<script data-pm-proxy="intercept"></script><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Your Diagnonsense ]]></title><description><![CDATA[A newsletter about all the nonsense that is this life.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Jvts!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00d1e918-87e5-4f02-8013-7e8ce771075e_1024x1024.png</url><title>Your Diagnonsense </title><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:54:08 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="/__u/toddbaratz.substack.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[toddbaratz@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[toddbaratz@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[toddbaratz@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[toddbaratz@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[You’re Not Attracting Unavailable Partners. You’re Drawn to Them.]]></title><description><![CDATA[Why we become attached to people we can't let go of, whether we're dating, in a relationship, or trying to move on.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/youre-not-attracting-unavailable-38e</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/youre-not-attracting-unavailable-38e</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:59:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3c757367-e97e-42ff-bca1-e98c9bb9160d_1024x1024.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know why I keep attracting unavailable people.&#8221;</p><p>I&#8217;ve heard some version of this hundreds of times.</p><p>It&#8217;s become one of the most common explanations for painful relationship patterns. We tell ourselves we&#8217;re attracting emotionally unavailable partners, avoidant partners, toxic partners, narcissists, or people who simply can&#8217;t give us what we need. Social media tells us it&#8217;s our energy. Our vibration. Our subconscious manifestation. The universe trying to teach us a lesson.</p><p>I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening. You&#8217;re probably not attracting unavailable people. You&#8217;re pursuing them.</p><p>That distinction matters because it shifts us from a story about fate to a story about very real dynamics that we are in control of creating. Most of us meet emotionally unavailable people all the time. We also meet emotionally available people. We meet people who are capable of intimacy, and people who aren&#8217;t. We meet people who communicate well, and people who don&#8217;t. The question isn&#8217;t why unavailable people crossed your path.</p><p>The question is why one particular person became so difficult to walk away from.</p><h3>The obsession is rarely just about them.</h3>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[How to Create Desire]]></title><description><![CDATA[Why desire changes in long-term relationships and what actually helps it come back.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/how-to-create-desire-494</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/how-to-create-desire-494</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:57:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/b13d96e9-d718-427c-bc09-cc1f192423a0_1537x1023.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Few topics create more anxiety in relationships than changes in desire. </p><p>Someone notices they are thinking about sex less often. One partner starts initiating less. The frequency of sex changes. The intensity feels different. The excitement that once seemed effortless becomes harder to access.</p><p>And almost immediately people start drawing conclusions.</p><p>Maybe we&#8217;re no longer compatible. Maybe we&#8217;ve fallen out of love. Maybe the relationship is over. Maybe something is wrong with me. Maybe something is wrong with them.</p><p>What is fascinating is how quickly people move from noticing a change in desire to assuming catastrophe or worse rejection. We treat desire like a relationship pulse. If it slows down, we assume the entire relationship is bad.</p><p>The problem is that this understanding of desire is largely based on fantasy rather than reality. In long-term relationships, desire changes. Not sometimes. Not in dysfunctional relationships. Not only in unhappy couples. In virtually all long-term relationships.</p><p>The intensity you felt at the beginning of a relationship is not designed to last forever in exactly the same form. The chemistry that fuels early attraction serves a purpose. It helps people bond. It motivates connection. It creates excitement. It focuses attention.</p><p>But eventually life happens.</p><p>Work happens. Stress happens. Children happen. Mortgages happen. Health issues happen. Responsibilities happen.</p><p>The novelty that once came naturally gets replaced by familiarity. The mystery begins to fade. The relationship shifts from discovery to maintenance.</p><p>This is not evidence that love is gone. It is evidence that time has passed.</p><p>Unfortunately, many people have been taught that desire should remain automatic forever. We are sold a version of love where two people lock eyes across a room, feel an immediate spark, and then spend the next fifty years effortlessly wanting each other.</p><p>It is a wonderful story. It is also complete nonsense. Long-term desire is fundamentally different from early desire. Early desire often runs on novelty. Long-term desire requires intention.</p><p>That does not mean desire becomes forced. It means it requires attention. And attention is something many couples stop giving it.</p><p>When someone tells me they have lost desire, I am often less interested in the desire itself and more interested in everything happening around it. Because in many cases desire has not disappeared. It has simply gotten buried underneath everything else.</p><p>Think about how many people are trying to access desire while simultaneously carrying chronic stress, sleep deprivation, financial anxiety, work pressure, unresolved resentment, parenting responsibilities, body image concerns, and emotional disconnection.</p><p>Then they wonder why they are not spontaneously overwhelmed with erotic energy. Desire is resilient, but it is not magical. </p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why It Takes So Long to Leave]]></title><description><![CDATA[We talk about walking away like it&#8217;s easy. Anyone who&#8217;s done it knows it&#8217;s not.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-it-takes-so-long-to-leave</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-it-takes-so-long-to-leave</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 30 Aug 2026 19:24:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/72b1c61e-ec4b-4397-b463-f04e6f149446_1536x1024.