You, Reclaimed Project

Madalina Podgorean
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Relationships
  • Updated Weekly

You Reclaimed is a show about limerence, attachment, and the patterns that quietly run our lives — and how we heal them. In each episode, I explore why certain people affect us so deeply, what we're really reaching for through love and longing, and how to come back to ourselves with more clarity, self-respect, and steadiness. It starts with obsessive love and heartbreak, but it runs underneath all of it: the people-pleasing, the overthinking, the going quiet when you should speak, the fear of being left. If any of that is familiar, you're in the right place.

  1. 1d ago

    Limerence Is an Addiction — But Not the Kind You Can Walk Away From

    You did everything the advice said. Blocked them, deleted the photos, stopped looking. And the limerence is still here, as loud as ever, weeks after they left your life. This episode is about what your brain is actually doing when you try to quit. Why it behaves like withdrawal rather than grief. Why "just go no contact" is such incomplete advice — because in limerence, the person was often barely there to begin with, and the thing you got hooked on was never really them. We look at what your reward system learned to do, why it's so much harder to put down than an ordinary breakup, what the fantasy was doing for you besides feeling good, and why quitting means more than willpower. Resources Website + free tools: https://www.youreclaimedproject.com Q&A inbox: https://youreclaimedproject.com/ask/ Is It Limerence? Quiz: https://youreclaimedproject.com/is-it-limerence-quiz/ Attachment Style Quiz: https://youreclaimedproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/ The Calm-Down Toolkit: https://youreclaimedproject.com/calm-down-toolkit/ Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  2. Oct 5

    Fearful Avoidant Limerence — Why Having Them Feels Worse Than Wanting Them

    You finally got them. The person you spent months half-obsessed with turned around and made it clear they want you — and within a few weeks, you were the one going cold. Picking at small things. Looking for an exit you could've sworn you didn't want. And now you're wondering what's wrong with you, because you wanted this more than anything, and having it feels worse than wanting it did. This is part two on fearful avoidance and limerence. Last time we looked at the two halves of us that can never seem to rest at the same time — and how limerence works for us precisely because the other person's uncertainty keeps those halves in their separate corners. This episode is about what happens when the uncertainty goes away. Why the testing starts: the pulling back to see if they notice, the going cold to see if they stay, the picking at their life and their friends. Why "just stop chasing unavailable people" almost never works for us, because it only speaks to one half. And why the person we're limerent about can only ever offer the amount of closeness we can already handle — which is exactly why it feels so right, and exactly why it so rarely goes anywhere. If you've ever been chosen and felt the wanting switch off, this one's for you. It's not a wanting problem. It's a limit — and limits can move. 🌐 Website + free resources https://www.youreclaimedproject.com 🔗 Q&A inbox — submit a question for a future episode https://youreclaimedproject.com/ask/ 📗 Free resources ▸ Is It Limerence? Quiz — https://youreclaimedproject.com/is-it-limerence-quiz/ ▸ Attachment Style Quiz — https://youreclaimedproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/ ▸ The Calm-Down Toolkit — https://youreclaimedproject.com/calm-down-toolkit/ ▶️ Watch on YouTube Part 1 — Fearful Avoidant Limerence: Your Two Halves Will Never Let You Rest https://youtu.be/9wi9toebVWs Around here we talk about limerence, attachment, relationships, and how real people like us build healthier love while still healing. Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. The information on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're considering therapeutic techniques discussed here, I recommend exploring them with a licensed mental health professional. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  3. Sep 30

