You're Brilliant at Everything. So Why Does Love Feel Like a Personal Failure?

The one missing piece that shifted my relationship pattern (that I now teach other leaders)

"What's wrong with me?"

That was the question I asked myself at 2 AM.

Lying awake.

Replaying conversations.

Trying to figure out what went wrong.

I'd crush a sales meeting like no one's business.

Fire an employee? Clear, direct, compassionate.

Coach clients through their messiest problems? Easy. Bring me your chaos.

But when it came to my own heart?

When talking to my significant other…

I'd crumble.

Freeze or check out.

Talk in circles until even I had no idea what I was saying.

If only someone had told me back then…

I wasn't broken.

Nothing was wrong with me.

I was just undertrained.

You see, healthy love, deep intimacy, real connection

Weren’t modeled to me as a child.

My immigrant parents taught me how to survive. 

How to work hard. How to have explosive fights.

They loved me deeply.

But for many years, their relationship taught me far more about endurance than about intimacy.

And nobody teaches this stuff in school.

So when boys and love came into the picture…

I was fumbling around in the dark.

Trying to find my way home to a place I'd never actually been.

Hunting for treasure with no map, no compass, and no concept of what that treasure even looked like.

No blueprint.

No framework.

No clue.

Professionally, people told me how impressive I was.

How much I'd done in such a short time.

But I looked around… my friends were getting engaged, married, having babies.

I wasn't jealous.

I was confused.

Because I felt like I hadn't fully lived.

Like I was collecting achievements but missing the thing that actually mattered.

Like I was running out of runway while everyone else had already taken off.

Too many first dates to count.

Too many "you're amazing, but…" texts.

When I was in relationships, it felt unequal.

Like I was doing all the heavy lifting.

Teaching him things, but learning nothing in return.

I got bored quickly.

Chemistry was rare.

And when I did feel a spark, it would fizzle out fast.

I longed for that person who felt like home.

Whom I didn't need to translate my soul to.

I wanted to be a power couple.

Be a boss. Date a boss. Build an empire.

I tried everything I could get my hands on.

Therapy.

Retreats.

Ceremonies.

Journaling.

The books.

The podcasts friends would send my way.

None of it worked.

Because none of it addressed the root:

I didn't have a model for what healthy love actually looked like.

I had a master's degree in achievement.

And a kindergarten education in intimacy.

I kept meeting emotionally unavailable men.

Or men I couldn't admire

Not enough depth, curiosity, sense of adventure, or zest for life.

I wanted to be with a man I respected, felt inspired by, and wholeheartedly admired.

The shift finally happened when I realized:

I didn't yet know how to be emotionally available myself.

This blew my mind.

How could I have expected emotional availability from myself or others

when I had zero experience or training in it myself?

I never learned it in the first place.

I was asking for fluency in a language I'd never heard spoken.

What I did learn was how to over-compensate everywhere else.

The performance looked great.

It was a protection mechanism from childhood.

So that the adults in my life didn't have to worry about me.

I got love and validation from looking like I was doing well.

Not from actually being well.

Not on a heart level.

My nervous system was choosing familiar hell over unfamiliar heaven.

The familiar hell?

Feeling cosmically lonely.

Deeply misunderstood.

Secretly unlovable.

The unfamiliar heaven

Real intimacy, deep connection… felt dangerous - the ultimate unknown.

My brain had years of data, giving me evidence that love was unsafe.

Love was chaos.

People equalled pain.

Connection came with a terms-and-conditions clause longer than an iPhone update.

Rejection was part of my operating system.

Evidence that people would hurt and/or leave me had piled up for years.

The only solution was corrective experiences.

New data.

My brain needed proof that love is safe.

That someone could see the real me… and stay.

After the initial shift, changes started to unfold.

I started by becoming more emotionally available - to myself.

I fixed the habits that were keeping me disconnected from my own body, mind, and spirit.

I stopped abandoning myself in small ways every day.

Breaking small promises to myself that seemed insignificant, but added up:

The workout I'd skip 

The drink I promised I wouldn’t have that day 

The late-night snack only I knew about.