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I just saw a reel from some podcast girly who now makes wellness content that started with something like, &#8220;You can tell how much someone loves themselves by how quickly they remove themselves from situations that don&#8217;t make them happy or serve them.&#8221; And honestly, it made my skin crawl. It almost made me angry.</p><p>She isn&#8217;t some kind of expert. I think she has a marketing agency? But it&#8217;s not like she invented this idea. It reflects a value that has become incredibly common: that if you stay in a relationship&#8212;or really anything&#8212;past the point where you think, <em>I don&#8217;t want to be here,</em> it must mean you don&#8217;t respect yourself or love yourself enough. </p><p>Which is outrageous to me. First of all, this isn&#8217;t some hard truth, it is plain and simple judgment. You do this thing, therefore you must be this thing. You stayed, therefore you must not love yourself. Um, hello? That&#8217;s judgment. And I thought we were trying to be less judgmental and more empathetic and understanding?</p><p>Because the reality is, especially if we&#8217;re talking about relationships&#8212;which obviously we are&#8212;walking away is probably one of the hardest things a person can do. Ask anyone who has ended a significant relationship and they will probably tell you it was one of the hardest things they&#8217;ve ever done. I&#8217;ve had that experience twice.</p><p>And I hate this messaging because I see people who are already struggling in their relationships now struggling with the fact that they&#8217;re struggling. They think they should have left sooner. They should have had the conversation last year. They should know what they want by now. They should be able to walk away.</p><p>So now you have to contend with trying to understand your feelings, working through them, finding the bravery to take an enormous risk, and being willing to essentially chop off your own arm&#8212;because sometimes that&#8217;s what ending an attachment feels like. And on top of all of that, you have to contend with the idea that the amount of time it takes you to do it says something about how much you value yourself.</p><p>So here&#8217;s a reality check: when someone is a central character in your life, ending the relationship will probably be incredibly hard. It might take you a long time. You might obsess. You might talk about it endlessly with your friends. Hopefully you&#8217;ll talk about it with a therapist. You&#8217;ll go back and forth. You&#8217;ll pressure yourself to figure it out. And when you finally do leave, you might regret it&#8212;not because it was the wrong decision, but because it hurts so much and you miss them, and sometimes missing someone feels a lot like regret.</p><p>And let me tell you: NONE of this tells me how much you love or respect yourself.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[To Good to Leave Too Bad To Stay]]></title><description><![CDATA[What to do when you can't decide whether your relationship should end.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/to-good-to-leave-too-bad-to-stay-0b0</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/to-good-to-leave-too-bad-to-stay-0b0</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:31:41 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4e637696-0d55-44bc-b6cc-b5a002fb28cd_1024x1535.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the most common questions I get asked is, <strong>&#8220;When is it the right time to leave a relationship?&#8221;</strong></p><p>People tend to think relationship endings happen like this: one day you make up your mind, you become certain, and then the next logical step is to leave. But that&#8217;s almost never how it works because that&#8217;s simply not how our minds work.</p><p>Instead, people end up feeling shame, confusion, and paralysis. It&#8217;s an overwhelming experience that follows you everywhere. Every day becomes another battle in your head. Maybe you get a few hours or even a few days of relief, but it almost always circles back to the same question: <em>Should I stay or should I go?</em> You make pros and cons lists. You ask your friends. You Google. You replay every conversation you&#8217;ve ever had. It becomes exhausting because we&#8217;ve developed an incredibly unrealistic expectation of what ending a relationship is supposed to feel like.</p><p>Will I answer the question in this article? Should you stay? Should you leave? Maybe.</p><p>But I actually think the most important question isn&#8217;t whether you stay or leave. It&#8217;s <strong>how much of yourself are you going to be while you&#8217;re figuring it out?</strong></p><p>Because at the end of the day&#8212;assuming the relationship isn&#8217;t abusive, unsafe, or completely destructive&#8212;there is often value in staying, and there is often value in leaving. The truth is, we don&#8217;t actually know which path will be &#8220;better.&#8221; We can&#8217;t predict the future. We can&#8217;t know who you&#8217;ll become six months from now or what this relationship might look like if things change. So instead of obsessing over what you <em>can&#8217;t</em> know, I think it&#8217;s more useful to focus on what <em>is</em> knowable.</p><p>And that&#8217;s you.</p><p>Or at least, as much of you as you can access. I say that with some hesitation because even our own perspective isn&#8217;t perfectly reliable. Our feelings change. Our history shapes what we notice. Our attachment patterns, defenses, fears, and emotional state all influence how we interpret reality. So I&#8217;m not talking about blindly trusting every feeling you have. I&#8217;m talking about committing to being as honest and as fully yourself as you possibly can.</p><p>What does that actually mean?</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why You Can’t Let It Go & Why You’re Still Spiraling]]></title><description><![CDATA[The deeper meaning hiding inside the thing you can&#8217;t stop thinking about.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-you-cant-let-it-go-and-why-youre</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-you-cant-let-it-go-and-why-youre</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:01:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/5b0b88a1-d9ec-4333-b304-7a9fa330412d_1024x1536.