Have you ever been in a relationship where your body said no but your heart kept saying OMG YES?
Where you over-gave, over-explained, or stayed too long because part of you believed love meant sacrifice and suffering a bit is normal?

If that sounds familiar, today’s new episode is for you. In this episode of the She Saves Herself Podcast, I sit down with psychotherapist and bestselling author Jessica Baum—a past participant in my Author Mentorship Program—to explore the science and soul of feeling safe in relationships. Her new book, SAFE: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships, moves far beyond #attachmentstyle trends and into the body’s deeper memory of love, fear, and belonging.

Together, we trace what it means to heal not just your heart, but your nervous system—to stop mistaking intensity for intimacy and start recognizing safety as the new definition of love.

From Survival Mode to Self-Safety: Why We Repeat Painful Relationships and How to Break the Cycle

If your nervous system feels like a live wire every time someone pulls away, it’s your body remembering old danger. Jessica and I explore how early attachment wounds wire us to seek the familiar, even when the familiar hurts. Healing begins when we interrupt that unconscious loop and start building relationships that feel calm, reciprocal, and kind.

Regulation Isn’t Perfection—It’s Return

For years, I thought healing meant staying calm no matter what. Now I know it means trusting myself when I’m not. Jessica and I dismantle the myth of being “perfectly regulated” and talk about what true emotional maturity looks like: noticing your trigger, taking a breath, and coming back home to yourself faster each time. Healing isn’t about control—it’s about responsiveness, flexibility, and self-respect.

How to Feel Safe After Betrayal

When trust shatters, your nervous system stays on guard, scanning for the next danger. We discuss how to rebuild that internal sense of safety by grounding back into your body, re-learning what calm feels like, and remembering that safety is your birthright, not a privilege someone else grants you. Healing betrayal isn’t about erasing the past—it’s about teaching your body that love no longer equals threat.

Rebuilding Trust: How to Love Again Without Losing Yourself

After deception, the hardest person to trust is often yourself. Jessica and I explore how to rebuild inner trust by learning the difference between intuition and trauma response. Real intuition is steady and clear; trauma is urgent and loud. Each time you honor your truth, set a boundary, or choose alignment over approval, you whisper to your nervous system: You’re safe with me now.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode

• Why “familiar” doesn’t always mean “safe”—and how to stop recreating chaos
• How the nervous system shapes love, attachment, and emotional availability
• The role of “anchors” in co-regulation and relational healing
• How to turn triggers into teachers and shame into self-awareness
• Tools to rebuild self-trust and practice earned secure attachment
• Ways to move from fight-or-flight into grounded connection
• How early attachment shapes adult love
• Why we repeat familiar pain and how awareness helps us choose differently.
• The body’s role in healing and what “safety” actually feels like in your nervous system.
• Reframing triggers reactivity as information instead of failure.
• Why you can’t heal in isolation—and how to find people who feel safe.
• Anxious vs Avoidant patterns. Spot them in yourself and others with compassion.
• Powerful ways to re-parent yourself through healthy relationships.
• The intuition vs trauma response test – how to know which one is speaking.
• Daily grounding practices that move you from fight-or-flight into connection and trust.

Listen to Podcast Episode: Relearning Love After Betrayal: How to Feel Safe Again (Jessica Baum):

Spotify | Apple | Download

ABOUT: Jessica Baum, LMHC is the founder of The Conscious Relationship Group (formerly The Relationship Institute of Palm Beach) and author of the bestselling Anxiously Attached. For more than 15 years she has guided individuals and couples toward secure, fulfilling relationships through attachment-informed therapy and her Be Self-full® courses. Her new book, Safe, offers an empathic roadmap for moving from survival mode into true emotional freedom.

👉 Grab Jessica’s Free Guide Here

👉 Connect with Jessica: jessicabaumlmhc.com

About the Book:
SAFE: An Attachment-Informed Guide to Building More Secure Relationships is a compassionate roadmap to healing attachment wounds and building emotional safety from the inside out. Therapist Jessica Baum, author of Anxiously Attached, blends neuroscience, psychology, and heartfelt wisdom to help you move from survival mode into self-trust, secure love, and genuine connection.

If you’re navigating emotional abuse or recovery, explore the rest of the website. SheSavesHerself.org, a collective of healing resources, programs, and tools to help you rebuild from the inside out.

👉 YOU ARE WORTH INVESTING IN YOU: If you want to come home to yourself and discover radical self-love explore 1:1 Embodied Mentorships with Shannon Kaiser here.