Welcome to Episode 11 of The Rise Room. As we move closer to the end of Season 1, this episode invites a deeper, generational conversation, one about the emotional rooms we’re creating for those who come after us.

In The Rooms We Build for the Next Generation, we explore how our words, behaviors, healing, and even our avoidance shape emotional environments that are passed down quietly but powerfully. This episode is about legacy, not just what we teach, but what we model.

If you’ve ever reflected on how you were raised emotionally, or wondered how your healing (or lack of it) impacts others, this conversation is for you.

References

Here are scholarly sources you can reference for this episode:

Felitti, V. J., et al. (1998). Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to adult health status. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 14(4), 245–258.

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.

Perry, B. D. (2006). Applying principles of neurodevelopment to clinical work with maltreated and traumatized children. Journal of Social Work Practice, 20(1), 65–77.

Shonkoff, J. P., et al. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246.

Yehuda, R., et al. (2016). Holocaust exposure induced intergenerational effects on FKBP5 methylation. Biological Psychiatry, 80(5), 372–380.

Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind. Guilford Press.

Cicchetti, D., & Toth, S. L. (2005). Child maltreatment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1, 409–438.

Episode Highlights

“Enough is enough” moments aren’t dramatic, they’re often quiet warning signs from your mind and body.

Feeling constantly drained, unheard, or emotionally overloaded are signals that your limits are being pushed.

I share my personal experiences with staying in situations too long, and how choosing myself became a turning point toward emotional clarity.

Research shows that chronic stress, emotional overload, and ignoring your boundaries can increase anxiety, burnout, and symptoms of depression.

Your body reacts to emotional strain the same way it responds to physical stress, proving that boundaries aren’t optional for mental wellness.

Healing begins with pausing, naming your limits, and taking one aligned step toward peace.

You learn that choosing your boundaries is choosing your mental health, and it is never selfish.

References

Here are scholarly sources you can reference for the research on words and mental health discussed in this episode:

Bianchi, R., Schonfeld, I. S., & Laurent, E. (2015). Burnout-depression overlap: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, 36, 28–41.

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26(1), 1–26.

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: Recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111.

Miller, G. E., Chen, E., & Zhou, E. S. (2007). Chronic stress and the HPA axis in humans. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 25–45.

Schwartz, H. A., et al. (2022). Signs of emotional overload: Psychological and physiological markers of stress. Annual Review of Psychology, 73, 271–298.

Smith, M. M., & Jordan, C. H. (2015). Self-compassion and emotional well-being: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 19(3), 234–258.

Teo, A. R., et al. (2018). Loneliness and mental health: Mechanisms and implications. Current Psychiatry Reports, 20(3), 55.

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Rise Room! Today, I’m diving into one of the quietest heartbreaks we experience, the end of a friendship. We talk about romantic breakups all the time, but the grief of losing someone who once felt like home? That’s a conversation most people carry alone.

In this episode, I’m breaking down why friendship breakups hurt so deeply, how they impact your mental and emotional wellbeing, and what it truly takes to rise after someone you love becomes someone you used to know.

This one’s for anyone replaying old conversations, missing old versions of themselves, or wondering why the end of a friendship still echoes years later.

Friendship breakups activate real grief responses in the brain, similar to romantic heartbreak.

Emotional intimacy in friendships means losing a friend is not losing “just a person,” but losing shared identity, daily connection, and a piece of your history.

Signs a friendship breakup is affecting you: replaying moments, struggling to trust new people, feeling ashamed for caring “too much,” grieving who you were with them.

I share my own experience with friendship loss, how it shifted my identity and how long it took to stop blaming myself for the end of something that mattered.

Here are scholarly sources you can reference for the research on words and mental health discussed in this episode:

Auerbach, R. P., Admon, R., & Pizzagalli, D. A. (2014). Adolescent loss of friendships and its impact on neural responses to social rejection. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 123(3), 662–678.

Badenes-Ribera, L., Fabris, M. A., Gastaldi, F. G. M., & Longobardi, C. (2019). Social pain and the brain: Neural responses to social exclusion. Social Neuroscience, 14(2), 156–168.

Bos, A. E. R., Snippe, E., de Wit, J., & Schuengel, C. (2021). Friendship quality and mental health: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 87, 102038.

Chopik, W. J. (2017). The benefits of social connection: Loneliness predicts mortality and health outcomes. Psychology and Aging, 32(2), 186–198.

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2004). Why rejection hurts: A common neural alarm system for physical and social pain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(7), 294–300.