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span>It&#8217;s not about the thing. It&#8217;s not about the thing you&#8217;re spiraling about. It&#8217;s not about the thing you&#8217;re fighting with your partner about. Well&#8212;it&#8217;s not </span><em>not</em><span> about the thing. But it&#8217;s also about som&#8230;</span></p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Should You Process Everything?]]></title><description><![CDATA[When it&#8217;s helpful and when &#8220;doing the work&#8221; keeps us stuck]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/should-you-process-everything</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/should-you-process-everything</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2026 15:09:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/338c069f-f15e-46a1-be82-204c3ffb02e0_1024x1535.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Is there a lesson in everything? Maybe. Maybe not. But how much time do we need to spend processing it? Do we need to make meaning out of every experience, or can we acknowledge what happened, reflect on it for a limited amount of time, and then let ourselves move on?</p><p>As a therapist and an over-thinker, I am extremely good at processing my thoughts and feelings. Probably too good. It&#8217;s a strength I have most certainly overworked.</p><p>Lately, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about the difference between something that actually needs my attention and something that just&#8230; sucks. Something I&#8217;m sad about. Something I wish were different. Something I don&#8217;t like but nevertheless have to live through.</p><p>Because I can process the shit out of anything. I can find the childhood connection, identify the pattern, understand what it&#8217;s bringing up, talk about it in therapy, journal about it, find the meaning underneath the meaning. And sometimes that is exactly what I need.</p><p>But sometimes I think I&#8217;m just giving myself more to do with a feeling that was already hard enough.</p><p>I&#8217;m trying to get better at knowing when something needs exploration and when it needs tolerance. And by tolerance, I don&#8217;t mean white-knuckling my way through pain or pretending I&#8217;m fine. I mean letting an experience be painful without immediately turning toward it with a flashlight. I can be sad. I can hate something. I can wish my life looked different in a particular moment. And maybe I don&#8217;t need to understand it any more than I already do.</p><p>The annoying part is that I don&#8217;t have a formula for knowing which is which. I don&#8217;t think there is one.</p><p>I think this is where I have to trust the knowledge I&#8217;ve accumulated over almost 40 years of being alive: my gut, my expertise, my intuition, whatever you want to call it. To know when there&#8217;s something here that deserves more of my attention and when I can say, <em>This fucking sucks. I&#8217;m sad. I wish it were different.</em> And then continue living my life while I carry the feeling with me.</p><p>I&#8217;ve spent so much of my life believing that understanding myself is the way through. And it has been, a lot of the time.</p><p>But I&#8217;m starting to think that sometimes there is no &#8220;through.&#8221; There is just feeling what I feel, doing what I can, and continuing to live.</p><p>So&#8230;Do we need to turn everything into a lesson? Does everything that happens to us need to have some grand purpose? And regardless of the answer, what is the process of finding meaning actually <em>for</em>? What are we doing when we decide something &#8220;happened for a reason&#8221;?</p><p>What is the process of processing? Lol. It sounds silly, but I actually think it&#8217;s an important question.</p><p>And because I know you probably want an answer and not just the philosophical ramblings that make up most of my internal life, I&#8217;ll try to give you some kind of formula.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Is It Self-Reflection or Self-Obsession?]]></title><description><![CDATA[On what happens when everyone puts themselves first.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/is-it-self-reflection-or-self-obsession</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/is-it-self-reflection-or-self-obsession</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:41:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8f55d842-c28d-4806-a454-2b1e15d1bb14_1254x1254.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wanted to start this by saying there&#8217;s this rare thing that happens, but I&#8217;m actually not sure how rare it is: people who are wildly unboundaried. It&#8217;s everywhere. The sexts that keep coming even w&#8230;</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[We’re All Afraid of Intimacy]]></title><description><![CDATA[Why closeness scares us, how we protect ourselves from it, and what it actually takes to let ourselves know and be known.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/were-all-afraid-of-intimacy</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/were-all-afraid-of-intimacy</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:55:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/33926cb7-68f4-490f-8c0a-d64b35b55ade_1536x1024.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>You&#8217;re afraid of intimacy. Just admit it. I am. Everyone is. And if someone says they aren&#8217;t, they&#8217;re lying and/or wildly disconnected from themselves. The things we do, the people we become, and the ways we&#8217;ve learned to protect ourselves. Consciously or unconsciously, so much of it comes back to fear of intimacy.</p><p>Some people are more aware of this than others. They confront their fears. They learn to recognize how they protect themselves. Not because the goal is to eliminate fear&#8212;fear is an ongoing part of being alive&#8212;but so they can remain open and act in ways that are congruent with what they actually long for.</p><p>Intimacy is scary. You can be rejected. Abandoned. Disappointed. Betrayed. Misunderstood. You can lose someone. You can lose parts of yourself. You can love someone enormously and still not be able to make it work.</p><p>And because of this, we protect ourselves. We pull away. Pursue too much. Withhold parts of ourselves. Endure too much. Say yes when we mean no and no when we really mean yes. Start fights. Try to control. Hide. Ask for more than we need or convince ourselves we need nothing at all.</p><p>This makes me think of a Susan Sontag quote: &#8220;It hurts to love. It&#8217;s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.&#8221; It&#8217;s a favorite. It starts one of the chapters in my book. Because it&#8217;s real. And it gets at why, in one way or another, love is always a painful risk. </p><p>Before I go any further, let&#8217;s clear something up. People use the word intimacy to mean a lot of different things&#8212;sex, emotional intimacy, physical closeness. When I talk about intimacy, I mean a process that happens across all of our relationships and experiences.</p><p><strong>Intimacy is the process of bringing what happens inside of you&#8212;your feelings, thoughts, wants, fears, needs, desires, reactions&#8212;into contact with another person&#8217;s inner world, and allowing yourself to be affected by what happens between you.</strong></p><p>That&#8217;s a skill. And it&#8217;s one we&#8217;re rarely taught.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[You're Asking the Wrong Questions]]></title><description><![CDATA[How we avoid the story underneath the problems we&#8217;re trying to solve]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/youre-asking-the-wrong-questions</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/youre-asking-the-wrong-questions</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:31:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/418653d5-52a5-4f66-bcae-2214fd2d33c5_1024x1536.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Someone asked me a question today that I&#8217;ve been asked some version of regularly: <em>I&#8217;m never going to find a partner. It feels hopeless. I think I&#8217;m meant to be alone forever.</em> Which, like, same girl. Been there.</p><p>I also saw a client today who referred to his completely normal emotions as &#8220;ridiculous.&#8221; Another person was struggling because their boyfriend wouldn&#8217;t talk about his past relationships. And then there&#8217;s the question I get all the time: <em>We haven&#8217;t had sex in eight years. How do we get desire back?</em></p><p>All of these questions suggest that what&#8217;s being said is only the tip of the iceberg. There&#8217;s a big fat wound sitting underneath the question, complaint, or experience.</p><p>We can be pretty certain that when we think in extremes&#8212;<em>I will never find anyone</em>&#8212;when we shame ourselves for having ordinary feelings&#8212;<em>I&#8217;m ridiculous for feeling this way</em>&#8212;or when we&#8217;re living inside relationships with significant disconnection&#8212;<em>we haven&#8217;t had sex in eight years; my partner won&#8217;t let me know them</em>&#8212;there is something deeper going on than the complaint being expressed.</p><p>This is no different from the presenting concern of most couples and individuals who come into therapy. People arrive with the thing that finally prompted them to reach out: <em>We have bad communication. I&#8217;m stuck in my relationship. I can&#8217;t get over my ex. I&#8217;m anxious all the time. We never have sex.</em></p><p>And there is almost always a much larger story that the person hasn&#8217;t fully become aware of yet.</p><p>A lot of the work of therapy is bringing whatever someone is avoiding in that story into awareness. I want to say I force it into awareness, but that sounds a little aggressive lol. It&#8217;s more like repeated exposure to the truths we&#8217;ve learned not to look at.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Instagram Vs. The Reality of Being a Person]]></title><description><![CDATA[On Instatherapy, your mother&#8217;s advice, your father&#8217;s rules, and learning that no one actually knows how you should live]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/instagram-vs-the-reality-of-being</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/instagram-vs-the-reality-of-being</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:12:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/fe1bc3e0-0031-448d-aa99-f09c7aa8c15b_1254x1254.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Love the Instagram vs. reality pictures&#8212;the ones where you see someone before and after they&#8217;ve been airbrushed. But what about Instagram vs. reality when it comes to life? Relationships? Ourselves? Self-help, therapy, value-based living?</p><p>The discrepancy is often just as dramatic. And it&#8217;s not all that different from the discrepancy between what your mother taught you and what you eventually discovered for yourself, or the values about sexuality you learned from religion and the reality of your own desire. It&#8217;s the age-old process of the external world telling us who to be, what to want, and how to live&#8212;and then having to contend with all the ways those messages don&#8217;t actually reflect who we are.</p><p>Advice from a stranger on the internet isn&#8217;t necessarily that different from advice from a parent or a preacher. Except now it isn&#8217;t always one person telling you how to live. It can be an entire cultural movement, with hundreds or thousands of people repeating the same idea. And when enough people say the same thing, it starts to feel like truth.</p><p>But let me tell you: 5,000 people can say something and it still doesn&#8217;t make it true.</p><p>When it&#8217;s time to end a relationship. When to get married. What marriage should look like. Whether you should wait for marriage. Self-love. Choosing yourself. Boundaries. Attachment. Nervous-system regulation. Basically, any advice&#8212;from an elder, therapist, preacher, or Instagrammer&#8212;that promises to help us live, love, and fuck better. These ideas can sound so right, so clear, so obvious when you hear them. But living them is another story.</p><p>I know this because I don&#8217;t just write about people on Instagram and here. I&#8217;ve also spent a very long time working with the reality of people&#8217;s lives. And people do not follow neat rules. We are driven by desire, fear, attachment, history, fantasy, longing, defenses against pain, and a million other things we don&#8217;t entirely understand.</p><p>Reality is where 1 + 1 somehow equals 4 one day and 24 the next. Where you can hate your partner today, fuck them tonight, and wake up tomorrow morning high on love. Where the thing you swore you would never tolerate becomes something you decide you can live with. Where the choice that looks obviously &#8220;healthy&#8221; from the outside can feel completely wrong from the inside.</p><p>Logic is great. It&#8217;s helpful. We need it. But human beings aren&#8217;t equations, and the problem begins when we start applying logic as though we are.</p><p>This is one of the biggest problems I see today: how harsh people are with themselves when they don&#8217;t measure up, and how much pressure they put on themselves to get there. Whether it&#8217;s measuring up to your father&#8217;s ideals, your partner&#8217;s expectations, or the latest ideas about health, healing, relationships, and self-improvement.</p><p><em>I should be better by now. This shouldn&#8217;t be taking me this long. I shouldn&#8217;t still feel this way. I shouldn&#8217;t let them know how much I care.</em></p><p>But if you&#8217;re not feeling better, then you&#8217;re not feeling better. If it&#8217;s taking you longer, then that&#8217;s how long it&#8217;s taking you. And maybe you should tell them how you feel&#8212;or maybe you shouldn&#8217;t&#8212;and then you have to deal with what happens next.</p><p>That&#8217;s the struggle. We organize so much of our sense of self around how other people tell us to be. First it&#8217;s a parent. Then maybe a teacher, a spiritual leader, a therapist, a guru, a partner, or an Instagram post. And we do this because that&#8217;s literally how we first learn about ourselves and the world: through other people. So of course we keep repeating the pattern.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[I’m Actually Okay. Mostly.]]></title><description><![CDATA[On loneliness, my dreams, defenses, and the parts of ourselves that don&#8217;t disappear just because we feel better]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/im-actually-okay-mostly</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/im-actually-okay-mostly</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:31:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cccef4c2-d143-4ea9-a43d-6cfeb9e7d792_1024x1024.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My dreams are feeling-centered, not unlike my waking life. I&#8217;ve always felt in 4K, and when I sleep it&#8217;s the same. The themes, the stories&#8212;they come alive through the feelings they evoke. Most of the&#8230;</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why “You Shouldn’t Need Anyone to Feel Complete” Is the Worst Advice Ever]]></title><description><![CDATA[On dependence, development, and the very human need to be loved]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-need-anyone-to-feel</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-you-shouldnt-need-anyone-to-feel</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 09 Aug 2026 13:49:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c11fe2f5-b994-45ba-b89e-c6b1612b9454_1619x971.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It drives me crazy to still see people promoting the idea that your self-worth, value, etc. shouldn&#8217;t be dependent upon being in a relationship. That you should be happy alone. That you shouldn&#8217;t need other people. And that if you&#8217;re single and believe your life is missing something, there is something wrong with you&#8212;and therefore you&#8217;re not ready for healthy love.</p><p>It&#8217;s outrageous to me. It almost feels like gaslighting. In fact, I would say that it is. It&#8217;s one of the most ridiculous ideas ever.</p><p>Firstly, we are designed to need other people. We have evolved as a species based on our need for connection and belonging. We have entire brain systems that revolve around attachment and co-regulation. Attachment studies have shown the profound developmental consequences for babies deprived of consistent human connection and care.</p><p>And the same people talking about how you shouldn&#8217;t need anyone are also constantly talking about attachment. Which in itself is wild because attachment is literally about the fact that we need other people.</p><p>Obviously, we need the capacity to be alone. To regulate ourselves. To maintain a sense of self. To create a life we like while single. But that doesn&#8217;t mean we stop needing or wanting a relationship. It doesn&#8217;t mean we stop longing for love sometimes even with a level of desperation. These things aren&#8217;t mutually exclusive.</p><p>We live in such a black-and-white, boring society that actually believes, invests in, and promotes these ridiculous ideas. That the best love is the love you don&#8217;t need? What?</p><p>Is this just another version of &#8220;it happens when you least expect it&#8221;? Or, even worse, &#8220;it&#8217;ll happen when you stop looking for it&#8221;? Give me a break.</p><p>We have studied this forever. We need people. Even look at the world around us: so much of society is literally arranged around dyads, couples, and families. The government literally gives married people tax benefits!</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[How to Tell the Difference, How to Know, and When It’s Time]]></title><description><![CDATA[Answers for all your life&#8217;s woes]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/how-to-tell-the-difference-how-to</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/how-to-tell-the-difference-how-to</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:34:22 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8a9b1ce6-8416-4c4b-899c-84114b30a93c_1024x1536.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I can&#8217;t stop writing about this because you can&#8217;t stop asking.</p><p>I do Q&amp;As all day, every day lately, and the questions are all basically the same. They tend to fall into a few categories.</p><p>The first is <strong>how to tell the difference between one thing and another.</strong> Is this a trigger or a red flag? Is this intuition or anxiety? Is this incompatibility or avoidance? Is this a boundary or am I being rigid?</p><p>Then there&#8217;s <strong>how to know.</strong> How do I know if my jealousy means something? How do I know if my anger is justified? How do I know if I&#8217;m settling? How do I know if I&#8217;m actually attracted to them? How do I know if this relationship is right?</p><p>The third, and maybe one of the most common: <strong>When is it time to end a relationship?</strong></p><p>And then there&#8217;s grief, heartbreak, anxiety, longing, obsession: <strong>How do I make this feeling go away? How do I feel less?</strong></p><p>Different questions. Same search.</p><p>People are looking for solid, black-and-white answers. They want me to say: 1 + 1 = 2. Here is the formula. Follow these three steps and you&#8217;ll know what to do.</p><p>And underneath that search is often an inability to tolerate uncertainty&#8212;or the belief that certainty and security are actually attainable if only some random stranger on the internet with 580k+ followers could tell you the secret to your life.</p><p>It&#8217;s interesting because I&#8217;m also a therapist. I hear versions of these exact same questions in my office all the time. The difference is that there we can spend an hour talking about them. We can get into someone&#8217;s history, their patterns, their relationships, their defenses. We can pay attention to what happens in their body as they talk. We can sit with contradictions instead of immediately trying to resolve them.</p><p>On Instagram, I get a tiny box and a few sentences.</p><p>But the questions themselves aren&#8217;t different. There are just so many more of them.</p><p>My therapy caseload is maybe 15&#8211;20 people. Online, I get hundreds of questions like this. Hundreds of people asking some version of: <strong>How do I know? How can I tell? When is it time? How do I make this stop hurting?</strong></p><p>Which is why I can&#8217;t stop writing these articles.</p><p>It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m sitting around trying to think of something to write to you about. This is the data I get from hundreds of thousands of people online. And the data keeps telling me the same thing:</p><p>We are desperate for someone to give us certainty about experiences that are inherently uncertain. We are desperate to feel less. With all of that said, I am going to try nonetheless to answer these questions. I will tell you how and when.</p><p>Want to know the secret? </p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why You'll Never Feel "Healed"]]></title><description><![CDATA[The uncomfortable truth about personal growth.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-youll-never-feel-healed</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/why-youll-never-feel-healed</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:51:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/952491e8-83c8-4385-bfa3-c54420cbcbab_1023x1537.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What do you know about your therapist? Did you ask? Have they shared? Probably very little. And you probably didn&#8217;t ask, and they probably didn&#8217;t share. And if you did ask, maybe they responded with minimal information or, worse, a question, as we&#8217;re taught in school: <em>Why do you want to know that?</em> Or, <em>How would me sharing this change your mind?</em></p><p>Boring. Ridiculous.</p><p>It&#8217;s boundaries practiced in such a rigid way that it&#8217;s ultimately beyond ironic, considering we, as therapists, are teachers of intimacy in many ways. Yet the therapy relationship is one in which we reveal very little about ourselves. On the one hand, that&#8217;s necessary for the relational dynamic and the healing nature of receiving care. But the rigidity around that level of disclosure isn&#8217;t necessary to preserve the integrity of the relationship.</p><p>So what happens instead is a level of idealization and assumption. We assume our therapists don&#8217;t have problems. They know things, so therefore they would never do&#8212;or struggle with&#8212;the things that &#8220;normal&#8221; people do. And if they do, many people make assumptions about their skill as a therapist or make ridiculous comments that begin with something like, <em>&#8220;As a therapist, I&#8217;m surprised that...&#8221;</em> or <em>&#8220;You&#8217;re the therapist, shouldn&#8217;t you...&#8221;</em></p><p>This idea of mystery, assumption, and idealization is a microcosm of how we understand healing itself. It reflects how we understand our own problems, how we understand other people, and it&#8217;s an extension of many of our cultural values around emotion, trauma, and helping relationships. We all operate around the idea that information leads to change, healing, or even a cure. That if one works hard enough, studies enough, or knows enough, somewhere out there a life exists that is easier. A life that is all-knowing. That is the holy grail of it all.</p><p>This is what we see all over social media. <em>You know you&#8217;re healed when...</em> <em>Manifest this just by thinking positive.</em> <em>Things got easier when...</em> All the listicles telling us that we too can be healed if we only know the truth, set boundaries, choose ourselves, and never entertain a partner with limitations.</p><p>As if that version of life exists.</p><p>Shocker. It doesn&#8217;t.</p><p>Last night I had dinner with friends. It&#8217;s a group I love to death. During these hangs we all share what&#8217;s going on in our lives&#8212;but not in the <em>I went to the store</em> kind of way. We talk about childhood, current relationship struggles, dreams, grief, joy. We scream, we cry, we laugh. I love all of it.</p><p>As we were going around the table, a few people started talking down to themselves. It was on brand for them, but honestly it&#8217;s on brand for so many of us. They were talking about their capacity for growth, the speed with which they&#8217;re changing, the parts of their lives they still haven&#8217;t changed. <span>Different versions of the same story: </span><em>I'm not there yet. I'm behind.</em><span> Everyone else seems more healed, more evolved, more "there" than they are&#8212;including our therapist, who is presumably the most healed of us all (because yes, we all have the same therapist... the drama of that to unpack later).</span></p><p>And I burst out laughing.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Stop Analyzing Other People]]></title><description><![CDATA[On self-avoidance, social media, and the psychology we're getting wrong.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/stop-analyzing-other-people</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/stop-analyzing-other-people</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 14:16:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/394d50c7-b7e3-43fd-ae98-ed2f08e21ca0_1024x1536.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The biggest problem I see with couples and individuals is that they&#8217;re far more focused on other people than they are on themselves. Usually it&#8217;s a partner. Before that, it was a parent. It starts in&#8230;</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What the Actual Fuck Has Happened to Love?]]></title><description><![CDATA[We know more about love than ever, yet somehow we've become less loving.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/what-the-actual-fuck-has-happened</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/what-the-actual-fuck-has-happened</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 01 Aug 2026 15:02:01 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/064148aa-8141-456e-bcc4-053cc640be1b_800x1200.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Ok, I watched <em>The Ultimatum</em> for like five seconds last night. It was intolerable. I had to change it.</p><p>But in those five seconds I listened to these idiots professing their love. And part of me was like... wow. That&#8217;s actually kind of sweet. Not necessarily because I believed them&#8212;I know it&#8217;s entertainment&#8212;but because of the intensity. The depth of the emotion they were supposedly expressing.</p><p>And then I think about the conversations I have every day with friends and clients. People in relationships. People looking for relationships.</p><p>It&#8217;s either hyper-clinical or completely head-in-the-clouds manifestation nonsense.</p><p>What in the literal fuck has happened to love? Where did it go!</p><p>We all say we want it, but we&#8217;ve reduced it to something so intellectual and logistical. We don&#8217;t want to take risks. We don&#8217;t want to feel uncomfortable. We&#8217;re looking for flaws. We&#8217;re analyzing. We&#8217;re not connecting. We don&#8217;t say the big things. We&#8217;re cautious. We wait. We think about timing. We don&#8217;t want to give too much.</p><p>And then most people finally get into relationships&#8212;and I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s year one or year thirty&#8212;they completely stop trying. Their minds aren&#8217;t focused on cultivating a love story. They&#8217;re focused on practicality. Family planning. And work. </p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Good Sex Isn't About Being Hot]]></title><description><![CDATA[Being desirable and being a great lover are two completely different things.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/good-sex-isnt-about-being-hot</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/good-sex-isnt-about-being-hot</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:19:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/beb881c5-fded-46fe-b7b5-69b5f9e2ba75_1024x1536.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Being good at sex has almost nothing to do with being hot.</p><p>I know that&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re taught. We&#8217;re sold this idea that the hottest people have the best sex. That if enough people admire you, want you, or find you attractive, you&#8217;ll somehow automatically be great in bed.</p><p>But the reality is your outer appearance has very little to do with the kind of sexual experience you create.</p><p>I talk to so many people who are anxious about sex because of their body. They tell me they need to lose weight first. Get in better shape. Build more muscle. Look younger. Then they&#8217;ll start dating. Then they&#8217;ll finally have sex.</p><p>And yes, we live in a culture that constantly reduces people to how they look. I&#8217;m not pretending that pressure isn&#8217;t real.</p><p>But here&#8217;s what I know after 15 years of talking to people about their sex lives: you can be in the best shape of your life and still be terrible in bed.</p><p>Being good at sex is about your capacity to be present. To communicate. To be curious. To notice another person. To be playful. To tolerate awkwardness. To express what you want. To stay connected instead of performing. To create an experience with someone rather than trying to impress them.</p><p>I&#8217;ve known incredibly attractive people who were disconnected, anxious, performative, and forgettable lovers. And I&#8217;ve known people who would never be considered conventionally &#8220;hot&#8221; who created some of the most erotic, connected, and satisfying sexual experiences because they actually knew how to be with another person.</p><p>Your body might get someone&#8217;s attention. Who you are in bed is what they&#8217;ll remember.</p><p>Ironically, the more preoccupied you are with how you look during sex, the less available you are for the actual experience. When you&#8217;re constantly wondering, <em>Do I look okay? Is my stomach showing? Are they still attracted to me? Do they like what they&#8217;re seeing?</em> you&#8217;re no longer in your body. You&#8217;re in your head.</p><p>You&#8217;re not paying attention to sensation. You&#8217;re not noticing what feels good. You&#8217;re not getting curious about your partner. You&#8217;re not responding to the moment. You&#8217;re performing. And performance isn&#8217;t the same thing as presence.</p><p>What I think is underneath all of this isn&#8217;t really body anxiety. It&#8217;s relational anxiety.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Most Arguments Are Dumb]]></title><description><![CDATA[Most arguments are dumb.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/most-arguments-are-dumb</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/most-arguments-are-dumb</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:31:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4dd9ab71-5b77-4f35-b710-614b588f88ed_800x533.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Most arguments are dumb. Not because the people in them are dumb. Not because the issues don&#8217;t matter. And certainly not because conflict itself is unhealthy. Conflict is inevitable. Necessary, even.</p><p>They&#8217;re dumb because they&#8217;re usually about the wrong thing.</p><p>You argue about dishes. About who texted first. About tone. About the fact that they were twenty minutes late. About the fact that they didn&#8217;t ask how your meeting went. About whose family you&#8217;re seeing for Thanksgiving. About who forgot to buy toilet paper. About whether they should have come to bed earlier. About who initiated sex last.</p><p>And while those things may deserve to be talked about, they are rarely what the argument is actually about. Most conflict is surface. Underneath it is something far more vulnerable that we struggle to say out loud.</p><p>&#8220;I felt alone.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I felt unimportant.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I was scared.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I felt rejected.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know if you still choose me.&#8221;</p><p>Those are much harder conversations to have. So instead we argue about the dishes. This is where the emotion lands. Because feelings don&#8217;t always arrive with language. Sometimes they arrive as irritation. Sometimes they arrive as criticism. Sometimes they arrive as control. Sometimes they arrive as defensiveness. Sometimes they arrive disguised as logic.</p><p>But underneath all of that is usually a human trying to make sense of some perceived threat to connection. When we don&#8217;t know how to identify that threat, we fight about whatever happens to be standing closest to it.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Everything Is Disappointing. And That's Actually Okay.]]></title><description><![CDATA[The problem isn't disappointment. It's what we've learned disappointment means.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/everything-is-disappointing-and-thats</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/everything-is-disappointing-and-thats</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:49:38 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/12c92fd2-03c7-4e30-a574-5542311b018c_1024x1024.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There are very few things in my life that I&#8217;m completely content with. That&#8217;s partly my own neurosis. I have a tendency to notice what&#8217;s missing before I notice what&#8217;s here. There always seems to be something I&#8217;m trying to improve, fix, optimize, or complain about. </p><p>But I don&#8217;t actually think that&#8217;s unique to me.</p><p>We all have our own way of responding to the inherent limitations of life. I complain. Someone else makes impulsive changes. Someone else spirals into anxiety. Someone else withdraws into depression. Someone else convinces themselves the answer is simply to start over. Different strategies. Same dilemma.</p><p>Because no relationship is perfect. No friendship. No career. No experience of being a partner, a parent, or a therapist. Nothing remains entirely satisfying forever. Every experience contains both fulfillment and disappointment. Every relationship gives us something while asking us to grieve something else.</p><p>I think this is one of the hardest truths to hold.</p><p>Love inevitably hurts. Connection always contains the possibility of disconnection. Sometimes being with another person can make us feel profoundly alone. Not because something has gone wrong, but because every human experience is limited. Every person is finite. Every relationship eventually bumps into its edges.</p><p>We spend so much of our lives trying to optimize those edges. We communicate better. We choose differently. We heal. We set boundaries. We work on ourselves. And all of that matters. But eventually we will have to find our way to somewhere that self-improvement can&#8217;t quite reach.</p><p>Acceptance.</p>
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   ]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Self-Abandonment Is a Relational Process]]></title><description><![CDATA[We're not simply leaving ourselves. We're unconsciously creating relationships where only parts of us feel safe to exist.]]></description><link>https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/self-abandonment-is-a-relational</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://toddbaratz.substack.com/p/self-abandonment-is-a-relational</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Todd Baratz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:56:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/62bd7f94-2f46-4e6d-b87b-4f3a4eff9912_1254x1254.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Self-abandonment, along with people-pleasing, is another one of those trendy phrases that&#8217;s exploded over the past couple of years. If you&#8217;ve been following me for a while, you know I tend to be a little oppositional when it comes to pop psychology. Not because I think it&#8217;s all wrong, but because I like to think critically about the language we use and why we use it.</p><p>Why? Because in my work, I routinely see clients who don&#8217;t just use these words&#8212;they internalize them as capital-T Truth. They become value systems rather than metaphors. And that&#8217;s where I think we have to be careful.</p><p>The idea of self-abandonment resonates because many of us grew up in families where we were, in one way or another, emotionally neglected, unseen, or abandoned. We internalized those relational experiences and often recreate them in adulthood. From that perspective, it can absolutely feel like we&#8217;re abandoning ourselves.</p><p>But I actually think there&#8217;s a more accurate way of describing what&#8217;s happening.</p><p>It&#8217;s less that we abandon ourselves and more that we never fully learned how to be ourselves in relationship in a way that feels safe. Learning how to be yourself isn&#8217;t nearly as marketable as &#8220;stop self-abandoning,&#8221; so we gravitate toward the more dramatic language.</p><p>The problem is that language shapes how we think.</p><p>If the goal is to stop self-abandoning and start staying with yourself, then other people can begin to feel like the threat. The emphasis becomes, &#8220;I will never leave myself again.&#8221; And for many people, that&#8217;s deeply empowering. It helps them reclaim parts of themselves they had to suppress for years. They become more declarative. They learn to say no. They stop organizing their lives around everyone else&#8217;s needs.</p><p>All of that is important.</p><p>But intimate relationships are more complicated than simply staying with yourself or abandoning yourself. Relationships are dynamic. They change us. They activate us. They expose parts of us we don&#8217;t encounter anywhere else.</p><p>It&#8217;s not that we metaphorically lock our authentic self in some prison deep inside our hearts&#8212;although I know that&#8217;s exactly how it feels.</p><p>It&#8217;s that we enter a particular relational field and begin participating in dynamics where we don&#8217;t allow ourselves to be fully seen. Which is complicated, because while many of us desperately want to be seen, the reality of being seen is often terrifying. </p><p>So maybe what we&#8217;re calling self-abandonment is actually something closer to self-protection.</p><p>We don&#8217;t leave ourselves. We protect ourselves so thoroughly that only a small, carefully managed version of ourselves enters the relationship. The goal, then, isn&#8217;t simply to &#8220;stay with yourself.&#8221; It&#8217;s to gradually expand the amount of yourself that feels safe enough to bring into relationship.</p><p>The unconscious becomes known through behavior and the outcome of that behavior. We discover it by watching the patterns we repeat.</p>
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