    Fearful Avoidant Limerence — Your Two Halves Will Never Let You Rest

    There's a strange contradiction at the center of fearful avoidant attachment. You want closeness more than most people you know — and the moment someone actually offers it, something in you pulls back. You fall hardest for the ones who are half in and half out, and when one of them finally turns fully toward you, the wanting quietly goes out. This episode is about why that happens, and why it isn't a sign that something's wrong with the way you love. We get into where the two halves come from — a childhood, or sometimes an adult relationship, where the same person was both the comfort and the threat, and you learned that closeness is where the warmth is and also where the danger lives. One half of you reaches for people and can't stand to lose them. The other half braces against anyone who gets too close. Most of the time you don't feel them as separate — you just feel that love is exhausting and can't work out why. From there we look at how those two halves show up in limerence specifically: why the almost-available person pulls you so hard, why reciprocation can leave you feeling flat instead of relieved, why you can swing from adoring someone to done-with-them in a day, and why the steady, available person so often registers as no spark at all. Underneath all of it is one idea — that for the fearful avoidant, limerence is the most closeness you can stand. Enough to feel it. Not enough to be caught in it. And the uncertainty is what keeps the two halves from ever having to meet. None of this means the limit is fixed. It can move. But it moves slowly, and gently, and not through the person you're limerent about — because they can only ever offer you the amount you can already hold. — 🌐 Website and free resources: youreclaimedproject.comTake the limerence quiz, find your attachment style, or download the Calm-Down Toolkit for the nights you can't stop thinking about them. Submit a question for a future episode at youreclaimedproject.com/ask/. Around here we talk about limerence, attachment, and how real people like us build healthier love while still healing. Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, please contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  4. Sep 15

    Limerence After No Contact — Why It's Still Alive When They're Gone

    You did no contact the way you were told to. Blocked, unfollowed, no drive-bys, no "just checking." Six months of it. And the obsession never got the memo. You wake up with them, you fall asleep with them, and in between you're carrying on a conversation they aren't part of — rehearsing what you should have said, imagining what they'd say back, wondering if they're thinking about you too. This episode is an answer to a listener who wrote in with exactly that: she did everything right and she's still stuck. And the answer isn't that she's doing it wrong, or that something in her is broken in a way no contact can't fix. It's that limerence runs on uncertainty — and when the person stops supplying it, your mind is perfectly capable of manufacturing it on its own. Every "maybe if I'd said this," every "maybe they'll come back," is a fresh top-up of fuel you're producing yourself. Which means no contact removed the person, but the person had stopped being the source a long time ago. We talk about what you're actually in a relationship with now, why it's so hard to put down (it's a kind of self-comfort, and it works), what it quietly costs you, and the one thing that lets it finally settle — not white-knuckling, not starving yourself of comfort, but getting the real version of what the fantasy has been giving you. Free resources, quizzes, and the Calm-Down Toolkit: https://www.youreclaimedproject.com Submit a question for a future episode: https://youreclaimedproject.com/ask/ Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. The information in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're considering therapeutic techniques discussed here, I recommend exploring them with a licensed mental health professional. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  5. Sep 7

    Why People You Like Exhaust You

    It's the drive home, or the walk to your door, or the moment you finally sit down — and it hits you. You're wiped. Not sleepy. Something heavier: a little wired, a little anxious, a low hum of unease you can't quite name. And none of it makes sense, because you liked the people you were just with. Nothing went wrong. Nobody was unkind. So why does being around people you enjoy leave you feeling like you worked a double shift? This episode is about the second job you've been quietly working your whole life — the one that runs underneath every conversation with people you like, respect, or want to be liked by. Watching your own face. Managing your hands. Editing each sentence before it leaves your mouth, then editing the next one. It's a kind of monitoring most of us learned young, in rooms where reading the atmosphere and adjusting ourselves was how we stayed safe. It was a good solution once. The trouble is it never turned off, and it burns real fuel — which is why an evening with people you genuinely like can drain you more than a day alone. But the part that took me twenty years to see is that all that effort doesn't even do what you think it does. The polished, careful, buttoned-up version of you that you're working so hard to present is the exact thing keeping people at arm's length — and keeping you from ever finding out whether you actually want to be in the room at all. I share the dinner party that took me two weeks to recover from, and the question I didn't think to ask for a year and a half.

  6. Aug 31

    Why You Can't Get Over Things

    You've been having the same argument with them for months. Not out loud — just in your head. In the shower, in the car, at two in the morning. Making your case, setting the record straight, getting it right this time. And you still can't figure out why you can't let it go. Here's what I've come to think: it isn't the person, or the thing that happened, that's keeping you stuck. It's the anger you reached for instead of the hurt underneath it. Anger comes with things to do — you get to argue, defend yourself, replay the whole thing with a better ending. It feels like you're getting somewhere. Hurt doesn't come with anything to do. It just sits on you, heavy, going nowhere. So you reach for the one that feels like movement. And you can stay there for twenty years, because anger never touches the thing underneath it — which is the only thing that would actually move. This is a slower, quieter episode about why that happens: the feelings that are easy to reach and the ones that aren't, the part of you that stands guard between them, and why every tool you've tried seems to bounce off. It's also about the strange thing hurt does when you finally stop fighting it — how it gets heavy, then dull, then boring, and how boredom is the first sign you're moving on. If you've been angry for a long time and quietly wondering why nothing's shifting, this one's for you. — Around here we talk about limerence, attachment, and how real people build healthier love while still healing. Find more, plus free resources, at youreclaimedproject.com. I'm not a therapist or medical professional. This episode is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, please contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  7. Aug 24

