The Break-Up Diet - You Don’t Feel Good Around Him… So Why Can’t You Leave? (ft. Psychologist Dr Kalli)

Episode Date: March 26, 2026

If you don’t even feel good around him anymore…so why can’t you leave?No literally… why is it SO hard to walk away from someone you know isn’t right for you?This episode is that conversation you have with your friends where everything suddenly clicks.Because you’re not crazy — your brain is literally addicted to him.This week I’m joined by Dr Kalli, psychologist, manifestation and self-concept coach, and qualified NLP coach, and we get into why you can know it’s not right… but still feel completely stuck in it.Why your logical brain basically goes offline in toxic relationships, why you keep going back, and why it can feel impossible to let go… even when you don’t feel like yourself anymore.Because it’s not just about him — it’s the attachment, the dopamine, the familiarity.And sometimes (even without realising it)… they’ve made you feel like you need them.We also talk about the shift that changes everything:when you realise nothing was going to change… until you did.If you’ve ever sat there thinking “why can’t I just leave?”this one’s for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I felt like I needed him, but he'd trained me, funnily enough, to believe that I needed him, and I couldn't live without him. Do you think people like that are aware that they're doing that or not? I think it's... Buckle up, bitches. It's going to get bumpy. This is the breakup diet. Welcome back to another episode of the breakup diet.

Today I have a very exciting guest on. I have Dr. Kelly. Hi. Who is a psychologist and manifestation coach. That's right. They kind of go hand in hand. They do. Yeah, they do. Which one did you start with? Psychology first. Yeah.

And then you suddenly, did you notice yourself manifesting a lot of things and then you got into it? Wow, it's a funny one. So I've always loved psychology, studied it right from like A level, went all the way up, got my PhD, and manifestation was something that came into it afterwards a little bit. So I was going through, funnily enough, a bit of a breakup at the time. And I was so stressed out. And I went to, I went to, I went to. went to the pub, had a chat with my friend, went and had a catch up with her. And I was obviously ranting about it. As you do, when you're going through a breakup, and she turned around to me and she says, you do realize you manifest your reality, don't you? And I was like, what do you mean by

that? I'd heard of manifestation. I mean, we're going back some years now. I didn't think much of it at the time, but she started talking to me a little bit about it. She got me into looking at different manifestation coaches and stuff. And she was like, just be mindful of how your beliefs and how you're showing up with your energy and everything is affecting your reality. looked into it a little bit more and I was like, hmm, there's a bit of psychology behind this whole manifestation thing. One thing led to another and then always wanted to run my own business anyway on top of doing my lecturing and teaching psychology and looked more and more into manifestation and I was like, no, I really want to teach people the psychology about this is actually

a thing. It's not this like woo-woo concept that we see it being on social media. With the psychology side, so you did your, all the like things that you have to do, for it. Yeah, yeah. So psychology did all my qualifications, got up to PhD level, so I got my PhD in psychology, just brought all of that knowledge and expertise into it with the manifestation side of things. So how are people actually then manifesting? I know I was meant to ask you this at the end, but I'm switching it around. What is it, number one? How do you know if you're doing it right? Are there any signs you're actually doing it right? Because I want to know. Yeah, yeah, cool. So manifestation, to strip it back,

We see the word manifestation. It basically means like creation. We're bringing thought into creation. One of the biggest pitfalls that we face with manifestation as well because we just think, oh, if I think something, it's just going to create. Yeah, it's just going to manifest. But when we actually look at manifestation at its core, it's this amalgamation of thoughts, feelings and actions.

So it's, yes, I can think this, but how do I feel when I think that? And how am I also showing up in my reality? as a result of how I'm feeling. And when we bring all of that together, that's what helps us to manifest. Is there anything they can do to make sure that the manifestation actually becomes a reality?

I think it boils down to the action. I really do. I think a big, like, block, I think that people faced was this whole law of attraction. This, it was a big trend that's still going around now. But law of attraction simply tells us

that if we just think something enough, we can attract it into our lives. because like attracts like. But we forget that actually all these people that have manifested these incredible things into their lives have taken action as a result of them thinking that way as well. Like I look back at all of the things that I've manifested and I've always taken action.

