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Why am I still triggered after years of therapy? I used to think if I could just explain a pattern clearly enough, it would finally stop running me. Turns out understanding something and being free of it are two completely different things — and that gap is exactly what I'm getting into in this episode.

I had a client on the table recently — body work, low-key session — when a memory dropped in that wasn't mine to know. I said it out loud before I even thought about it: "Tell me about the time you lost a teddy bear." She went still. This woman had done years of therapy. EMDR, inner child work, all of it. She could recite her own patterns better than most people could. And none of that knowing was what moved her that day.

That's the real question behind why am I still triggered after therapy, even when you've done real work, even when you can explain exactly why you react the way you do. Processing clears what's live from one moment. A belief is built from a hundred moments like it, repeated, until your body stopped needing new evidence and started running on the conclusion instead. You can process a single conversation completely and it still won't touch the belief underneath it, because that belief was never really about that one conversation.

In this episode I walk through what actually happened in that session — where the belief started, where it's still showing up decades later, and why "just talk it out" was never going to be enough. If you caught the toxic interaction episode, this one goes one layer past it: it's not just that talking and processing are different things, it's that processing a moment and dismantling the belief it confirmed are different things too.

I also get into why healing was never a one-time unlock, why it usually takes more than one modality working together, and why staying in the deep work forever isn't actually the goal. You were never meant to live in the digging. At some point the point of all of this is to go live your actual life.

If this is the episode that makes you go, wait, is she talking about me — that's not a coincidence. That's your body telling you something's ready to move. This episode is the first in a six-part series leading into the Intuitive Circle, my twice-monthly live membership where we do exactly this kind of work together, in real time, in the body. Doors are open right now at lesleyturner.ca/theintuitivecircle.

Related episode: catch Ep. 36 How To Get Over A Toxic Interaction first if you haven't — this episode builds directly on it.

Book 1:1 www.lesleyturner.ca/services

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If you've been searching for how to get over a toxic interaction that keeps replaying in your head no matter how many times you've talked it out, this episode is for you. I see this constantly with clients — they've processed something out loud with a trusted friend, sometimes more than once, and it should feel done. And yet weeks later, it's still there, still living in the body.

In this episode, I break down why getting over a toxic interaction takes more than talking about it. Your nervous system doesn't decide something is finished based on whether you've narrated it — it decides based on whether the activation in your body got to complete. This is somatic healing at its core: I bring in Peter Levine's work on nervous system regulation to explain the mechanism — animals discharge survival energy physically after a threat and move on fully, while humans are taught to stay calm and hold it together, which leaves that energy stuck in the body instead of released.

I also walk through the four things a toxic interaction usually touches — abandonment, not being enough, being unseen, and safety through appeasement — and how to spot the real clue: when an emotional trigger feels bigger than the moment that caused it. That gap is where the real work is.

Knowing how to get over a toxic interaction isn't about talking yourself out of ever getting triggered again. I share a personal story about a friendship that changed permanently after one interaction I didn't handle well, and how self-compassion — not resolution — is what actually helps.

If a toxic interaction is on repeat in your head right now, I have a free resource: "A Toxic Interaction in 15 Minutes" is in the shop, built specifically to interrupt the spinning and bring your nervous system back to neutral. If something deeper is still there after that — anger, shame, loneliness, betrayal — the Trigger Toolkit is the next step.

And if you're ready to go deeper than any single interaction — into what's actually running underneath all of them — that's the work we do together in the Intuitive Circle. Doors are open now at lesleyturner.ca/theintuitivecircle.

Book 1:1 www.lesleyturner.ca/services

Subscribe to the pod:
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There are four signs the good girl is dying, and if you've only noticed the loudest one, rage, there are three more underneath it worth knowing about. I see this constantly in my client sessions: a woman who has spent decades being agreeable, easy, and no trouble at all suddenly finds herself reacting to things that never used to bother her — and rage is just the first of four signs the good girl is dying.

In this episode of The Emotional Truth, I walk through the pendulum framework I use with clients: on one end is the good girl, functioning, naive about the cost of always being easy. Something catalyzes, and the pendulum swings hard toward rage — the first sign. That rage isn't a character flaw. It's the correction for years, sometimes decades, of proportion only ever going one direction.

The second sign is in the body — it stops cooperating with the performance, and things that used to look and feel a certain way just don't anymore. The third sign is in your focus and attention, as bandwidth that used to go entirely toward everyone else finally starts redirecting inward. And the fourth sign is the hardest one: an identity crisis, a real question of who you are without the role you've played for so long.

This episode also covers three of the most common origins behind good girl syndrome and people-pleasing: conditional love, parentification (if this one is yours, go listen to episode 25, What We Get Wrong About the Eldest Daughter, right after this), and punishment for having needs. I also talk about perimenopause as a real catalyst in this shift, along with a midlife divorce statistic that names what so many women are quietly renegotiating in their relationships right now.

If you've noticed even one of these four signs the good girl is dying, this episode will walk you through exactly where you are, and what's actually on the other side of it — not less feeling, but more ease, more confidence, and relationships built on who you actually are now.

I close the episode with an actual ritual: a funeral, or a small token of gratitude, for the good girl who got you this far. She did her job. She doesn't have to keep doing it.

If this episode is landing, I've got 1:1 sessions open right now where we can work through exactly what's true for you underneath the role you've been playing. Details at lesleyturner.ca.

Book 1:1 www.lesleyturner.ca/services

Subscribe to the pod:
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