208 Ever feel easily irritated or annoyed with your partner and wonder what it means about your relationship? Ever thought, “Why is everything that my partner’s doing bothering me lately?”or “Does this mean something is wrong with us?” If so, I've been there too, and this episode is for you.

In it, we explore why feeling irritated in your relationship doesn’t mean anything is wrong, how chronic stress and dysregulation fuel annoyance, and what you can do to shift out of irritability and reactivity and back into connection.

Drawing from my own experience in my marriage – and nervous system science – I share how I learned to stop letting irritation and reactivity damage my relationship, and how you can do the same.

In this episode, you’ll hear 5 tips to shift out of irritation, aggravation, or annoyance, as well as:

• Why annoyance is a normal part of healthy relationships
• How to stop making irritation mean something is wrong
• The connection between stress, your nervous system, and relationship tension
• Simple ways to regulate yourself and soften reactivity
• How to rebuild warmth and appreciation with your partner

This episode is especially for highly sensitive people and anyone who feels overwhelmed, reactive, or disconnected in their relationship.

It will help you use any annoyance, irritation, and reactivity that comes up as the spark that can actually guide you back to your most connected, loving place in your relationship.

SHOW NOTES:

Learn all about and join Hannah in Foundations of Emotional Well-Being For HSPs; The Root Of a Safer Marriage and Heart here. Doors close Feb 4th, 2026. After that, price goes up forever.

Find Hannah at her website: hspmarriagecoaching.com

207 If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation with your partner feeling more overwhelmed, more disconnected, or more upset than when you started — this episode is for you.

In this conversation, we explore why so many well-intentioned attempts to “talk things through” actually escalate conflict instead of resolving it — especially for highly sensitive people.

You’ll learn what’s really happening in your nervous system during moments of emotional intensity, why communication breaks down when safety drops, and the difference between processing an emotion and unintentionally ruminating in it.

We’ll also talk about:

• Why your “survival brain” hijacks conversations when you’re flooded
• How trying to communicate while dysregulated can create a fight–fight loop
• Why timing matters more than technique when it comes to hard conversations
• What it means to regulate first — and communicate second.

This episode isn’t about blaming yourself or your partner. It’s about understanding the physiology underneath communication struggles — so you can stop trying to solve emotional problems at the wrong level.

If you’re a sensitive person who wants calmer, more honest, more connecting communication — without forcing or over-explaining — this episode will help you see your patterns with more compassion and clarity.

SHOW NOTES:

Learn all about and join Hannah in Foundations of Emotional Well-Being For HSPs; The Root Of a Safer Marriage and Heart here. Doors close Feb 4th, 2026. After that, price goes up forever.

Find Hannah at her website: hspmarriagecoaching.com

206 If you’ve ever read a marriage book, heard some relationship advice that seemed logical, or sat in a therapy session and thought, "Why is this so much harder for me than it seems to be for everyone else?"—there is a biological reason for that.

Today we dive into what that is, and why a lot of traditional marriage advice just doesn't work for us as highly sensitive people.

The truth is, most marriage advice does not take into account the HSP reality – our highly sensitive nervous systems and brains. So of course it’s going to flop for us if we are not first respecting and honoring our physiological differences and needs.

To expect traditional marriage advice to work for us is like expecting an orchid to bloom in a desert. It’s not going to happen.

So tune in to hear the top 5 popular pieces of advice that fail us sensitives, and what actually works instead – all illustrated with HSP-resonant nature analogies (sometimes some good old garden metaphors can really clear things up!)

By the end of this episode, you’re going to understand why, to thrive in your relationship, you don’t need to try harder at traditional marriage advice’s top down approach – like communicating with specific phrases– and that nourishing your sensitive system at the root level is what will make the biggest difference–and make the rest come quite naturally.

What does that mean? Tune in to find out.

SHOW NOTES:

Learn all about and join Hannah in Foundations of Emotional Well-Being For HSPs; The Root Of a Safer Marriage and Heart here. Doors close Feb 4th, 2026. After that, price goes up forever.

Take the Dysregulation quiz in the episode 190, or here in written format.