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.

In this episode, I explore the idea of mononormativity—the assumption that there is one correct structure for love, desire, maturity, and even healing—and how deeply it shapes religion, psychology, and spirituality.

Drawing on the work of David Congdon, Angela Willey, and Jorge Ferrer, I examine how appeals to “nature,” normality, and spiritual maturity often function less as descriptions of reality and more as tools of moral control. Across these traditions, plurality tends to be tolerated—but rarely trusted.

A key thread in this episode comes from philosopher Carrie Jenkins, who offers a powerful alternative metaphor: relationships—and life itself—as a choose-your-own-adventure. Rather than assuming a single correct path, this framework invites us to think in terms of responsible navigation, open futures, and ethical discernment without guarantees.

This is a conversation about desire as information rather than threat, plurality as a condition of growth rather than a failure of integration, and what becomes possible when we stop confusing uniformity with wisdom. It’s an invitation to rethink love, healing, and spirituality beyond rigid scripts—and to imagine forms of maturity that can hold complexity without panic.

In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I’m joined by psychoanalyst, writer, and host of Rendering Unconscious, Vanessa Sinclair, for a wide-ranging and deeply human conversation at the intersection of psychology, film, culture, enchantment, and resistance.

We begin by tracing Vanessa’s journey from Miami to New York to Sweden, her early adoption of telehealth long before it became the norm, and the origins of her podcast as a way of sustaining intellectual and creative community across borders. From there, we dive into a rich clinical and philosophical discussion of Melancholia (2011), which Vanessa describes as her favorite film of all time.

Using Melancholia as a lens, we explore depression and anxiety not simply as pathologies to be cured, but as meaningful responses to a profoundly disordered world. We contrast Kirsten Dunst’s melancholic attunement with Charlotte Gainsbourg’s anxious drive for control, examine how certainty, rationalism, and “trusting the experts” can collapse under existential pressure, and reflect on how denial, productivity, and optimism can become fragile defenses in the face of catastrophe.

From there, the conversation opens outward into questions of intuition, magical thinking, colonialism, patriarchy, monotheism, pluralism, and the loss of an enchanted worldview. Vanessa offers a powerful critique of how modern culture trains us to distrust our inner compass—pathologizing intuition, ritual, synchronicity, and imagination—while outsourcing meaning to algorithms, experts, and online consensus. We talk about art, astrology, animism, psychoanalysis, and why having your own experience of something matters more than reading reviews or interpretations first.

Clinically, we reflect on the dangers of romanticizing depression while still honoring its depth, especially in the context of systemic injustice, poverty, medical trauma, and institutional failure. Vanessa shares moving reflections from her work in hospital settings and HIV clinics, underscoring the limits of therapy when material conditions are fundamentally inhumane—and why self-care, community, and moments of joy are not luxuries but necessities.

We close by returning to the film’s final images of relational connection in the face of annihilation, and what they suggest about how meaning, care, and presence might still be possible—even when the world feels like it’s ending.

This is a conversation about depression, anxiety, art, magic, justice, and what it means to remain human in a disenchanted age—and why reclaiming depth, intuition, and connection may be one of the most radical acts available to us.