I've thought, right, this is what I want. I can think, I believe that I'm capable of it and I can feel that belief within me as well. And now I've got to take action. Now I've got to take the steps that are going to get me there to get that result. And yeah, we can experience some amazing things along the way. But it's also knowing that sometimes, even in the manifestation process, things don't always

go out way sometimes. But it's also how you choose to respond in those moments as well. Are you going to let it defeat you? Are you going to set yourself back as a result of it? Or are you still running on that belief and that drive and that feeling in you to say, no, I can do this. Despite what everything around me is showing me, this 3D current reality. I'm going to choose to believe that I can do it anyway,

and I'm going to continue to take action in spite of what's being presented to me, basically. Is there different types of ways you can manifest? As in we said, like, you know, taking action and, you know, thinking, but for somebody that literally has no idea about it, what would you say to do? The biggest thing we need to remember is we're manifesting anyway. We're manifesting good as well as manifesting the not so good, the stuff we don't always want.

And it's knowing that manifestation is more a case of you being aware of your beliefs, you being aware of how you're showing up for yourself day to day, the intentions you're setting for yourself every day. We have all of these amazing techniques that we can use, meditations, affirmations, my God, there's so many EFT tapping, so many scripting, all sorts, journaling. Those techniques are great to get you in that frame of mind and to persist and to keep the repetition going. But if you're not feeling it, your subconscious isn't listening to what you're saying or what you're writing down. It's listening to how you're feeling. And that's what's manifesting.

So if you are a beginner to manifestation, what I always say to every single amazing woman that I've worked with, let's focus on who you are, who you believe you are right now. And then let's focus on who you want to be and look at the difference between the two. I get it if you have something that's very obvious that you want to change about yourself, but what if you're not even sure? Would you then be working with, like, a psychologist, like yourself to try to uncover why you're not, I don't know, the person that you want to become?

Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, completely. And to be honest, this is what got me into coaching in the first place. So I was probably mid to late 20s at this point. And my life was just an absolute shit show. It was, I was so stuck on what I wanted to do with my job. This was before I was deciding to go off and do my PhD and stuff. I was in the most toxic trauma bond relationship ever.

It was so bad. And I, I just thought something's got to change. But I didn't know what. I didn't have a clue. Isn't it so crazy how you're like a psychologist, you know what I mean? And even, even someone like you can get stuck in a pattern. It happens to everyone. and it doesn't matter how much knowledge you have about certain situations.

Like when you're actually going through it yourself, it's so hard to one realize it and also get out of it and break it. 100%. Like I can sit with clients all day long and know exactly where they're blocking themselves and help them through that. But when you're so emotionally attached to a situation, you're blindsided. But it's easily done because when we feel like we're in a survival response, which a lot of us go through when we're in really toxic relationships,

ships, our prefrontal cortex, this logical part of our brain just goes offline and we're straight into limbic system, straight into the emotional part of our brain. And that's what's driving everything. So you can't see the wood for the trees. You know, you have that saying, don't you, where you're looking at things through, through rose tinted glasses because you're emotionally driven. The emotional part of your brain's active, the logical part of your brain's gone completely offline. Everyone goes through it. You could be the most knowledgeable person about the human. brain ever but when you're emotionally attached to a situation all that logic goes out the window you know also so weird about that as in general like those type of situations is the clicking point like why do you

suddenly a lot of the time like click out of it it's also like a breakup or like realize like why do you suddenly click like oh no I'm fine now you know what I mean like even if you've done loads of stuff even if you like I don't know it could be months later it could be like a few weeks later you just why does your brain suddenly go like okay okay, I'm fine now. It's so true though, isn't it? I think you hit exhaustion. And I was, I was scrolling on social media the other day,

and I can't remember for the life of me who it was. It's really an amazing coach online. And she was saying, life will give you the same lesson over and over again until you choose to learn from it. And I think you just get to the point where you realize you're just in a cycle, and then you've been in the cycle that long

that you also then realize, the only way I can get out of this cycle is if I break it and no one else is going to break it because I think you start to notice patterns in other people as well and you get to the point where you realise like I've done in my previous relationship, nothing was going to change until I changed. You can spend however long you want trying to change him, but nothing's going to happen because the more you still show up as the same version of yourself, the more he's going to look at it and think, well, I can do whatever I want because she's still going to be here regardless. I want to ask you this question because I feel like you would know is what actually

happens to our brain when a breakup happens because why does it suddenly feel like the actual end of the world? Like you go into a depression session a lot of the time. I mean, some people don't, but like from my own personal one, that, like, what? And even though I wasn't, like with me being totally honest, I didn't think that our relationship at that time was great because it wasn't. but it still was so overwhelming when it actually happened. And I wasn't living with him.

