You're Not Chasing Love, You're Chasing Relief from Rejection

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Thais Gibson Podcast
Episode: You're Not Chasing Love, You're Chasing Relief from Rejection
Host: Thais Gibson
Release Date: May 25, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Thais Gibson delves into the real reason so many people continually chase love or attention from emotionally unavailable or inconsistent partners. She reveals that what we are actually pursuing is not love itself, but relief from deep-seated feelings of rejection. Through neuroscience-backed examples, analogies, and actionable exercises, Thais explains how childhood wounds and subconscious programs keep us trapped in unhealthy relationship cycles and, most importantly, how we can begin to break free.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Myth of Chasing Love (00:00–01:50)

• Main Idea:
  What feels like a relentless quest for love is really a search for relief from the pain of rejection.

• Insight:
  Most people in these cycles are not after romance, but after “nervous system relief” from wounds triggered at a subconscious level.

  “You may think you're chasing love, but you are chasing relief from rejection… seeking that moment when rejection finally stops hurting.”
  — Thais Gibson (00:00)

2. The Science of Intermittent Reinforcement (01:50–04:20)

• Key Concept:
  Intermittent reinforcement (taken from behavioral psychology) explains why attention or affection given inconsistently can lead to obsession and addiction.

• Example:
  Thais describes a study on rats where food pellets delivered on a random schedule led the animals to compulsively press levers—mirroring how humans chase inconsistent affection.

• Parallel to Human Relationships:
  People, especially those with anxious attachment styles, can mistake the anxiety and “high” of intermittent affection for chemistry or love.

  “Intermittent reinforcement is exactly what gamblers get addicted to… The same thing happens from a love addiction standpoint if you feel like somebody is inconsistent to you.”
  — Thais Gibson (02:45)

3. Rejection Activates Old Core Wounds (04:20–08:20)

• Core Analogy:
  Unresolved childhood wounds are likened to “bears in the woods”—threats stored in the brain that become ever-present triggers.

• How This Plays Out:
  When faced with inconsistency, rather than seeing it as someone else’s shortcoming, people internalize it as evidence of their own inadequacy.

• Self-Abandonment:
  Chasing attention from someone who offers little is a way of abandoning oneself and reinforcing the wound of “not good enough.”

  “You end up defining your character and who you are by somebody else's behavior and how they treat you… To pursue somebody at the expense of not recognizing how that person's making you feel only further reinforces those wounds.”
  — Thais Gibson (06:50)

4. Breaking the Cycle: Self-Rewiring Exercise (08:20–13:20)

• Solution:
  The way out of this cycle isn’t to try harder for someone’s attention, but to heal inner wounds and create new patterns.

• Exercise Steps:

  1. List Your Fears: Identify core wounds (fear of not being chosen, not being good enough, etc.).
  2. Self-Reflection: Draw a line down the page and ask, “Where do I do this to myself?” (e.g., Not choosing yourself, putting dreams on hold).
  3. Action Plan: Draw a third column, and list out what you’ll do differently—commit to new, self-supportive behaviors for at least 21 days.

  “If through repetition and emotion over time, we treat ourselves differently… this is going to help you begin the process of rewiring your behaviors. And indirectly… it will impact at a much deeper level, these wounds.”
  — Thais Gibson (11:55)

5. Core Message & Empowerment (13:20–End)

• Stop Seeking Outside Approval:
  Life cannot be lived chasing relief through others’ approval; true healing must come from within.

• On Hope and Change:
  This pattern is not a personal defect but a pattern—one that can be changed.

• Long-Term Transformation:
  When you heal and honor yourself, you attract healthier relationships, maintain your standards, and build confidence from the inside out.

  “You are not broken, you are simply patterned. And when you change the belief underneath this and those behavioral patterns, you will stop looking for proof that people like you or that you're worthy because of other people's approval.”
  — Thais Gibson (14:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Trap of Chasing:

  “We cannot solve an inside problem with an outside fix.”
  — Thais Gibson (13:00)

• Empowering Reframe:

  “Doing that chasing at the expense of abandoning yourself is not healing, that's losing your heart.”
  — Thais Gibson (13:16)

• Encouragement:

  “Hope is not gone. This is a solvable problem.”
  — Thais Gibson (13:10)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00 – Introduction and main thesis: “You’re not chasing love, you’re chasing relief from rejection.”
• 01:50 – Intermittent reinforcement explained and the neuroscience behind love addiction
• 04:20 – How rejection activates core wounds; bear-in-the-woods analogy
• 08:20 – How to break free: self-reflection and reprogramming exercise
• 11:55 – The mechanics of changing self-behaviors and long-term rewiring
• 13:00 – Core message: true healing and validation must come from within

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Summary Flow

Thais Gibson guides listeners through the revelation that much of what we perceive as the chase for love is actually an unconscious effort to relieve old pains of rejection, rooted in childhood or earlier experiences. Through storytelling (including animal studies and analogies), hard-hitting neuroscience, and an actionable journaling exercise, Thais offers a compassionate yet practical roadmap for breaking free from self-abandoning patterns, emphasizing that real, lasting change starts on the inside and leads to richer relationships outside.

