Stuck Not Broken

Latest Episodes:

Stuck Not Broken: What It Means & Why it's Good to be Stuck Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

Stuck and broken are two very different problems, and which one you believe you are changes everything about what comes next. This is the title chapter. You’ll hear why every one of us is running on the same biological hardware no matter how different our lives look, what it means to call your trauma a stuck state rather than a defect, and why the stuck point you’re in right now is the hopeful part. You’ll also hear why the next one, after this, isn’t failure. It’s just what growth looks like.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

😊 About the Host: Justin Sunseri is a therapist and coach committed to helping you live with calm, confidence, and connection without psychobabble or woo-woo. Justin is the author of the Stuck Not Broken book series, a member of the Polyvagal Institute's Editorial Board, a father of two, and a husband.

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

This and other content produced by Justin Sunseri (“JustinLMFT”) (i.e; podcast, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) is not therapy, not intended to be therapy or be a replacement for therapy. Nothing in this creates or indicates a therapeutic relationship. Please consult with your therapist or seek for one in your area if you are experiencing mental health symptoms. Nothing should be construed to be specific life advice; it is for educational and entertainment purposes only.

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast! When you do, you will immediately get the next episode as soon as it's available. What's better than having the next episode of SNB ready and waiting for you? (Nothing, that's what.)

Why You Stay Stuck in Trauma, Part 2: Cognitive Adaptations Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

You already know what Bill does. This episode is about what's underneath it: the stories he tells himself, the things he keeps quiet, and the beliefs he never chose. You'll learn what a cognitive adaptation is, how the same mental habit sounds completely different depending on the state you're in, why humans isolate and keep secrets when animals don't, and how the beliefs handed to you can block the very pulls that would bring you toward safety. It ends with one question for you: how do you keep yourself stuck?

A note before you listen: from about 5:42 to 9:52, this episode talks in general terms about abuse, perpetrators, and victim-blaming.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Why You Stay Stuck in Trauma, Part 1: Behavioral Adaptations Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

Wild animals live with danger every day and don't get traumatized. So why do you stay stuck? In this episode, you'll meet Bill, a father, husband, and business owner who can't see what's driving him. You'll also learn the two ways we keep ourselves stuck without noticing: we ignore the body's self-regulation impulses, and we reach for behaviors that let us avoid feeling what's actually there. Part 2 picks up the stories we tell ourselves.

Chapters

0:00 Why Wild Animals Don't Stay Traumatized

0:41 Meet Justin & About This Audiobook

1:43 Last Time: Co-Regulation

2:02 Why Humans Stay Stuck in Trauma

4:10 Meet Bill

5:52 Bill, All Grown Up

8:25 Ignoring Self-Regulation Impulses

10:25 The Impulses Bill Ignores

12:26 Behavioral Adaptations Keep You Stuck

14:42 Bill's Behavioral Adaptation: Overworking

15:15 Next Time: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Co-Regulation, Explained: Polyvagal Theory Sep 15, 2026

Show notes

Your nervous system doesn't just calm down on its own — more often than you realize, it borrows the calm from somebody else. This episode covers co-regulation: the specific cues your body sends and reads without you ever thinking about it, eye contact, tone of voice, the tilt of a head, what it means if you don't have a self-regulated person in every part of your life, and what actually happened, biologically, in the room with Maria before her hands ever moved.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Self-Regulation, Explained: Polyvagal Theory Sep 08, 2026

Show notes

Sometimes the most useful information in the therapy room isn't in what someone says; it's in their hands. This episode breaks down self-regulation on a nervous system level: the two main ways we do it, top-down (thoughts) and bottom-up (body), why top-down tricks work in the moment but don't solve anything on their own, and a session with a client whose hands were saying something her voice wasn't.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