He wasn't really part of my day-to-day life because we were long distance. So you wouldn't think that it would be that traumatic, but it was. Yeah. So a couple of different things. So just talking about what you were saying there, even though you were long distance, you still had that familiarity of that person being present in your life. And when we go through a breakup,

up, because we've got so used to living life alongside another person, our brain loves familiarity. So when that person goes, our brain just instantly goes into survival mode. It's lost. It doesn't know what to do. So no matter how much time you spend with someone, your brain still associates life with that person. You create this new version of yourself that co-exists alongside this person as well. The biggest problem that we face when we go through a breakup is we feel like we can't live without that person and the reason being is because we feel that we've lost a part of ourselves in the process. When the relationship breaks down, you're navigating this version of you that's only been used to coexisting with someone, but alone now. And it's trying to work through that.

Our brain just basically goes into survival. It's weird how long it can last too. My one, it was my first serious breakup, but I was sad for months. And like I was doing the most amazing things, like hanging out with my friends, had somebody basically come and live here with me. Like, I was with people, but I just wasn't there. Going back to like what I said earlier about, like, suddenly it was just okay again. And I was like, what the hell? Because it was like a long time. I think a lot of women that I speak to feel a little bit of guilt around the fact that they aren't quite over it as quickly as they think they should be as well. A lot of women, especially if they've got themselves into certain like situationships, for example, that

have only lasted like a couple of months and then that person's gone and they're like well why is it got such a hold over me it was only a couple of months and in reality it's because you're so going a little bit more into the chemicals in our body and everything that happens as women we attach really easily to men especially when we're intimate with men this is why like one night stands don't work as well with women as what they do with men because when we are intimate with someone we really so much oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone in our brain. And so we grow an attachment so quickly to someone, which the man doesn't actually do straight away. It's a female thing. How long does it take them to get that? A little bit longer. It does happen, but it...

So if you want to attach them, you've got to just lock it down for a little bit longer women. Yeah, yeah. Then you got them. Yeah, men's brains work a little bit differently, but this is why women just get attached so easily. because we release this oxytocin. And then we find ourselves in these situationships or even these relationships that don't even last all that long, but because we've got this rush of oxytocin and we get these hits of dopamine every time they message us,

even if they're dead flaky and they're so hot and cold or they're like booty calling you, whatever time. You like get that rush of dopamine again. You become addicted to the connection. And then you just stuck in that loop for quite some time. Yeah, I feel like with situationships, they can really hurt a lot because you don't, you don't feel like you've fully given yourself to somebody really, not, you know what I mean, like not fully like being in the relationship for them to kind of reject you.

Even if it's nothing to do with you, you feel like unwanted. Most people feel after a breakup, like a relationship, a situation ship doesn't matter. It can really hit your confidence. Like why, why, if you have a nice breakup, a nice-ish breakup, why does it always seem to hit your confidence? of you not feeling good enough, or is this just a personal thing? No, it's really common. Because our brain doesn't work well with rejection. And it sees rejection as, well, what's wrong with me then?

Especially if it was just like a one-way thing where you didn't want the breakup, but he did or they did. It's like, well, if they didn't want me, what's wrong with me? And your brain's a natural problem solver, basically. So, and it will always, it automatically goes to negative a lot more reason. than positive. So when you're going through a breakup, especially if it wasn't a mutual breakup, your brain is analyzing, it's trying to problem solve, and because it's not getting the answers from him, it's directing us straight to, well, what's wrong with me then? Was I not good enough? Did I not do this right? Was I not loving enough? Did I not? Whatever, whatever your brain's trying to problem

solve in that moment, it will, it will do it. Do you have any advice of somebody, if they're like having all these thoughts of something immediately that they can do to try to get themselves out of that brain like pattern? Yeah. So I always, when I work with my clients, I always get them to focus on, well, let's focus less on what you think you've done wrong and let's focus on the connection in general. Focus on the fact that you've probably put this guy on a pedestal and he can do no wrong. And then so that's why you instantly go into you and thinking, well, what was wrong with me then? Especially if he's moved on. with someone else quite quickly as well. But it's more a case of, well, what did the relationship

not give you? Rather than focusing on the good, which sometimes isn't always all that good, again, the rose-coloured glasses and all of that stuff. Yeah, because when you have the breakup, you often go straight away into thinking, like, about all the happy times and you just conveniently forget all the, like, times that you were upset as much. Why does your brain do that? Like, why does it do that? Because that's nasty. Yeah, but again, it's the oxygen. It's the dopamine. It's that bond that we've created with that person. Our brain doesn't want to think of the bad things. It's craving the connection again. So it's thinking of all the good things and all the good times because that's what it craves. Even though it's not ideal, we don't want to be doing that. So again, this is why I get them to think instead of, right, okay, so what didn't the relationship give you? Were there any red flags that you were ignoring maybe? Let's rationalise this. Let's put it all out on the table and see it at face value exactly as it. if we strip away all the emotion behind it and look at the relationship logically, was this person, the person that you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with?