The only way I could create a trusting, respectful relationship was if I’d create a life where I 100% trusted and respected myself first.

On every level.

To meet the one I had to be the one.

Almost overnight, I found myself in the most healing, loving relationship of my life.

It felt surreal.

Like I accidentally unlocked a level of the game I didn't know existed.

Here’s the thing about longer relationships. We start off by being the one. Then we get lazy, and complacent. We stop “dating” our beloved, we stop being the one for them. And things start to fall apart. 

Becoming and being the one is not a once-off thing.

It’s a lifetime of mastery.

This reminds me of a coaching client.

At the beginning, she was completely closed off to men.

Zero interest.

Found none of them attractive.

Had every excuse for why she wanted to stay a single mother.

I understood, she had gone through a lot of pain in relationships.

We worked on her habits.

The relationship with her body changed.

She started to love how she looked and felt.

I taught her to flirt with herself in the mirror.

Slowly but surely, she became emotionally available.

And amazing men started showing up.

Like magic. Except it's not magic. It's neuroscience.

When she became a beacon for love and admiration, then love and admiration couldn't help but find her. 

Now what?

You realize that loving relationships weren't modeled to you.

Great. Awareness unlocked.

Self-awareness without tools is just front-row seats to your own suffering.

After awareness, we need change. Real change that rewires the nervous system. 

That teaches your body (not just your mind) that love is safe.

That's exactly why I created Relating Intelligence™.

(Sometimes you’ll hear me call it Relationship Intelligence).

It's a 3-skill framework that spells out step by step how to become the one.

So that love can finally find you.

And more importantly…

So that love can finally stay.

I’ve created this video training. This link will take you to a page to fill out your details to watch the video.

The video will be sent to your email immediately. Please check your email.

This is an invitation to invest time in the most important area of your life - your love life.

If you don't learn at least one thing you didn't know before

I’ll owe you a coffee.

To feeling desired and admired,

Anna

I'm Not a Corporate Girlie (and that's why you should hire me to future-proof your team)

Why do the smartest leaders still struggle with their team's performance?

Performance problems are not performance problems

They are relationship problems in disguise.

Many leaders get promoted to their leadership role because of how well they did in their previous role. But leadership is a different skill. It's all about the people.

I've dedicated my life to understanding human behavior and helping people work and play better 

together.

The human elements that teams need to future-proof themselves are:

Awareness

Authenticity

Perspective

Collaboration

Aligned Action

With a decade of coaching experience, I've added the Lumina Spark certification to help teams collaborate on an exponentially deeper level.

Lumina Spark is groundbreaking as the only psychometric tool that clearly demonstrates how individuals and teams change their behavior and performance day-to-day compared to high-stress times and situations.

I'm not a corporate girlie. But I have built a business with a thousand employees and have created and coached countless teams for clients.

The skill of bringing out the best in people. Helping every team member feel safe to tap into their most authentic self… because that's how they'll bring their most productive, efficient, and happiest self to the team.

One of the first questions I ask team leaders during an initial consult is what books they are reading on relationship skills. If they say not much or they don't have time, then I know there's massive potential for their team to step up.

Your team's ceiling isn't their talent or their tools. It's the quality of their relationships.

Because performance problems?

They're just relationship problems waiting to be solved.

And that's exactly where I come in. I don't just identify the gaps, I help you bridge them.

The future belongs to teams that prioritize the human elements, not just the bottom line. Ready to future-proof your team?

Email anna [at] annashilina [dot] com

the most controversial dating advice that ACTUALLY works

You’ll be shocked by this dating advice.

It flies in the face of everything you’ve seen on the internet.

And it will sound weird at first.

But if the current advice was working, there would be much fewer amazing humans who are struggling to go from “single to chosen”.

Here it is…

Treat every man you meet as a king

Treat every man as an opportunity to practice engaging with a king.

(yes, sometimes this will be much harder than other times).

“But Anna what if he’s not worthy of being treated like a king?

What if he’s scum?”

