The Core with Lorin Krenn

There is a moment when the identity you have built your whole life around stops making sense. Old roles feel hollow, relationships shift, and you find yourself in a kind of no man's land where you cannot go back to who you were and do not yet know who you are becoming. In this episode, Lorin breaks down the three distinct phases of the dark night of the soul, dissolution, the void, and dawn, so listeners can recognize exactly where they stand in their own process.
He then shares five practices to work with this experience directly rather than bypass it: resisting the urge to force a solution, grieving the old self the way you would grieve any real loss, moving the body and getting into nature, finding someone who can witness the transformation without pulling you back into old patterns, and journaling as a way to let the process speak for itself. Lorin also names a trap he says almost no one talks about: mistaking the sense that nothing matters for spiritual truth, when it is actually a form of bypassing.
Lorin closes with a practical reframe: this stripping away is not punishment, it is preparation for a deeper calling, and the goal is not to figure everything out immediately but to trust the ground will return.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine

A 4-week immersive program for women
Healing Your Inner Child

A 2.5-hour immersive workshop on why the same patterns keep appearing in your relationships, your work, your finances, and your life, and how to change them at the root.

Terry Real has spent 40 years working with couples on the brink of divorce, and he argues the core problem is that we live in a culture that values personal growth and ignores relational growth. Women have changed. Men largely have not. And the result is a silent crisis playing out inside marriages around the world.
In this conversation, Terry and Lorin go deep on what it actually takes to build a lasting relationship: why traditional masculinity is, in Terry's words, a relational disability; the difference between individual empowerment and relational empowerment; how to hold your ground and love someone at the same time; and why shame and grandiosity are two sides of the same coin.
This is one of the most direct, practical conversations on real relationship work you will find anywhere.
Referenced in this episode:
terryreal.com | Terry Real, creator of Relational Life Therapy
Terry Real on Instagram: @realterryreal
YouTube: ‪@realterryreal‬

Books mentioned in the episode: https://terryreal.com/books/
Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship
I Don't Want to Talk About It

Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Inner Child

A 2.5-hour immersive workshop on why the same patterns keep appearing in your relationships, your work, your finances, and your life, and how to change them at the root.
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine

A 4-week immersive program for women

Most people on a healing journey believe they have moved past their parents' patterns. They meditate, they do the inner work, they say with real conviction, "I am nothing like my mother" or "I am nothing like my father." And yet the same reactions keep showing up in their closest relationships: shutting down, getting defensive, feeling criticized when nothing critical was said.
In this episode, Lorin breaks down one of the most overlooked layers of healing the mother and father wound: the unconscious imprints that get passed down and repeated, even by people who consciously tried to do the opposite of what their parents did.
Lorin shares a personal story about his father, who vowed never to repeat his own father's emotional absence and showed up far more present in many ways, yet still passed down a version of that same wound in a different form. This becomes the entry point for a wider look at two layers of healing: the work of addressing the relationship with a parent directly through boundaries, letting go of guilt, or cord cutting, and the much harder work of recognizing where their reactions, defensiveness, avoidance, the need to explain or defend yourself, have become part of your own.
Lorin walks through how to spot these patterns in daily life, why the shadow works so hard to keep them hidden, and what changes the moment they are brought into the light, both in yourself and with the people you love most.
He closes with two practical steps anyone can take to start identifying and working with their own imprint.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Inner Child

A 2.5-hour immersive workshop on why the same patterns keep appearing in your relationships, your work, your finances, and your life, and how to change them at the root.
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine

A 4-week immersive program for women

Most men believe they are showing up fully in their relationships. They are doing everything right on paper. And yet something feels off. The intimacy is not quite there, the trust is not fully built, and resentment quietly grows.
In this episode, Lorin breaks down one of the most misunderstood dynamics in relationships: what happens when a man turns his partner into his source of meaning, identity, and purpose, and why, despite his best intentions, it creates the opposite of what he wants.
Lorin explores the difference between a man who has found his deepest calling and commits to a relationship from that place of fullness, and a man who is unconsciously asking his partner to give him what only he can find within himself. Over time, this erodes trust, produces resentment, and leaves both people feeling disconnected.
This episode also speaks directly to women, helping them recognize this dynamic and understand what is actually happening beneath the surface.
Lorin closes with two practical steps any man can take right now.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Inner Child

A 2.5-hour immersive workshop on why the same patterns keep appearing in your relationships, your work, your finances, and your life, and how to change them at the root.
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine

A 4-week immersive program for women

When a man shuts down in relationship, the common belief is that he doesn't care, that he's avoidant, or that he doesn't love her. A man who shuts down is actually a man overwhelmed by feeling, gripped by shame, trying to cope with an experience that feels too big to regulate.
Shame is different from guilt. Guilt says "I've done something wrong." Shame says "there is something wrong with me." It's a crushing belief of being bad and unworthy. When a woman expresses upset or pours love into the relationship, it can activate this old wound in a man, and his system responds by disappearing.
What follows is a painful loop. The woman feels rejected by his silence and becomes more intense in trying to reach him. Her response, though loving, pushes him further into shame. Her wound that she is too much and his wound that he is not enough affirm each other, even as both long for connection.
The way through is for the man to face his shame. Naming it, owning it without collapse, staying connected to breath and body. The practice is about cultivating the capacity to stay a little more open, a little more present, even when triggered. From that place, a man becomes someone a woman can deeply trust.
Mentioned in this episode:
Healing Your Relationship with the Masculine

A 4-week immersive program for women
Healing Your Inner Child

A 2.5-hour immersive workshop on why the same patterns keep appearing in your relationships, your work, your finances, and your life, and how to change them at the root.