Healing + Human Potential with Alyssa Nobriga

Episode 105 – Why The Love You’ve Been Searching For Is Already Inside You
Release Date: September 9, 2025

Main Theme / Purpose

This episode explores the revolutionary idea that the love we seek from others is already present within ourselves. Alyssa Nobriga, drawing from her decades as a psychotherapist and coach, invites listeners to unlearn societal myths about love and to discover practical, deeply transformative ways to embody greater love in all areas of life—without needing others to change. Through personal stories, debunking of romantic myths, and actionable tools, Alyssa guides listeners to shift from “outsourcing” love to “insourcing” it, resulting in greater freedom, fulfillment, and genuine connection.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Backward Approach of the Personal Development Space

[00:00 – 05:30]

• Most teachings encourage eliminating negativity to experience more love, but Alyssa counters:

  "True love doesn't require we get rid of anything. Love meets life exactly as it is." (Alyssa, 00:09)

• It’s our resistance to feelings, not the feelings themselves, that causes pain.
• “There is a way to go deep without wallowing and a way to stop avoiding what’s asking to be felt.”

2. Personal Story: Healing Through Family Patterns

[05:30 – 12:15]

• Alyssa shares a transformative experience in Bhutan with seven therapist friends, where she finally felt the weight of lifelong over-responsibility for her mother’s happiness.

• After an intense emotional breakthrough, her dynamic with her mom—previously marked by triggers and guilt—healed profoundly, culminating in deeper connection even during her mother’s breast cancer diagnosis.

  “I didn’t need her to change for me to heal and shift my relationship with her. I healed it within me.” (Alyssa, 11:47)

3. Myths and Cultural Conditioning Around Love

[12:15 – 17:30]

• Popular songs reinforce dysfunctional beliefs (obsession, codependency, suffering):

  • The Police’s "Every Breath You Take": not romance, but “obsession and control.”
  • Mariah Carey’s "Without You": “codependency, not love.”
  • Leona Lewis’s "Bleeding Love": links love with suffering and blame.

  “No wonder we're confused around what love actually is.” (Alyssa, 15:28)

• These narratives shape subconscious expectations that set us up for pain.

4. Client Story: The Trap of Outsourcing Love

[17:30 – 25:30]

• Alyssa describes a client who saw marriage as a safeguard against abandonment, seeking healing outside herself.

• The real shift came when the client stopped abandoning her own feelings of abandonment, learning to “insource” love instead.

  “Because she’s not abandoning herself, she’s really embodying a deeper sense of confidence.” (Alyssa, 23:45)

• As a result, her client thrived at work and in relationships, eventually marrying—not from need, but from wholeness.

5. Outsourcing vs. Insourcing Love

[25:30 – 29:45]

• Outsourcing: Expecting love and security from others, which leads to frustration and powerlessness.

• Insourcing: Becoming the source of love for ourselves, welcoming every part of our experience.

  “When you're starting to insource love, you don't need other people to be different.” (Alyssa, 28:18)

Three Steps to Insourcing Love

[29:45 – 33:30]

1. Recognition: Acknowledge that outsourcing doesn’t work.

2. Identification: Find your core wound (e.g. abandonment, unworthiness).

3. Welcoming: Be present with the wound as sensation, not story, and forgive judgments.

   • Alyssa offers a free love quiz to help listeners identify their core wound.

6. The Power of Triggers and the Gift They Bring

[33:30 – 39:10]

• Triggers are not obstacles—they’re guides.

• The “honeymoon period” in relationships is a glimpse of potential, the real growth comes when challenges arise.

  “You thought you were signing up for cuddles and compatibility, but what you really got was a crash course in self worth and boundaries.” (Alyssa, 37:44)

• Every relationship and interaction is a mirror for our own evolution.

7. Processing Emotions: The 90 Second Rule

[39:10 – 47:30]

• Alyssa recounts a rapid emotional breakthrough with her husband Emilio—processing grief not by resisting, but by feeling for 90 seconds.

• Neuroscience supports: emotions move through the body in 90 seconds if not resisted.

  “Feelings aren’t hard. It’s our resistance to them that is.” (Alyssa, 45:14)

• Instead of suppressing or indulging, allow emotions, integrate, and increase your capacity for love.