Then he’ll very quickly disappear

You cannot fool the frequency

When you treat people as they’re the highest and best versions of themselves, they start to show up like that more and more.

Recently I told my man that I started saying ‘you’re the best man I’ve ever met’ way before I actually knew you were.

And now just wow!

You really are the best man I’ve ever met.

The way you’ve stepped up and up is exceptional.

King is an energy I serve

Before this energy was connected to my person, it was an energy that I served.

Are there wounded kings and kings who need a lot

And I mean A LOT of work?

Yes and they’re most probably not YOUR king.

This is the ultimate hack to meeting the man of your dreams.

Treat every man you meet as an opportunity to engage with a king.

Most importantly…

Have fun with it.

If you’re buying a red Audi, you’ll start seeing red Audi’s.

If your filter is set to frogs you could kiss

That’s what you’ll notice

If your filter is set to kings

That’s what you’ll be shown more of

You can’t fool the frequency!

Oodles of love,

Anna

relationships are ratios: the surprising secret behind inspiring relationships

Most people think the key to great relationships is…
Say it with me:
Communication.

It’s not.

The real key is ratios.

There’s an invisible architecture holding your relationships together.

When something feels “off,” chances are a ratio is out of balance.

Here are the main ones that determine whether your relationship thrives or slowly dies:

🎾Fun to Feedback

When we first start dating someone, it’s fun, fun, fun.
Later (especially when you move in together),

it becomes feedback, feedback, feedback.

The art is learning to restore a healthy balance between the two.

When there’s enough fun in the relationship, it’s easy to receive feedback.
When there’s not, even small suggestions can feel like criticism.

This goes all the way back to childhood

and how important fun is in human development.

🎾Play to Pressure

Fun-to-feedback happens in the daily rhythm of a relationship.

Play-to-pressure shows up during big transitions… like planning a wedding, starting a family, or building a business together.

What starts as lighthearted play can quickly turn into overwhelming pressure.
Balancing both is what keeps love resilient.

🎾Feminine to Masculine Energy

Both men and women have feminine and masculine energies. It’s about knowing how much to use and when.

The skill is learning to consciously switch between the two.

As a woman, it’s perfectly okay to step into your masculine energy when needed,

you’re not trying to eliminate it.

But if you want polarity with a masculine partner,

you need access to your feminine traits:

receptivity, flow, emotional expression, intuition, and presence.

Most women don’t realize they’re stuck in one mode

and they wonder why the spark is gone.

Their energy ratio is quietly killing attraction.

The same goes for men.

And the polarity they bring to the table.

🎾Positive to Negative Interactions

Relationship researchers John and Julie Gottman discovered the “magic ratio” of 5:1
Five positive interactions for every one negative.

If you’re below that, your relationship is already deteriorating.

This ratio is one of the cornerstones of lasting love.

🎾Support to Challenge

Too much support and we stagnate.
Too much challenge and we shut down.

Thriving relationships have a dynamic balance of both.
When this ratio is off, you either feel like roommates or adversaries.

🎾So what?

Most people never examine these ratios.
They relate on autopilot, repeating patterns they learned in childhood.

That’s why I created the Relating Intelligence Quiz (RQ).

Your RQ measures your ability to build healthy, authentic, and resilient connections… with yourself, your loved ones, and the world around you.

It’s a blend of emotional awareness, communication skills, honesty, boundaries, and repair capacity.
Think of it as EQ’s deeper, more relationship-focused cousin.

🎾 Click here to take the 3-minute quiz and discover your Relating Intelligence score.

Best wishes,

Anna Shilina

Founder of the Relating Academy

Creator of Relating Intelligence (TM)

Imagine Being as Successful in Love As You Are In Business

Smart, successful high-achievers struggle in relationships for 1 reason: they've never developed Relating Intelligence™. Here's the missing link you've been searching for.

What the heck is Relating Intelligence?

You’ve never heard of it. That’s not surprising… no one’s teaching it.

Until now.

But here’s what you might have experienced:

The gap between how successful you are professionally and how successful you feel in your personal relationships.

