In this episode, I speak with a mother who wants to be a more loving, present, and supportive parent… but keeps noticing that what she intends as help is often experienced by her family as criticism.

Together, we explore what happens when awareness arrives after the moment, and you can finally see the impact of how you’ve been showing up, but don’t yet know how to consistently do it differently.

We talk about the heartbreak of hearing your child say, All I remember is you yelling.

The tension between who you were and who you’re trying to become.

And the messy, human process of repairing relationships while you’re still learning.

This conversation moves beyond just be more empathic and into the deeper work of:

•How to stay open when your past is still being brought into the present

•Why “helping” often sounds like criticism to our kids

•How to shift from controlling and correcting to connecting and coaching

If you’ve ever thought, I’m trying so hard to do better; why does it still come out this way?, this episode is for you.

Listen to learn:

•Why awareness often comes after the moment, and why that’s not failure

•How to repair with your child without collapsing into shame

•The difference between guiding your child and trying to shape them

If you’re wanting more support in shifting from correction and control to connection and attunement, I go much deeper into this work inside my Parenting Masterclass available in the School of Human Connection.

Inside, we explore:

•how to work with your own reactivity and judgment

•how to build connection without losing structure or boundaries

•and how to support your child’s development without trying to shape or fix who they are

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

Read more on the blog.

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

How do you respond when someone you love says they feel guarded around you?

Carol’s question about how to start a difficult conversation quickly reveals something deeper: a long history of sibling dynamics, childhood wounds, and the painful feeling of being the less-loved child.

Together, we unpack what guardedness really is, why it forms, and how resentment, longing, and the need to feel loved can all live just beneath the surface.

This conversation is an invitation to move beyond trying to change others—and instead begin the deeper work of understanding ourselves, softening our defenses, and creating the conditions where something new might emerge.

Listen to learn:

• Why guardedness in relationships is often mutual—even when it doesn’t seem that way

• How resentment can keep others “on the hook” and quietly block connection

• Why healing relational wounds requires more than insight—it requires new relational experiences

Read more about softening on the blog.

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

In this episode, I speak with two callers whose stories reveal a powerful tension many of us live inside: trying to heal in a culture that wants to fix us.

Kate struggles with crying that shows up quickly in conversations and professional settings. Her inner critic tells her this means something is wrong with her. Together we explore a different possibility: that tears may be the nervous system’s way of releasing pain and restoring balance.

Shelly’s story reveals another layer of the same dynamic. After years of trauma and nervous system dysregulation, she longs for empathy and understanding from her husband, but instead encounters pressure, misunderstanding, and cultural shame around emotional struggle. We explore what it means to pursue healing when the people closest to us may not understand the journey.

These conversations point to a deeper truth: many of the emotional responses we’ve been taught to suppress are actually the body’s natural attempts to heal.

Learning to trust those signals, and to create space for our own healing path, can change everything.

Listen to learn:

• Why crying and emotional release are often signs of healing, not weakness

• How shame around emotions gets reinforced by culture, family, and relationships

• How fix-it thinking can unintentionally block emotional healing

• What to do when the people around you don’t understand your healing journey

Read more on the blog: Healing in a Fix-It Culture

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

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 and over, or trying to control the situation so we don’t feel uncomfortable.

In this episode, I explore two common relational moments: one where someone freezes when a request is made, and another where a couple gets caught in defensiveness and subtle power struggles around autonomy and values.

Defensiveness isn’t something “bad” about us. It’s a form of self-protection. Our nervous system is trying to protect something important—our dignity, our autonomy, our belonging.

The question isn’t how to eliminate defensiveness.

The question is how we can learn to work with it in ways that create more understanding and connection.

Read more on the blog.

Listen to Learn

• Why defensiveness often shows up as freezing, explaining, or controlling rather than arguing

• How to respond skillfully when requests trigger a defensive reaction

• A simple shift that helps conversations move from power struggles to understanding

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

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 mismatch.

In this episode of Conversations from the Heart, a listener named Dave asks a thoughtful question: Is it possible to stay friends with an ex—and if so, what makes it work?

Dave and his former partner went through a conscious uncoupling process and are now attempting to rebuild their relationship as friends. But as they reconnect, they find themselves slipping back into familiar patterns that once strained their romantic partnership.

Dave wonders whether there might be blind spots in how he’s showing up—and whether understanding those blind spots could help them move forward with more ease. Ultimately, we arrive at a hard truth: You cannot create a low-intensity friendship with someone whose nervous system still experiences you as an attachment figure.

In this episode we explore:

•Can exes really stay friends after a breakup?

•Why emotional timelines rarely match after relationships end

•How attachment wounds can keep relational patterns alive

•The difference between observing a situation and participating in it

•Why intention and impact can feel so different in communication

•The challenge of staying authentic without over-managing another person’s emotions

•Boundaries, grief, and emotional “dosage” after a breakup

Read more on the blog: Is it Possible to Stay Friends With My Ex?

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

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 listening, encouraging more relational maturity, and drawing on our courage to stay present with complexity. Together, we explore how our values are often clarified not through rules or scripts, but instead through our attention, integrity, and lived experience.

This episode isn’t about fixing anything. It’s about listening for what matters, for what wants to emerge, and for what becomes possible when we stay human together.

Read more on the blog.

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

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 neatly.

Together, we reflect on:

•Why some forms of grief don’t have clear endings—and why that’s not a failure

•How grief lives in the nervous system and shapes our capacity for connection

•The difference between presence and fixing when someone is grieving

•What it means to stay human, relational, and honest in the presence of loss

This episode invites a slower, more compassionate way of being with grief, one that honors presence over solutions, and meaning over closure.

Read more about grief and ambiguous loss: Grief That Doesn't Resolve

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube

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 supervision, we unpack how to stay relational without over-giving, avoid power struggles, and focus conversations on impact, responsibility, and shared outcomes.

This is a grounded, practical look at empathy as a leadership skill, not a personality trait.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why empathic leadership is not codependence, people-pleasing, or self-betrayal
• How to negotiate boundaries, fees, and expectations without defensiveness or guilt
• What to do when a supervisory relationship is strained and performance still matters
• How shifting from personality to observable behaviors restores authority and reduces conflict

Use code SOHC to get 50% off your first month in the School of Human Connection. Learn more here.

Use code YVETTE to get 20% of your annual subscription at nvclibrary.com

For ongoing practice and deeper learning, I warmly invite you to become a member of The School of Human Connection.

Twice a month, I host live calls where members bring real relationship dilemmas. We slow things down and I'll help you see what's actually happening and how to respond with more integrity, strength and care.

You will find a safe space for live discussions and a supportive community of like-minded, open-hearted humans.

Stay updated on new episodes and resources by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts or visiting yvetteerasmus.com.

Here are more ways to connect with me:

• Join the School of Human Connection
• Hop on my free Wednesday live call
• Follow me on YouTube