This isn’t just about porn — it’s about the parts of you that learned to hide.

You don’t have a porn problem - you have a nervous system problem.
This episode unpacks how porn becomes a coping mechanism for stress, loneliness, and emotional disconnection. We explore how it hijacks your nervous system, numbs your deeper needs, and wires your body to seek safety through isolation, not intimacy.

If you’ve ever watched and felt more alone after - this will explain why.
If you’ve struggled to connect, feel, or stay present in real intimacy - this is where the root lives. But we don’t stop there.
We begin the roadmap out - a way to understand what porn has been soothing, and how to meet those needs without self-betrayal.
You’ll walk away not just with insight, but with steps toward reintegration, truth, and connection.

This isn’t about judgment. It’s about clarity.
And it might just change the way you relate to pleasure, sex - and yourself.

Annie O'Brien M.Sc. Psychotherapist

www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

You think it’s about sex. It’s not.
In this episode,we go deep; not into porn addiction, but into what your porn habit might really be about. Control. Loneliness.The need to be wanted without risk. If you’ve ever watched and then felt empty, numb, or ashamed...this is why.

We’re unpacking the psychodynamic core of porn use:
How it acts as emotional anaesthetic.
How it replays early attachment wounds.
How it replaces intimacy with fantasy.
And why, for many men, porn becomes the only place they feel safe being vulnerable.

This isn’t a moral rant.
This is - the truth under the habit.
And once you see it - you can never unsee it.

Annie O'Brien M.Sc. Psychotherapist & Clinical Hypnotherapist

www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

You’re not crazy. You’re chemically attached to someone who trained your nervous system to mistake pain for love.
This isn’t romance — it’s a trauma loop. And you’ve been stuck in it for years.

In this episode, we expose the brutal mechanics of trauma bonding: the intermittent reward cycles, the childhood imprinting, the neurochemical addiction, and why you keep calling manipulation “connection.”
We’ll walk through why you chase people who hurt you, how your past programmed you to tolerate chaos, and what happens when your need to be chosen outweighs your sense of self.

If you’ve ever begged for clarity from someone who thrives on confusion…
If you’ve ever felt high when they come back and sick when they leave…
If you’ve ever called that love -

This episode is your wake-up call.

Annie O'Brien M.Sc. Psychotherapist

www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

Music Credit - Grand Project - Majestic Sky

They broke the rules. But the story started long before the affair.

In this episode of Soul Path Alchemy, we go beneath the surface of infidelity — not to excuse it, but to understand what drives it, what it exposes, and what it demands of us.

Affairs aren’t about sex. They’re about silence. Neglect. Longing. Power. And the parts of ourselves we exile to keep the peace.

We’ll explore:

• Why affairs are often a response to unspoken truths

• The unconscious dynamics that precede betrayal

• What both the betrayer and the betrayed must face if anything real is to survive

• How to make sense of the chaos without bypassing the pain

• This episode isn’t about blame. It’s about brutal clarity.
  Because the wound only starts with the affair — but healing goes all the way down to the root.

  www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

You’re still in the same bed — but the distance is unbearable.

In this episode of Soul Path Alchemy, we dig into the truth behind sexless marriages and disconnected relationships. Not just the lack of sex — but what the silence is really saying.

We explore:

• Why people stop reaching for each other

• How avoidance becomes a coping mechanism

• The role of resentment, duty, and unspoken grief

• And what’s required if you want to bring the erotic back — or walk away with clarity

• This isn’t about blame. It’s about truth. Because sex doesn’t just die — it disappears when honesty does.

  www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

  Books on the way... www.sophiessecretbooks.com

You saw the signs. You just didn’t want them to mean what they meant.

In this episode of Soul Path Alchemy, we’re getting brutally honest about relationship red flags — the ones you minimised, rationalised, romanticised… until they ran you into the ground.

Maybe it was the hot-and-cold mind games.
Maybe it was how they “joked” about your insecurities.
Maybe it was how you stopped laughing. Or stopped speaking. Or stopped being you.

This isn’t a checklist. It’s a reckoning.

We’ll explore:

• Why smart, strong people ignore the obvious

• The difference between trauma bonding and real intimacy

• Subtle signs of emotional manipulation that masquerade as passion

• How your own unmet needs can distort what feels like love

• This episode is for the part of you that knew — and for the part that still wants to believe they’ll change.

  Because red flags aren’t the problem.
  The real danger is what you do with them.

  www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

Soul Path Alchemy is not another performative wellness podcast. It’s a living, breathing space where the unseen is honoured, the uncomfortable is named, and truth is treated as sacred.

I’m Annie O’Brien — a psychotherapist, writer, and lifelong student of the human soul. After decades of sitting with people through their most vulnerable, bewildering, and awe-inspiring moments, I’ve come to understand one thing: real transformation doesn’t happen in the light. It begins in the dark — in the cracks, the grief, the missteps, the nights you thought would break you.

This podcast was born from those places.

Here, we explore the quiet truths that don’t fit into Instagram quotes. We talk about love, loss, trauma, healing, longing, faith, betrayal, grief, rage, repair — and what it means to live in integrity with your soul in a world that keeps trying to pull you away from it.

I don’t believe in quick fixes. I believe in depth. In mystery. In hard-won clarity.
And I believe that the path of the soul isn’t linear — it’s alchemical. It asks everything of you, but gives you back something eternal.

Whether you’re a seeker, a survivor, a therapist, a mother, a man trying to find his way, a woman waking up to her own knowing — or just someone who's tired of bypassing their own pain — you're welcome here.

This is a space for remembering who you are beneath the masks. For softening into your knowing. For turning your deepest suffering into something holy.

Welcome to Soul Path Alchemy.
Where truth is not a weapon, but a key.

www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com

Books coming soon at www.sophiessecretbooks.com

I am not your Therapist and your choices are your own!

www.longfordpsychotherapyandcounselling.com