    Why You Can't Say It Out Loud — The Shame That Keeps Limerence a Secret

    There's a specific kind of quiet that comes with limerence — the kind where you're sitting across from someone you love and trust, wanting to finally say it, and the words just won't come. This episode is about that silence. Not the obsession itself, but why it's so hard to speak about it out loud. Madalina reads a letter from Joanna, who can't bring herself to tell even her closest friend that she's fixated on a coworker — and unpacks what's actually underneath the reluctance. The self-deception you're half-aware of. The loss of control that feels like an addiction. The fear of being judged. And the quiet conviction that you should be ashamed of how you got here. The turn in this one: almost none of it is something you did wrong. Limerence takes hold in the vulnerable stretches — a move, a career change, a season where you were already stretched thin — and it traces back to patterns set long before you could have chosen otherwise. The shame is real, but it's attached to things that were largely out of your control. And the way it loosens is the same way it always has: saying it to a safe person, out loud. Standing resources: youreclaimedproject.com — free limerence and attachment quizzes, plus the Calm-Down Toolkit for the nights the thoughts won't stop. Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy or medical advice. If you're in crisis, please contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

  8. Aug 17

    Love Addiction or Limerence — It's the Same Drug With a Lock On It

    You've probably tried to figure out whether what you're in is love addiction or limerence. And the harder you look for the line between them, the more it moves — every definition seems to blur into the next one. Here's why: they're not the opposites they look like. Love addiction chases the state — the falling, the rush, the electric part before anyone really knows anyone. When the feeling wears off, and it always does, the person gets swapped for a new source of the same high. Limerence looks like the reverse: not many people, but one you couldn't trade if you tried. One swaps endlessly, one fixates and won't let go. Opposites, apparently. Except they're running on the exact same fuel. The love addict isn't addicted to love — they're addicted to uncertainty, to the moment before you know. And that's the same thing limerence runs on. The difference is only what happens to the uncertainty. For the love addict it keeps resolving, so they keep moving. In limerence it never resolves — you've found one person who can't be had, and an unavailable person is a perpetual-motion machine for the feeling of falling without ever reaching the part that spoils it. It's the same drug. Limerence is just the version with a lock on it. In this episode I get into why neither state is really about the person at all — why you can spend years fixated on someone and still not know who they are on an ordinary Wednesday, how the blank spaces in a person you don't fully know are exactly where you paint your own unlived parts, when one episode is just an episode versus when it's a pattern worth looking at, and what the way out actually is. Not forcing the real person into focus. Just letting the fantasy resolve into what is — specific, ordinary, human — and letting the built version go. —📗 Free resources▸ Is It Limerence? Quiz — ⁠https://youreclaimedproject.com/is-it-limerence-quiz/⁠▸ Attachment Style Quiz — ⁠https://youreclaimedproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/⁠▸ The Calm-Down Toolkit — ⁠https://youreclaimedproject.com/calm-down-toolkit/⁠🔗 Submit a question for a future episode — ⁠https://youreclaimedproject.com/ask/⁠🌐 Website + newsletter — ⁠https://www.youreclaimedproject.com⁠—Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're considering any techniques discussed here, I recommend exploring them with a licensed mental health professional. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.

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About

You Reclaimed is a show about limerence, attachment, and the patterns that quietly run our lives — and how we heal them. In each episode, I explore why certain people affect us so deeply, what we're really reaching for through love and longing, and how to come back to ourselves with more clarity, self-respect, and steadiness. It starts with obsessive love and heartbreak, but it runs underneath all of it: the people-pleasing, the overthinking, the going quiet when you should speak, the fear of being left. If any of that is familiar, you're in the right place.

Information

  • Creator
    Madalina Podgorean
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Madalina Podgorean
  • Show Website
    You, Reclaimed Project

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