Somatic Exercise [~47:30 – 51:00]

• Short guided practice to locate, welcome, and embrace any contraction or feeling, repeating silently:
  • “I see that I’ve judged you. I didn’t know how to be with you before, but I’m learning now. Thank you for arising to teach me how to open. You can stay as long as you want. I love you.”

8. Paradox of Transformation: The Path Is Through, Not Around

[51:00 – 58:00]

• Story of feeling unworthy before a Deepak Chopra event—breakthrough came not by running from the feeling, but by fully embracing it.

• The “game of opposites”:

  • To feel worthy, embrace unworthiness.
  • To feel free, embrace stuckness.
  • To feel peace, embrace stress.

• “The very thing you’ve been running from holds the key to what you deeply desire.” (Alyssa, 54:05)

• “What you avoid, you create.” For example, seeking to fill insecurity from others pushes them away, deepening insecurity.

9. The Heart Only Hurts When You Close It

[58:00 – 1:03:40]

• Alyssa’s story of choosing to keep her heart open—even amid tension with her husband’s ex-wife—led to genuine connection.

  “I don’t let her disapproval be the reason I close my heart.” (Alyssa, 1:01:45)

• Openness isn’t about others earning our love, it’s about who we are when loving.

• Even a 5% shift toward openness can change your life.

10. Realization: Love Comes From Within

[1:03:40 – 1:08:40]

• Alyssa recalls an epiphany: after leaving a relationship, the feelings of ecstatic love remained—because “he never gave me love, he simply helped me access what was already inside of me.”

  “If he didn't give them to me, he couldn't take them away... the truth was, they came from me.” (Alyssa, 1:06:25)

• Love is not about getting or giving, but about BEING love.

11. Concluding Insights and Takeaways

[1:08:40 – End]

• Love is our true nature; nothing external needs to change to realize this.

• When we stop trying to “get” love, we stop being emotional addicts; when we give, we touch the source within ourselves.

• By welcoming every part of our experience with love, we naturally become magnets for healthy relationships and abundance.

  “What you are looking for is what's looking through your eyes right now.” (Alyssa, quoting St. Francis of Assisi, 1:11:20)

• Embrace all of yourself to awaken to your inherent wholeness—and as you do, you embrace the world.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On common love myths:

  “This teaches that love is survival. Like, this is—I am nothing without you. This is codependency. This is not love. Let's be clear.” (16:32)

• On the source of love:

  “The love that you really want isn’t out of reach. It is available right here and right now. It's just been hiding in the last place you would think to look.” (55:40)

• On being present with emotions:

  “If you can stay present with a feeling as a sensation for a minute and a half, it will clear. Isn’t that wild?” (43:00)

• On the paradox of transformation:

  “If you want to feel worthy, embrace unworthiness. If you want to feel free, embrace stuck. If you want to feel peace, embrace stress.” (53:29)

• On relationships as mirrors:

  “Honestly, it doesn’t totally matter who you’re with, because your core wounds are going to come up whether you’re with person A or B.” (33:00)

• On the heart and openness:

  “My heart only hurts when I close it.” (59:25)
  “You can even open your heart to your closed heart—that's a hack.” (1:01:20)

• On the nature of love:

  “It’s not just about getting love, it’s not about giving love, it’s about being love.” (1:07:10)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 — Introduction; the fundamental misunderstanding in self-help about love.
• 05:30 — Personal healing story in Bhutan; transforming the mother-daughter relationship.
• 12:15 — Pop-culture myths & song lyric analysis.
• 17:30 — Client story about the fear of abandonment; the power of “insourcing” love.
• 29:45 — Three steps to insourcing love.
• 33:30 — Triggers as guides, not problems.
• 39:10 — Story: quick emotional healing and the neuroscience of the 90-second emotion.
• 47:30 — Somatic exercise: welcoming contraction.
• 51:00 — Embracing unworthiness; the paradox of transformation.
• 58:00 — “My heart only hurts when I close it:” story about husband’s ex-wife.
• 1:03:40 — Realizing love was within all along; the importance of being, not seeking, love.
• 1:08:40 — Closing reflections; quote from St. Francis of Assisi.

Final Takeaway

Alyssa Nobriga encourages listeners to end the cycle of seeking and resisting, inviting us instead to open ourselves to every feeling, welcome every part of our experience, and claim the love that is our inherent nature. When we do this, not only do our relationships transform—so does our whole life.

“You are the source of love itself. It is who and what you are.”
— Alyssa Nobriga, [1:11:44]