And nine times out of ten, there's so many aspects of the relationship that weren't aligned, but they convinced themselves that it was because there was chemistry. How do you know with like a relationship, so say you have a breakup and they both haven't moved on, right? but then every so often you end up chatting to your ex a bit and you obviously get on because you guys keep talking. What is that about? You know what I mean? Like is it actually that maybe you both do actually like each other a lot and maybe you should try again or is it or what is that about? Because I know it's a familiar thing. It is. Yeah. But then also if it keeps happening, I'm kind of like, why? I see this so many times. I don't know whether it's,

Okay, so it's one of these things where, yes, it can be a familiar thing, but if that chemistry is still there between the two of you, and you do keep coming back to each other, and the reason you broke up in the first place wasn't through any animosity, any toxicity, nothing like that. The only reason why it's potentially not working out, you're continuing in this back and forth, is because on a compatibility level,

the relationship just isn't quite there. So maybe the non-negotiables on both parts just don't quite match up, or maybe lifestyles just don't fit. Like, you could be amazing for each other and you could feel so much love for someone. But if the compatibility isn't there or what you want out of life just doesn't quite match, then there's always going to be that blockage.

So you're always going to want to keep reconnecting and coming back together, but something just isn't quite connecting, like a jigsaw puzzle. But to work out those, like, values, when you first start dating someone, and that's quite hard to work that out straight away, I feel. Because also people are, not all people are good, number one,

which is a discussion I was having with my friend literally yesterday, about not everybody turning up when you're dating them is turning up for the same reason of, like, meeting a long-term partner. So then, and also some people are bad, some people are actually, like, you know what I mean? So how can you work out someone's true about, like, life goals and all this without being number one, far too intense at very start and being like, la, la, la, la, because it is a bit intense. Or, yeah, or even a few months down the line actually working it out. You know what I mean, that you align so you don't waste as much time maybe.

No, I get what you're coming from. I think it's one of those age-old things of time will tell. Everything reveals itself over time. And the issue is we can become so besotted with the version of the person that we see from the get-go. Because let's face it, when we're dating, we're always showing our best selves. We're always just on our A-game all the time, because we always want to show someone who, the best version of ourselves. We want to impress. We want to feel attractive.

But then, the more you spend time with someone, the more you notice who they truly are anyway, because you can't hide behind that facade forever. At least if someone is, it's very exhausting for them behind the scenes, because you're always going to eventually show your true colours anyway. So it's why so many people say you don't actually know your partner until you live with them, which I think is so true. Like you don't, like you have so many habits and so many like daily lifestyle choices that you don't, you wouldn't notice on someone when you dating them to start with. I think it's one of those things of seeing how things go over time. I know sometimes we just want to jump straight into a connection,

especially if the chemistry is so hot and you just like, you, you, you, just want to be around them all the time. But how does that progress over time as well? There's the big thing that you have to weigh up when it comes to connections. Yes, chemistry is a part of it, obviously. We want to feel a chat. We were talking about it, weren't we, in terms of like, what if you just don't get, you just get the ick and it's like, oh, no, you're not for me kind of thing. But what is the level of compatibility? We focus so much on the chemistry that we forget about how compatible you are with someone as well. So over time, we're going to, you as you are getting to know each other, yeah, the attraction can be there. Yeah, it can be great.

But always keep reminding yourself, how compatible are we? What would some of those things be to be like compatible? Like, what do we actually want out of life? How do we see relationships? How do we perceive love? I think, especially with a lot of the women that I work with, the chemistry is very much there. And so all of that oxytocin, all the dopamine hits, everything's there. but this guy can't give her what she actually wants. She's craving commitment and loyalty, and he's off doing whatever he wants to do

and just dropping her a message every few days or whatever. But because the chemistry is so there, and she's built such a strong attachment to someone, she's craving more of it. And she's bypassing a lot of the red flags, and she's bypassing a lot of the things that she knows she wouldn't accept, and she knows she doesn't want it in a relationship. But again, we're holding on to the potential

and the hope that it is going to change. So it's always just, obviously I'm not saying every time you get into a connection, just constantly be alert all the time. It's just reminding yourself of what you truly want, setting those standards, setting the right boundaries and not letting those things slip just because of how they're showing up

or the potential that you potentially see. I had this conversation with another guest a few weeks ago. What I find hard in that situation, so I'm hoping somebody else does too, is knowing what values, you hold the most. I want to live in a nice place, be able to do, like, have a nice lifestyle, and also have a supportive husband. But then also, I want someone that's kind. How am I prioritising? What thing? Because a lot of the time I hear this a lot, like you don't get everything that you want.

