You can listen to every mental health podcast going and still find yourself losing it about shoes on a Tuesday morning. Knowing the information and actually doing something with it turn out to be two very different skills.

Therapist Marie Vakakis sits down with Sana Qadar, host of the ABC's All in the Mind, to talk about what actually sticks after five years of interviewing some of the best minds in psychology and neuroscience. Sana isn't a therapist or a psychologist. She's a journalist who has absorbed more mental health content than most of us ever will, and she's honest about the bits that changed how she lives and the bits that went in one ear and out the other. They talk about the parenting advice that reshaped her mornings within a week, the therapy language that's become so common it's lost its meaning, and why nearly every story about the brain ends up being a story about relationships.

This episode covers:

How mental health language has shifted over the last five years, and where words like trauma and ADHD get stretched past what they actually mean

The one parenting change Sana made the same week she recorded an interview, and why it worked when nothing else had

The difference between relying on willpower and changing the system around you

How to be discerning about who you take advice from online, and what qualifications really tell you

Why relationships sit underneath almost every mental health story, even the ones that look like they're about the brain

What Sana says makes her hard to live with, and the bid for connection she'd been missing

Why knowing the information and doing something with it are two very different things

marievakakis.com.au

askmarie@marievakakis.com.au

The 5 Love Languages: What the Research Actually Says

Twenty million copies sold. A quiz most couples have done at least once. The five love languages are one of the most widely used relationship frameworks in the world, and it turns out the core claims don't hold up the way most people assume they do.

Therapist Marie Vakakis breaks down what the research actually found when the five love languages framework was formally tested, what it gets right, where it falls short, and what she sees in her couples therapy room when people use it in ways that aren't working.

This episode covers:

• The origins of the five love languages and why the framework resonated so widely

• Why Gary Chapman's model was based on pastoral counselling, not research

• What the Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy found when the core claims were formally tested

• Why sharing the same primary love language as your partner doesn't predict relationship satisfaction

• The most common ways the love languages go wrong: compatibility tests, measuring sticks and fixed diagnoses

• What responsiveness is and why it's one of the strongest predictors of relationship satisfaction

• Love maps: what they are and why most couples stop updating them after three to five years

marievakakis.com.au

askmarie@marievakakis.com.au

https://marievakakis.com.au/relationship-new-year-reset-2026/

Grief is something all of us will live through, yet most of us were never taught how to talk about it. In her latest episode of This Complex Life, therapist Marie Vakakis sits with grief in all its forms, from the loss we see coming to the loss that knocks us sideways.

Therapist Marie Vakakis, an Accredited Mental Health Social Worker and couples therapist based in Melbourne's west, opens up about the grief she's lived through and the patterns she sees in her therapy room every week. She covers the many types of grief, the things people say with good intentions that actually make it harder, and the small practical ways we can show up for the people we love when they're grieving.

This episode covers:

The different types of grief, including anticipatory grief and disenfranchised grief

What to say, and what to never say, to someone who's grieving

Why partners often grieve in completely different ways

Grief bursts, and why sadness can arrive months or years after a loss

How to support someone without asking them to do the thinking for you

What to do when grief comes out as anger

Why your grief matters, no matter whose loss it's measured against

Find Marie at marievakakis.com.au or get in touch at askmarie@marievakakis.com.au.