In The Messy Podcast
Welcome to In the Messy. In The Messy (in-ti-macy) is more than a play on words — it’s a podcast for people who want to heal their relationships from the inside out.
Hosted by Janette Chu, a Registered Psychotherapist (RP), this podcast explores the real, raw, and often messy parts of being human. Whether you're navigating anxiety, attachment wounds, relational conflict, or parenting struggles, you’ll find grounded insights, compassionate guidance, and practical tools rooted in therapy.
Each episode offers support for individuals, couples, and families—drawing from evidence-based approaches like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS), EMDR, and more. Together, we’ll explore how your past may be shaping your present, how to move through disconnection with care, and how to build deeper, more secure relationships—with yourself and with the people who matter most.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just bring your willingness to be honest, curious, and kind to yourself. Healing doesn’t mean perfection—it means presence.
Subscribe and join me in the messy work of becoming more whole, more connected, and more integrated.
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Why You Want Your Ex Back After a Breakup
Why do you want your ex back even when you know the relationship wasn't right for you? In Episode 41 of In The Messy, Jan explores why breakups can trigger anxious attachment, why familiarity can feel safer than being alone, and why missing your ex doesn't necessarily mean you should get back together.
Learn how to manage the urge to text or call your ex, regulate your nervous system after a breakup, navigate dating again, and distinguish attachment panic from a genuine desire for reconciliation. Jan also explores what needs to change before getting back together can become a secure choice: including accountability, consistent behavioral change, emotional responsiveness, and genuine relationship repair.
When Someone You Love Fails You | Grief, Broken Trust & Healing
In this episode of In The Messy, Jan explores the kind of grief that often goes unseen—the grief that comes when someone you love is still alive, but the relationship no longer feels the same. Whether you're navigating betrayal, broken trust, infidelity, repeated disappointment, financial dishonesty, or a partner who continually lets you down, this episode offers a compassionate framework for understanding your pain without abandoning yourself.
If you're grieving the version of someone you thought you knew, struggling to rebuild trust after betrayal, or wondering whether your relationship can heal, this episode will help you approach your next steps with greater clarity, self-respect, and compassion.
How to Heal Anxious Attachment | Why You're Still Triggered
In this deeply personal episode, registered psychotherapist Jan explores why healing anxious attachment isn't about becoming perfect or never getting triggered again. Instead, it's about learning how to regulate your nervous system, understand your attachment wounds, build emotionally safe relationships, and stay connected to yourself even during life's most painful moments.
Jan shares practical strategies for managing activation, explains why healing looks different for everyone, and opens up about her own 20+ year journey with insecure attachment
The 5 Regrets You'll Wish You Avoided: Healing Anxious Attachment
In this episode of In the Messy, Jan explores the powerful lessons from The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware through the lens of anxious attachment, emotional healing, and becoming your secure self.
Together, we'll explore how fear of rejection, people-pleasing, emotional suppression, overworking, and self-abandonment quietly shape our relationships and daily decisions. You'll learn how anxious attachment can influence the choices you make—and how to start living with greater authenticity instead of fear.
Why Your Anxious Attachment Gets Triggered
In this episode of In The Messy Podcast, registered psychotherapist Jan explains why anxious attachment gets triggered, what feeling memories are, and how your nervous system can mistake uncertainty for danger. You'll also learn practical ways to regulate your emotions, communicate from your Secure Self, and build healthier, more secure relationships.
Whether you experience anxious attachment yourself or you're dating someone who does, this episode offers compassionate, research-informed guidance rooted in attachment theory, nervous system regulation, and emotionally focused therapy (EFT).
From Insecure to Secure: What Actually Creates Healthy Relationships
If you've ever wondered which attachment style is the hardest to date, which attachment style takes the longest to move on, or whether certain attachment styles are doomed in relationships, this episode is for you.
In this honest and compassionate conversation, Jan explores some of the most common questions people ask about attachment theory—and challenges the idea that attachment labels determine your relationship destiny. While anxious, avoidant, fearful-avoidant, and secure attachment styles can help us understand our patterns, they are not life sentences.
You'll learn why the hardest relationships are often not about attachment styles at all, but about self-awareness, accountability, emotional regulation, and a willingness to grow. Jan also discusses how trauma, stress, burnout, grief, and life circumstances can influence the way attachment patterns show up in relationships.
Secure Love vs. Attachment Wounds: How to Choose Better Relationships
Secure love isn't about finding a perfect person. It's about learning to recognize emotional safety, consistency, accountability, and mutual care—and choosing relationships that don't require you to abandon yourself to be loved.
If healthy love wasn't modeled for you growing up, secure relationships may feel unfamiliar. But unfamiliar doesn't mean unsafe, and intensity doesn't automatically mean connection.
You don't have to earn love by chasing, proving, fixing, or performing. The healthiest relationships allow you to be fully yourself while growing together.
The Father Wound: Breaking Free from Old Relationship Patterns
If you grew up with a father, grandfather, teacher, or male caregiver who was inconsistent, emotionally distant, critical, unavailable, or unpredictable, you may find yourself carrying beliefs such as: "Men will disappoint me," "I have to earn love," or "I can't trust anyone to stay." These beliefs often operate beneath the surface, influencing who we choose, how we communicate, and how we respond to conflict, intimacy, and vulnerability.
Drawing from attachment theory, emotionally focused therapy (EFT), and the Secure Self framework, Jan explores how father wounds can show up as anxious, avoidant, or fearful attachment patterns—and why healing requires learning to separate the past from the present.
Stop Arguing About the Details: How to Find the Real Issue in Conflict
When emotions run high, our brains naturally focus on the surface details of conflict. We become fixated on criticism, defensiveness, silence, facial expressions, or past mistakes. But beneath most relationship arguments lies a deeper need: a desire for connection, reassurance, support, safety, understanding, or emotional closeness.
Drawing from attachment theory, emotionally focused therapy (EFT), and years of clinical experience, Jan explains how to identify the real target underneath conflict and why doing so can lead to faster repair, deeper understanding, and healthier communication. You'll learn how to recognize when you're getting pulled into the noise, regulate your nervous system, connect with your secure self, communicate your needs clearly, and repair conflict in a way that strengthens your relationships.
Religious Trauma Through the Lens of Attachment Theory
In this episode of In The Messy Podcast, Jan explores religious trauma through the lens of attachment theory, nervous system safety, shame, belonging, and the secure self. This conversation is not about attacking religion or telling you what to believe. Instead, it’s about understanding what happens internally when faith, family, fear, obedience, and love become deeply intertwined.
Jan unpacks how attachment wounds can shape our relationship with religion, authority, boundaries, and even our sense of self. If questioning your beliefs feels terrifying, if setting boundaries with family brings overwhelming guilt, or if you’ve struggled with the fear of losing love and belonging by becoming your authentic self, this episode offers compassion, insight, and practical reflection.