You don't. Not all the time. And I think relationships do take compromise as well. It's two completely separate people coming together and building a life together, isn't it? And sometimes there is going to be compromised and it's compromise on both parts. If you feel that you're the only one compromising over and over again, you're going to grow to be a little bit resentful of the connection, let's face it. So I think the biggest thing is the logistics of stuff where you live, all of that kind of stuff will work itself out. When you meet the right person, those weigh themselves out anyway. It's how that person makes you feel. And I think, oh gosh, there was a there was a post on Instagram from Peter Crone. I love Peter Crone. He's brilliant. And he was basically saying,

you don't fall in love with the person. You fall in love with who you are as a result of being with that person. And I think it's focusing on how do I want to feel in a relationship? If I'm bringing someone into my life, how do I want to feel in that connection? We forget that choosing our life partner is one of the biggest decisions we'll ever make. And we take it so large. We, we take it so lightly when in reality i have such a big pressure on it like i'm i don't know if i take it lightly but yeah lots of people do yeah yeah lots of people do and it's i think a lot of it is pressure of time seeing other people settle down and being like why isn't it working for me and so you you're racing against the clock then and so you you're naturally then matching up with people who don't necessarily

meet your needs and don't make you feel a certain way or and i guess you you're obviously self-regulation and feeling good within yourself is important. You don't want to just meet a partner to ease all of your anxieties and stuff like that. The way that I like to see it is I want to feel great within myself. Don't have to be completely healed. Again, we can talk about that. That's fine. But we don't have to be completely healed. But it's knowing that whoever I bring into my life gets to enhance that rather than I have to depend on that person in order to be happy. I see that a lot with people that jump in relationships, not all people, but like a lot of people. A lot of that tend to go and they're never single.

I'm always like, but why can't you be single? Yeah, exactly. You know, I'm the opposite. I'm always single. And sometimes romantic connections can just bring out this side to you where you just completely lose all sense of who you are as well. So. Why do you think that happens when you lose it?

Is that just because you compromise so much that you just kind of forget your own needs? Yeah. think it can depend on the relationship as well. We hear, I mean, I don't like to use the term narcissist too much because I feel like it's been banded around that much that it's just become this trending word when, but I think when you're in quite toxic relationships or quite unhealthy relationship, not necessarily toxic, but they can just be unhealthy. We lose all sense of self because our entire being has revolved around this relationship. It's revolved around the words that we hear,

how we're treated and again how we feel how do I feel within myself if I feel like crap all the time within myself I'm going to lose all sense of self because you your body doesn't want to feel crappy so you just lose who you are there is as a result of that as well at the very start of this conversation you said that you were in a relationship and you said something needed to change but you didn't know what yes yeah so this was um my relationship in my 20s with this guy on and off for about six years. And I felt like I needed him. But he'd trained me, funnily enough, to believe that I needed him. And I couldn't live without him. Do you think people like that are aware that they're doing that or not?

I think it varies, to be honest. I think some people are completely oblivious, but they've subconsciously trained themselves to show up that way. They feel so insecure within themselves. that they've built this belief system that they have to belittle others or make others feel like they need them. But it's all at a subconscious level. So they're not completely aware of it. Whereas then you have the other people who are fully aware of what they're doing. They know they're being manipulative and they use it to their advantage. We can go as far back to attachment styles and all of those things,

how we were treated as children and the defence mechanisms that we build up as a result of that as well. which can then decipher if someone genuinely is manipulating you or whether it's more at a subconscious level. Like we look at narcissists, for example. Narcissists, we're led to believe that narcissists are these like really evil people who just manipulate you and stuff. But a lot of the time, actually, no, all the time, narcissists are the most insecure people in the world.

The only way that they feel that they can feel better about themselves is to push down the others. down the others. Yeah. God, it's scary out there, isn't there? It's a scary out. No, look as to be beautiful.