The Vagal Brake, Explained: Polyvagal Theory Sep 01, 2026

Show notes

You can't just decide to calm down, but you can strengthen the thing that makes calming down possible. The vagal brake isn't a body part, it's the influence of your safety state on your heart, and it's what lets you move between mobility and stillness without dropping into full defense. Here's what it actually is, how to start strengthening it even if "feeling safe" is a foreign concept, and the two skills, pendulation and titration, that come out of a strong one.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

0:00 Intro

1:36 The vagal brake

3:24 How to strengthen your vagal brake

5:05 Return to the present moment

5:34 Pendulation and titration

6:39 The vagal brake in daily life

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

What is Trauma? The Two Paths: Polyvagal Theory Aug 25, 2026

Show notes

Trauma isn't the event. It's what happens afterward, when your nervous system gets stuck defending against something that's already over. This episode breaks down the two distinct paths that lead there: one from a single overwhelming moment, the other from years of disrupted connection, and what separates someone with one specific trigger from someone who's never had access to safety at all.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Why Being "Too Nice" Can Be a Survival Strategy Aug 18, 2026

Show notes

Not every survival strategy looks like fighting back or running away. Sometimes it looks like befriending the person who's hurting you.

This episode covers the last two mixed states: appease (safety plus flight/fight plus shutdown — all three primary states at once) and fawn (flight/fight plus shutdown, but without safety). What separates a hostage using social skills to stay alive from someone disappearing inside an abusive home. Why both states likely require significant dissociation to survive. And where I personally land on how much weight these two deserve as actual Polyvagal Theory mixed states, versus maybe something else entirely.

This is Episode 13 of the Stuck Not Broken audiobook — Book 1, Trauma & the Polyvagal Paradigm; full series in the playlist. 🎙️ More on Fawn & Appease as maybe not mixed states: https://youtu.be/4vTXTEF47pQ

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

Why Can't You Just Sit Still and Relax? Aug 11, 2026

Show notes

Sitting still should be the easiest thing in the world, right? But for a lot of people, it's maybe the hardest.

This episode moves into the third mixed state: stillness and intimacy — safety plus shutdown, immobility without fear. What actually makes it safe to sit still, use the restroom, or fall asleep at night. Why meditation, yoga, and even bedtime can feel dangerous for someone who lives in flight, fight, or freeze. And what changes the moment a safe person joins you in stillness.

This is Episode 12 of the Stuck Not Broken audiobook — Book 1, Trauma & the Polyvagal Paradigm.

🛏️ Sponsored by Cozy Earth. Go to cozyearth.com and use code STUCK for 20% off.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

The Play State: Polyvagal Theory Aug 04, 2026

Show notes

Wrestling with your kids. Trash-talking during a pickup game. Screaming through a game of tag. On paper, those look like danger cues, so why do they feel so good? Play is what happens when your safety state and your fight-or-flight mobility switch on at the same time. Here's what's actually happening in your nervous system when you play, why the game changes the moment it moves from the living room to online voice chat, and what it looks like when a kid mobilizes with no safety behind it at all.

🛏️ Sponsored by Cozy Earth. Go to cozyearth.com and use code STUCK for 20% off.

👉 New here?

Find your stuck state, and your starting place: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/stuck

Or go straight to what's best for you:

👉Start free in the community: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/join?invitation_token=25c72b8c15987838a4a6bcc54b1bd652d520420c-d23357d7-4381-4003-be61-c1f4f0bb538d

📘 Prefer to read, or want to support the show?: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/books

🎧Practice on your own, free, no account, no card: https://app.stucknotbroken.com/?start=practice&src=podcast

👥Prefer company? Move through it alongside others in the Unstucking Academy. $39/month, cancel anytime: https://www.stucknotbroken.com/unstuckingacademy

✅ Crisis resources:

National Suicide Prevention Hotline - 988
National Domestic Violence Hotline -1 (800) 799-7233
LGBT Trevor Project Lifeline - 1 (866) 488-7386
National Sexual Assault Hotline - 1 (800) 656-4673
Crisis Text Line - Text “HOME” to 741741
Call 911 for an emergency

Justin Sunseri is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist registered in the State of California (#99147).

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