A Therapist's Playbook on Regulating Your Nervous System, Why You're Attracted to Unavailable Men, and What Actually Changes Your Life with Aliza Shapiro

Hands down THE most vulnerable I've ever been on the internet. Buckle up!!!

In this episode I sat down with one of my closest friends, Aliza Shapiro. She’s a licensed psychotherapist, the founder of Therapy in the City, and one of the sharpest clinical minds I’ve ever been around. Aliza trained in DBT with psychiatrist Dr. Charles Swenson, studied CBT under a Harvard psychologist, completed Wharton’s leadership program, and has built a following of more than 300K people who trust her to tell them the truth about their own minds.

This one is for the woman who has been doing the work. The journals, the meditations, the affirmations. And still feels like something is off. Or the woman who keeps choosing the same pattern, the same unavailable person, the same version of chaos, and deep down she knows it. She just doesn’t know how to stop.

What makes this conversation different is that Aliza hasn’t only seen my story from the outside. She has been on the clinical side of everything I’ve lived through -- the eating disorder, the depression, the years of DBT, the toxic relationships, the complete rebuilding. This is the therapist and the patient sitting in the same room, and I’ve never gone this deep publicly before. I gave her full permission to go there, and she did.

We talk about why you cannot manifest your way out of an unregulated nervous system. Why your brain will literally choose what’s familiar, even if it’s destroying you, over something healthy that it has never experienced. Why doing spiritual work without emotional work keeps people stuck. And what actually has to shift at the root before anything you’re calling in can land.

Inside this episode we talk about:

• Why we keep choosing unavailable partners and the nervous system patterns behind it

• What nervous system regulation actually means

• The difference between chemistry and chaos in relationship

• How I stopped needing to control the outcome and what shifted in my love life

• Repetition compulsion and why the brain chooses what’s familiar even when it hurts you

• The four DBT modules that changed my life and how to start using them

• Why manifestation doesn’t work without psychological work, and why therapy alone isn’t enough

• The dialectical dilemma most people have never heard of: unrelenting crisis and inhibited grieving

• How to find a good therapist and know when one isn’t the right fit

• Three simple ways to start regulating your nervous system today

If you’ve been living in extremes where everything feels incredible or everything feels like it’s falling apart, this conversation will meet you in the middle.

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts! 

xx

Hannah 

Find Hannah on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/itshannaheve/ Find Aliza on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alizashapirotherapy/

Aliza’s Practice, Therapy in the City: https://www.therapyinthecity.org/

01:40 Meet Aliza Shapiro and the work she does

03:05 Why DBT became such a big part of my life

05:24 High highs, low lows, and living in emotional extremes

06:32 What DBT actually is and why it works

09:41 Learning how to actually spot your patterns

12:11 Letting go of control and the need to know how it ends

19:14 Choosing differently when you’re triggered

25:10 Dark moments and learning to stay with the feeling

29:00 Why therapy actually helps when it’s done well

31:17 The four DBT modules that changed my life

35:34 Neediness versus secure love

37:59 Understanding your nervous system

39:28 Overstimulation and the fight or flight response

42:23 Practical ways to regulate your nervous system

46:04 Where therapy and spiritual work need to meet

49:51 How to find DBT support and resources

53:07 Tools, apps, and final thoughts