Growing up, I struggled with relationships.

I remember being mortifyingly sad on the playground at school.

Hiding in the library playing chess during lunch breaks.

At age 15, a boy asked me to be his girlfriend.

I said yes.

That was the beginning and the end of our ‘relationship’.

I had no idea what it meant to be a girlfriend.

The relationships modeled in my childhood were chaotic and full of conflict.

When I later studied human behavior, I learned something that stuck with me:

Our perceived voids as children shape what we value as adults.

My void was deeply nourishing relationships.

So I made it my life’s mission to learn everything I could about relationships and human connection.

10 years of coaching has led me to create the Relating Intelligence quiz:

• Shining light on blind spots

• Fortifying relating strengths

• Breaking frustrating relationship patterns

So What Exactly IS Relating Intelligence?

Relating Intelligence incorporates three key areas:

Identity script: How much of your relational patterns come from childhood experiences, and how much have you consciously designed? What are your levels of self-love, self-trust, and self-respect?

Love-receiving/vulnerability capacity: Do you openly express your needs, feelings, and boundaries? Can you speak your truth even when it risks conflict or discomfort?

Relating and magnetism skills: Conscious, intentional, and compassionate communication skills that draw incredible people to you and draw the best out of the people around you.

These are the exact elements I used in my own life to create amazing relationships across the board… with my life partner, friends, family, business partners. Bar none.

And now I want to help you do the same.

Find Your Starting Point

Click the right quiz for you:

For high-achieving single women who want epic love

High-achieving single women

For leaders & entrepreneurs who want better personal relationships

Leaders & entrepreneurs

This Is Your Chance To...

Stop repeating the same relationship patterns that leave you lonely, misunderstood, frustrated and confused.

Finally understand why your relationships haven’t matched your other successes.

Develop relating skills they sadly don’t teach at school.

The quiz take less than 3 minutes.

Get your report instantly.

Completely free.

You’ll get immediate insights into where you are and specific guidance on where to grow next.

Your professional success didn’t happen by accident.

You learned skills, you practiced, you got better.

Your relationship success won’t happen by accident.

Take your quiz now and discover the missing element in relationships.

All my love,

Anna

Founder of RelatingAcademy.com

Creator or Relating Intelligence™

break the frustrating relationship pattern, rewrite your story: join the Relating Academy

Decades of research, and multiple studies show that people with strong, healthy relationships live longer (sometimes up to 50% longer) than those who are isolated.

I spent decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars learning how to create healthy habits and create meaningful relationships. I share my journey to guide anyone who’s done trying alone and is ready for real freedom - freedom in habits and freedom within relationships.

Relating Academy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

If you want to see how the 8-week Relating Academy applies to your unique story, book a call here:

https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy

“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why do I keep repeating the same patterns, even though I ‘know better’?”
“How many times can I swear it’ll be different… and still break promises to myself?”
“Why do I keep disappointing myself?”

These questions plagued my mind, even though on the outside, my life looked like a highlight reel.

Here’s a haunting moment, burned into my memory like a hot iron on the deepest layers of my psyche…

I promised my boyfriend (at the time) I’d stop drinking. He was in Mexico, I was in Cape Town, and we were set to meet in Mauritius for a friend’s wedding. By the time he saw me, I was stumbling off the bus, obliterated after a boozy flight with the wedding party.

Charming.

A week later, he ended things.

That breakup set off nearly nine years of emotional and energetic infertility: staying single, unconsciously attracting unavailable men, and numbing a deep cosmic loneliness with unhealthy habits. I use the word ‘infertility’ because having a family was always one of my deepest desires, yet my choices in habits and relationships kept me far from stepping into that role.

For seven of those years, I lived in a state of being ‘sober curious,’ constantly wrestling with the exhausting cycle of promising myself, I’m not drinking today, and then breaking that promise.

I threw every solution I could find:

• Books

• Podcasts

• Apps
  Coaching programs

• Even the Sinclair method (yes, I tried taking an opioid blocker)

Nothing worked. Why?

Because the problem wasn’t drinking. Or overeating. Or binge-scrolling.
Those were symptoms.

The real problem?
My identity script.

The identity script functions like a subconscious operating system, silently influencing perceptions, decisions, and behaviors. Developmental psychology suggests that much of this script is established in early childhood, typically before the age of 7, when the brain predominantly operates in theta wave states.

My identity script was shame.
Shame → Numb → Shame… loop.

On the outside, it looked like:

• Drinking

• Overeating

• Scrolling endlessly

• Binge-watching series

• Smoking

On the inside, it was this hidden script written in childhood:
“Hide the parts of you that are unlovable. Show illusions instead that make you lovable.”

Looking back, it’s not surprising that I turned to alcohol to numb my shame and the loneliness that followed. Loneliness is inevitable when we feel compelled to hide parts of ourselves from the world. I grew up in a Soviet household where the unspoken norm was to conceal anything ‘shameful’ and present only a polished version to others. As Dr. Gabor Maté, a parenting and trauma expert, explains, children often learn to abandon parts of themselves in order to secure their parents’ love and approval.

The Turning Point

Nothing shifted until…

1. The Pain-to-Pleasure Scale Flipped

If you take just one thing from reading this, let it be: all behavior is governed by the pain-to-pleasure scale. Whenever we feel stuck (in a habit, a pattern, a relationship), it’s this neural scale that keeps us there. Flip this scale, and life can change instantly. I’ve seen this not only in my own life, but also in coaching thousands of people over the past decade.

We assume we’re addicted to pleasure. We’re not.

We’re addicted to what’s familiar. From the brain’s perspective, the neural pathways wired through repetition feel safer (even if they lead to pain) than the uncertainty of creating new ones.

For me, the pain and shame of drinking and numbing eventually outweighed the safety of those familiar neural pathways. Each broken promise carved the discomfort deeper until change became unavoidable. But we don’t have to wait for rock bottom for the pain of a behavior to outweigh its pleasure. Many of my clients stop drinking after realizing it no longer serves them.

There’s pain and discomfort in being in a relationship. There’s also pain and discomfort in being single. When I was single for all that time, I didn’t realize I was subconsciously choosing the familiar pain of being single over the uncertainty of connection. Flipping that scale opened new possibilities.

1. Identity Script Rewired

Understanding where our patterns come from is one thing. Developing the real-time awareness to change them? That’s where real transformation happens. Only with real-time awareness can we make conscious decisions that phase out the default identity script that’s been running our lives.

My breakthrough moment came when I realized I was struggling to feel loved.

Intellectually, I knew love surrounded me. I knew people loved me. But I wasn't accessing that feeling. My identity script whispered that I was only lovable if I achieved enough, performed enough, earned it enough.

I committed to rewiring that script. When we fall in love with a person, we think the love comes from them. It doesn’t. They’re a catalyst for the love activated within us. We have the power to access that state of love anytime. Once I started accessing this feeling, my frequency shifted, aligning me with a new reality, one where I could shower another person with the love unlocked inside me.

Two weeks after this inner shift, I met an amazing man. The connection was instant. Two months later, we moved in together and have been co-creating a beautiful life ever since. The transformation was palpable.

My parents modeled conflict, so my identity script told me relationships equaled conflict. I feared recreating the relationships I saw growing up. To build the nourishing, safe, and exciting relationship I craved, I needed a new model, one rooted in radical transparency and intuitive connection.

My identity script shifted from shame to compassion. I learned to love, trust and respect myself by embodying healthy habits, and that changed everything.

The Invitation

After a decade of coaching entrepreneurs 1:1 and inside high-level programs, I created the 8-week Relating Academy program.

This isn’t just another coaching container.
It’s a pattern interrupt for your entire life.
It’s a paradigm shift.

This is for you, if you’ve

• Scaled businesses but can’t scale your own joy

• Mastered cashflow but not your relationship

• Built companies but still feel that cosmic loneliness

Perhaps you’re single, like I was, and tired of the same old patterns.
Perhaps you’re in a marriage where you feel misunderstood, lonely, or lost.
Perhaps you’re estranged from family, longing to reconnect but feeling like it’s impossible.
Perhaps you’re trapped in tension or conflict with someone you love, or your business partner.

The Relating Academy goes straight to the roots:

• Crack your Identity Script – discover why you’ve been treating yourself like a liar or failure and finally unlock self-trust, self-love, and self-respect.

• Build Relating Intelligence – master the tools to repair, deepen, and transform every relationship in your life. All relationships are a mirror, and an opportunity for self-mastery. Learn to bring out the best in others, and to speak to the higher self in others, no matter who they are.

How do we do this?

At the Relating Academy, we live by two codes:

1. All relationships are a mirror. They reflect your inner world and offer valuable blind spot awareness and a path to self-mastery.

2. Do the hard thing now. We promise ourselves we’ll change tomorrow, but today is the easiest it will ever be. If we give in to old, frustrating patterns today, we reinforce those neural pathways. Tomorrow, making new decisions is harder.

Imagine this: You stop waiting for anyone or anything to change. You stop hiding behind your achievements. Instead, you wake up every morning knowing you’re living your most aligned, authentic life. You’re proud of yourself… not just in business, but in your habits, your relationships, your entire existence. You’re no longer in relationships where you feel like you need to translate your soul.

The Choice

At the end of the day, you’ll need to de-addict yourself from your habits and relationship patterns. The only question is when.

Now or an imaginary tomorrow?

Tomorrow is always harder. Today is the easiest it’ll ever be.

You can wait for the pain-to-pleasure scale to tip, or you can tip it and be in the driver’s seat of your habits and relationships.

Join the Relating Academy and build a life and relationships you don’t need to escape.

If this sounds like it could be for you, book a call to chat with me.

https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy

The Guarantee

What if coaching worked like Amazon?
Try it.
If it’s not for you, “return” it.

100% guaranteed.

No awkwardness. No guilt. No risk. No reason not to take the leap.

Joining the Relating Academy is a no-brainer.

Book a Private Call to make triple sure this is the right fit for you - https://go.oncehub.com/RelatingAcademy

why you’ll never break your bad habit(until you break this)

You think your bad habit is soothing stress or boredom.

Emotional eating

Late-night scrolling

Vaping, drinking…

But what if I told you… it’s not?

Your nervous system isn’t craving discipline. It’s craving relief.
And the thing you're soothing isn’t stress.

It’s a deeply embedded sense of shame.

A quiet, hidden subconscious belief that whispers:

I’m bad. I deserve to feel bad.

So you scroll. Eat. Drink. Vape.
And then beat yourself up for doing it.

That’s not a bad habit.
That’s a shame loop.

And as long as you're trapped in it, no amount of discipline will set you free.
Because this isn’t a behavior problem.
It’s an identity wound.

Why Most Habit Advice Doesn’t Work

You’re smart—you’ve figured out the “diet starts Monday” mindset doesn’t work.

What’s making it worse is calling them bad habits.

Your brain hears: “I am bad.”
And that fuels the loop:

I am bad → I do bad things → I feel bad → Which proves I am bad.

In my book Habit Freedom, I write that habits are limiting, not bad.
Because when you call your habits “bad,” you strengthen the very identity that keeps the habit alive.

Your habits aren’t bad or random. They’re doing exactly what they were programmed to do.

Imagine you’re a supercomputer with a core program running in the background.

That program was installed years ago—based on what you experienced, what you were told, and what you came to believe about yourself.

If that script says “I’m bad,” then every decision you make is filtered through that lens.

The habit isn’t the glitch.
It’s the output of a specific code.

Trying to change a habit without changing your shame identity is like changing the font on a document riddled with viruses—the destructive code runs the show.

You don’t need new habits.
You need a new identity script—one that says:

I’m safe. I’m worthy. I don’t need to suffer to feel in control. I am lovable.

There’s No Such Thing as Self-Sabotage

Only reinforcement of subconscious programming.

If you're stuck in a shame loop, your habits are just showing you—over and over—that you’re right to feel unworthy.

So what actually breaks the loop?

The only thing that can set you free is rewiring your identity of shame into a self-concept based on:

- Self-compassion (not punishment)

- Self-trust

- Self-respect

And there are 3 steps to do that.

But First, My Story

I’m not saying any of this from theory.

Yes, I studied human behavior, habits, and relationships. And I’ve coached thousands of people in the past decade.

But I also struggled with destructive patterns and limiting habits—deeply—for over 7 years.

Alcohol. Food. Scrolling. Binging series.

The worst part was… I was a mindset coach with every tool under the sun.

And still, I was stuck.

Stuck in patterns that felt heavy, compulsive, out of alignment.

And I was brutal on myself:

“How could I know so much and still be doing this to myself?”

The answer?

I was trapped in a shame loop—one that had been running quietly since I was very young.

Until I cracked that loop, no tool could have worked.

Every technique, every strategy, every mindset shift got filtered through a core belief that said:

“I’m bad. I deserve to feel bad.”

That shame lived in my body.

And it showed up in every part of my life.

But when I stopped trying to control the habit

And instead started unclogging the shame underneath it.

Everything changed.

Today, I feel at home—in my body, my mind, my choices.

Not because I fixed myself

But because I met myself with compassion—and rewrote the core script.

The 3 Steps That Set Me Free

Step 1: Reparent the Inner Child

Habits don’t start as problems—they start as solutions.

Protective mechanisms. Emotional shields.

When your inner child didn’t feel seen, soothed, or safe… you found ways to self-soothe.

For me, that initially looked productive.

I buried myself in schoolwork and academics to avoid the chaos at home.

It wasn’t until later that I turned to food and alcohol to medicate the pain of being me.

Reparenting is about becoming the adult you needed when you were a child.

As kids, we don’t have context or perspective. Even with the best parents, we all encounter moments of:

Disappointment

Rejection

Loneliness

Abandonment

When those emotional states are repeated, they form a blueprint in the body—a felt sense of how the world works.

When I coach someone who’s afraid they’ll be disappointed by the process, the first thing we do is dismantle the disappointment blueprint from childhood that taught them:

“Things don’t work out for me. I always end up let down.”

Reparenting happens in a multitude of micro-moments—through new, aligned decisions.

It’s building new neural pathways and reinforcing them with self-respect.

You start to replace self-punishment with self-compassion.

You build self-trust by choosing your highest self—again and again.

You’re not fixing the child.

You’re leading them.

Step 2: Retrain the Brain’s Reward System

1. The Real Addiction Is Familiarity

Most people think they’re addicted to pleasure.
But they’re actually addicted to what’s familiar.

If you’ve lived with shame for years, your nervous system reads it as “safe.”

The brain prefers predictable pain over unfamiliar peace.

So the work isn’t just to feel better.
It’s to make better feel familiar.

2. Do the Hard Thing Now

Every time you give in to the habit, you’re rehearsing it.

“I’ll stop tomorrow” is a trap.
If you’re reinforcing the neural pathway of the limiting habit today, how could it be easier to stop tomorrow?

Tomorrow is harder. Not easier.

You can do the hard thing now—or do the harder thing later.

Either way, discomfort is the toll.

Doing the hard thing now is the ultimate key to freedom.

3. Reframe Discomfort as Progress

Cravings aren’t failures. They’re invitations to rewire.

Eventually, you might even start to enjoy them:

“This hunger means I’m mastering my impulses.”
“This craving is a rep in the gym of my nervous system.”

Discomfort is your best friend. It’s you choosing a new narrative.

4. Replace Escape with Regulation & Joy

Your nervous system doesn’t want discipline.

It wants relief—the kind that nourishes, not numbs.

Most people make the mistake of removing the habit… but don’t replace it.

Nature abhors a vacuum.

You have to offer your brain a better deal.

Start filling your life with aligned inputs—moments that feel safe, soothing, and fun:

• Movement

• Music

• Nature

• Awe

• Deep play

• Real connection

These aren’t luxuries. They’re your rewiring toolkit.

The more joy and presence you bring into your day, the less your system will crave escape.

Of course, even in a full and beautiful life, stress still happens.

Solving problems is part of being human.

But with more joy in your system, you expand your capacity to hold stress without defaulting to the old loop.

When you’re nourished and connected, you have the capacity to meet life instead of hide from it.

5. Delay Gratification & Master the Now

The habit exists to pull you out of the now.

But all your power lives in the now.

Meditation trains your mind to stop reacting to every craving like it’s an emergency.

Each time you sit with discomfort instead of reacting, you are mastering the present moment.

Want a step-by-step guide to never struggling with cravings again?
Download the free Cravings Freedom Kit — a guide specifically designed to take control even when most triggered.

https://stan.store/relatingacademy/p/free-download-never-struggle-with-cravings-again

Step 3: Relate with Radical Honesty

Shame grows in secrecy.

One of the fastest ways to break its grip is to speak your truth—out loud, in safe company.

We heal in relation to one another.

Not by telling everyone your deepest secrets, but by finding a space where you can be fully honest—without fear of judgment.

Something powerful happens when you finally say the thing you thought made you unlovable…

and someone else looks at you and says, “Me too.”

That’s the moment shame loses its power.

On this journey, radical honesty isn’t just encouraged—it’s required.

There is no substitute for radical honesty in a safe community.

That’s why community is a core pillar of Habit Freedom.

Healing doesn’t happen in isolation.

And neither does freedom.

These 3 steps—reparent, retrain, and relate—don’t just break the habit.

They rebuild who you believe you are.

That’s how you go from self-punishment to self-respect.

From coping to choosing.

From soothing… to wielding freedom.

Never struggle with cravings again

Download the Free Cravings Freedom Kit

Question for you today:
Who would you be without your shame loop?

Your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.

have you ever quiet quit your relationship?

I'm coaching two people, a couple. They've been married for over 30 years. They've considered separating many times over the decades.

 Everything came to a screeching halt a couple of months ago when they became very serious about parting ways. But they didn't. By a hair, they stayed together. Kind of.

When we started working together, I spoke with them individually before a joint session. It was clear. They were both 'quiet quitting' their relationship.

What is quiet quitting? It's a TikTok phenomenon where you do the bare minimum, just enough to scrape by until there's no longer a job for you.

That way you don't have to make the bold and brave move to get out. You let it happen, you let it slip away.

Unfortunately, my client's story is not unique. Special, not unique. Many people quiet quit their relationships for years.

By the way, this goes for friendships too. One or both parties do the bare minimum until it disappears altogether. 

When I pointed out to my clients what was happening, they didn't even flinch. It rang true. I told them they had to make a decision. Either they are to continue on the exact path they're on, but at least be honest about it. You have already quit the relationship, in one sense or another. Or metaphorically sit up and do the work. 

It all depends on if the longevity of the relationship is important enough. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not.

I am guilty of quiet quitting a relationship in the past. I know how difficult it is to turn things around when you're emotionally checked out. 

It absolutely can be worth it when you have the right structure and support. After all, love is not a feeling, it's a series of vulnerable and supportive actions.

The Frankl Pause

Victor Frankl wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning, after surviving the Holocaust. Here is the exact quote:

“Between the stimulus and the response, there is a space. In that space, we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”

Any transformation requires new decisions and new actions. Within you, there is the older version of yourself and the new you.

The old you chooses certain actions, the new you chooses new actions. For example, if I’m wanting a new level of fitness and I have the decision between going to the gym or staying home… the old me would prefer to stay at home. The new me chooses to go to the gym. If you want to change anything you have to make millions of these micro-decisions. You have to choose the new, over and over again. At least 80% of the time. 

In relationships, this decision could look like this. You and your partner have a disagreement. The old you would have chosen to respond in that way. The new you chooses the new way.

The decision of choosing the new you is always harder than the counterpart. The brain likes comfort. If you let your conditioning choose it will always choose the easy path. When you choose the harder option over and over again you will inevitably hit that fitness, business, or relationship goal.