell hooks, and Simone Weil, we reflect on masculinity not as an identity, but as a relational ethic—something built, moment by moment, in the presence of another who does not leave. Why Listen? Explore how absence—not aggression—has shaped the inner lives of boys Reflect on masculinity as contribution, presence, and emotional inheritance Understand the cultural collapse of mentorship—and what might restore it Engage with ethical masculinity without ideology or spectacle Listen On: YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts Bibliography Galloway, Scott. The Algebra of Happiness. New York: Portfolio, 2019. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. hooks, bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Atria Books, 2004. Weil, Simone. Gravity and Grace. London: Routledge, 2002. Perry, Grayson. The Descent of Man. London: Penguin Books, 2016. Bibliography Relevance Scott Galloway’s insights on mentorship and male failure quietly shaped the foundational hinge of the episode. Hannah Arendt’s work on responsibility and natality informed the ethic of offering more than you take. Bell Hooks’ vision of masculinity as a site of love, not domination, underpins the emotional architecture of the piece. Simone Weil’s emphasis on attention as a moral act underlies the deeper call to witness boys differently. Grayson Perry’s cultural critiques of masculinity’s rigidity provide a soft counterpoint to inherited norms. #Masculinity #Boyhood #Mentorship #ScottGalloway #BellHooks #HannahArendt #SimoneWeil #EmotionalLiteracy #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast