On a drive home after dinner with my kids, listening to Tim Henson’s Original Sin, a constellation of ideas came together around the work and life of psychoanalytic philosopher Mari Ruti. This episode is a personal, creative reflection on Ruti as a kind of “meek rebel” — someone deeply relational, politically engaged, and radically committed to inner freedom without ever surrendering herself to social belonging.

At the heart of the episode is a story I heard from Gail Newman about Ruti’s time in Vienna: how she accepted the invitation to collaborate on The Creative Self, but only if she could rent her own apartment — needing solitude not as withdrawal, but as the condition of her thinking, writing, and creativity.

Thinking with Rami Kaminski’s idea of otroversion, and drawing on Ruti’s own words about singularity, intimate revolt, and the limits of external revolution, this episode is an affectionate, speculative portrait of a life oriented toward depth over performance, inner freedom over recognition, and creativity over coherence.

Not a scholarly argument — just a meditation on what it might mean to live a deeply relational life without ever losing one’s singularity.

In this solo episode, I reflect on two recent conversations that have been quietly reshaping how I think about faith, love, and identity—my dialogue with theologian David Congdon on polyamorous Christianity, and my conversation with Rami Kaminski on otroversion and The Gift of Not Belonging.

On the surface, these episodes come from very different worlds. But as I sit with them, I begin to hear a shared invitation: to step out of inherited scripts, resist mono-normative ways of living, and take responsibility for crafting an ethical, relational, and spiritual life that is truly our own.

This episode explores the courage it takes to choose your own adventure—to discover your authentic voice, to seek deep connection without losing yourself to groupthink, and to live without the false safety of guarantees. Drawing from my work as a therapist and from the heart of Green Flags, I reflect on what it means to belong without disappearing, to love without rigid rules, and to build a life rooted in curiosity, integrity, and real intimacy.

If you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite fit the scripts you were handed—this one is for you.

What if not belonging isn’t a flaw—but a form of freedom?

In this episode of Psyche, I sit down with psychiatrist and author Dr. Rami Kaminski to explore his powerful book, The Gift of Not Belonging: How Outsiders Thrive in a World of Joiners. Together, we unpack his concept of otrovertness—a way of being in the world where a person may appear gentle, kind, and socially capable on the outside, yet internally refuses to surrender their identity to groupthink, ideology, or social pressure.

Dr. Kaminski describes the otrovert as a kind of meek rebel: someone who doesn’t need to be loud, defiant, or disruptive in order to be free. Instead, their rebellion is inward—rooted in the radical act of thinking for themselves, feeling for themselves, and refusing to let the crowd define who they are.

We talk about how modern culture confuses belonging with safety, how early socialization trains us to trade authenticity for acceptance, and why so many sensitive, neurodivergent, and deeply thoughtful people grow up feeling like outsiders—even when they seem to “fit in” just fine.

This conversation also explores:

• Why connection is not the same as belonging

• How otrovertness relates to autonomy, attachment, and inner freedom

• Why obedience often gets mistaken for goodness

• And how living outside the emotional herd can actually lead to a calmer, more meaningful life

  
  

If you’ve ever felt like you were never meant to live according to someone else’s script—this episode will speak directly to you.

In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I’m joined by theologian David Congdon for a deep, wide-ranging conversation about desire, love, polyamory, and the future of Christianity.

For centuries, Christian theology has treated eros, sexuality, and pleasure as something dangerous — something to be controlled, disciplined, or confined to narrow moral boundaries. David’s new book challenges that entire framework. Drawing on theology, philosophy, and queer theory, he asks what it would mean to imagine a Christianity where God, desire, and human love are not in competition with one another.

We talk about why Christianity has been so suspicious of pleasure, how monogamy became a moral norm, and what a non-competitive vision of love might look like. Along the way, we explore Donna Haraway’s concept of natureculture, Carrie Jenkins’ philosophy of love, jealousy and compersion, and why a resurrection-centered faith opens the door to a more abundant, joyful, and inclusive understanding of intimacy.

We also dive into the cult film Shortbus as a surprising parable of the church — a community built around permeability, forgiveness, and the courage to let in the new.

This episode isn’t about tearing faith down. It’s about asking what kind of love, spirituality, and community might become possible if we stopped confusing scarcity with holiness.

Listen in for a conversation about eros, grace, and a church that could be otherwise.

In this episode, I draw the second film from my New York Times Jenga movie deck—Anchorman—and end up somewhere I didn’t expect: a surprisingly intimate reflection on masculinity, emotional development, and the quiet fragility beneath alpha performance.

Using both the film and stories from my clinical work with men and couples, I explore how so many of us were taught to perform masculinity without ever being taught how to feel, relate, or truly know ourselves. What Anchorman turns into comedy, I often see in the therapy room: men who look confident on the outside but feel disconnected, angry, or numb on the inside.

I also bring in Jorge Ferrer’s idea of the “omega male”—a relational, emotionally grounded alternative to dominance-based masculinity—to imagine what might emerge when the alpha role finally collapses.

This isn’t a movie review.

It’s a reflection on how masculinity breaks—and what might grow in its place.

What if intimacy was never meant to come with guarantees?

In this solo episode, I explore how psychotherapy often inherits a quiet promise—that if we choose the right relationship structure, heal enough, or communicate well enough, intimacy will eventually become safe and predictable. Drawing on my clinical work, reflections on anti-mononormativity, and insights inspired by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics, I suggest a different way of holding love and relationship.

Rather than treating intimacy as something that should protect us from change, I explore the idea that intimacy is inherently risky—not in a harmful way, but in a deeply human one. To love is to be affected, transformed, and sometimes undone by another person. No relationship structure—monogamous or otherwise—eliminates that risk; it only organizes it differently.

This episode is not an argument for or against monogamy or polyamory. It’s a reflection on moving away from relational essentialism and toward a view of relationships grounded in perspective, relatedness, and transformation. Along the way, I draw on real clinical moments, explore jealousy as information rather than pathology, and reflect on therapy’s deeper task—not guaranteeing safety, but building capacity to stay present while we’re being changed.

If you’ve ever wondered why love still feels hard even when you’re “doing everything right,” this episode is an invitation to think about intimacy in a more honest, compassionate, and spacious way.

In this episode, I sit with a question that’s been quietly shaping a lot of my clinical work and personal reflection: What kind of masculinity are we actually bringing into our relationships?

Inspired by a provocative appendix from Jorge Ferrer’s Love and Freedom, I explore his contrast between the “Alpha Male” and the “Omega Man”—not as fixed identities or ideals, but as relational patterns that shape how men experience confidence, desire, power, and intimacy.

Rather than critiquing Ferrer, I use his framework as a doorway into something more personal and clinical: how masculinity often becomes organized around performance, hierarchy, and validation—and what begins to shift when it moves toward presence, self-trust, and relational safety.

Along the way, I reflect on:

• Why gender language always risks essentialism—and how to hold it lightly

• How these dynamics show up quietly in the therapy room

• Why gentleness, empathy, aesthetics, and emotional attunement are still coded as “unmanly”

• How sexuality changes when it’s no longer treated as a referendum on worth

• And why masculinity doesn’t need to be defended through hardness in order to remain potent

This isn’t an episode about becoming a “better man,” or replacing one masculine ideal with another. It’s an invitation to get curious about what allows relationships—and desire—to breathe.

If you’ve ever felt alienated by hyper-masculine bravado or flattened versions of “healthy masculinity,” this conversation is for you.

Jealousy is one of the most misunderstood human emotions. It’s often either justified as proof of love or dismissed as something we should simply get over. In this episode, I take a different approach—exploring jealousy as a complex emotional signal that can sometimes serve us, while also examining the ways it becomes shaped and intensified by cultural scripts like patriarchy, scarcity, and comparison.

Drawing on insights from Jorge Ferrer—especially his reflections in Love and Freedom on sympathetic joy (mudita)—I explore how jealousy can be transformed rather than suppressed. Sympathetic joy is not about denying jealousy, but about developing the capacity to genuinely celebrate the happiness and success of others without experiencing it as a threat.

I also reflect on ideas from my book Green Flags: How to Be the Kind of Person You Need in Your Life, particularly the challenge many of us face in celebrating the “wins” of others. Often, our difficulty rejoicing in someone else’s joy has less to do with them—and more to do with our own insecurities and fear of scarcity.

Throughout the episode, I explore how jealousy is shaped by evolutionary factors, attachment history, and sociocultural conditioning, and how psychotherapy can help us discern when jealousy is pointing to a real relational issue—and when it has become a barrier to freedom, intimacy, and joy.

This is a conversation about moving beyond possession and comparison toward discernment, emotional maturity, and the possibility of shared joy—without moralizing, bypassing, or pretending jealousy doesn’t exist.