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone who finds themselves stuck in repetitive relationship patterns or seeking healing from rejection and abandonment wounds.

Transcript

[A]

You may think you're chasing love, but you are chasing relief from rejection. In fact, you are seeking the vast majority of the time to just find that moment when rejection finally stops hurting. And in today's video, I'm going to take you through three major things. Number one, what this cycle actually is about. Why you feel so addicted to seeking out that acceptance or approval from somebody who otherwise is mostly breadcrumbing you or not being available to you much at all. We'll talk about what this actually represents in inside of you at a deeper level. As our second point, and most importantly at the end, I'll take you through a process for how you can break this cycle and get free from chasing the wrong people once and for all. Her name is Thais Gibson.

[B]

Thais Gibson.

[A]

Thais Gibson. Thais Gibson.

[B]

Thais Gibson.

[A]

Thais Gibson.

[B]

I hope I pronounce her name properly. Thais Gibson.

[A]

I am so excited for you to be here with me today. Thank you for joining us. I want you to understand that this chase is not about romance. It is about nervous system relief that is happening because you have wounds that are being deeply activated at a subconscious level. If you've never heard of this before, you want to understand the neuroscience of intermittent reinforcement. Let me tell you a study that represents this. There was a study done where researchers took rats and they put them in a cage where they could push a lever and a food pellet would come out. They had the rats removed, push the lever, eat the food pellet, and then they change things. They made it instead so that when the rats would push a lever, the food pellet would come out intermittently. So every third time, every 16th time, every 47th time, the food pellet would come out. And what they found is that rats would become obsessed and addicted to this idea that they have to sit there and press the lever. They would stop mating, they would stop grooming, and instead they would sit there and just repeatedly push this lever, seeking some sort of high from that intermittent reinforcement. And intermittent reinforcement is exactly what gamblers get addicted to when they pull the slot machine. And every so often, they win. But there's a randomness to it. The same thing happens from a love addiction standpoint if you feel like somebody is inconsistent to you, especially if you're more anxiously attached, meaning if you're the type of Persona in a relationship that often can express as more needy or clingy or afraid of rejection or abandonment, rather than somebody who's more hyper independent and does their own thing, what this means is that you usually have stored wounds from childhood where you fear these things because of painful experiences around them. And you cope with these fears by basically going into hyper pursuit mode to resolve that internal feeling of uncertainty. And the more uncertain a person is, the more your brain can actually mistake this for chemistry, causing you to become extremely preoccupied with somebody in front of you because it's activating these huge fears. And this is what I mean on our second point here by rejection doesn't just sting, it activates old core wounds. I always tell people we all have core wounds, especially if we're insecurely attached. And core wounds are like a bear in the woods. If you go into the woods and you see a bear and you run away and you're safe, thank goodness, but you have to go back into the woods the next day, well, what does your brain do? Your brain has stored literally the bear as a huge threat to your survival. And as soon as you hear the trees blow in the wind, you're projecting out, then, oh my gosh, the bear is coming. We're wired that way on purpose. That's supposed to protect you. But we're not really living in a world where bears are chasing us all the time. So instead, often our version of the bear in the woods is our unresolved experiences from childhood. Have you felt abandoned or not chosen or not important or not good enough in your childhood or upbringing or even in your past more recent relationships? Guess what happens when somebody's inconsistent? You're like, oh my gosh, it's about maybe not good enough, Rather than maybe looking outside of yourself and thinking, maybe that person's unavailable for a healthy relationship, or maybe we're not that compatible, it's just a mismatch. We instead jump to the conclusion of our own core wounds, and you end up defining your character and who you are by somebody else's behavior and how they treat you. Why should some stranger or somebody you've been on a few dates with perhaps define who you are and whether or not you're good enough as a human being? This is the cycle we get locked into. Every time you see yourself in the pursuer role or that chasing role, it's often a reflection of you carrying these wounds forth from the past into your present. And until you rewire them, they will define your future and every move you make. To pursue somebody at the expense of not recognizing how that person's making you feel only further reinforces those wounds. For example, if you're chasing and people pleasing somebody who literally is hardly giving you the time of day, you further abandon yourself. You further tell yourself through your actions that you are not good enough, in essence, reinforcing that wound. Point number three. Here is, what do we do? The way out of this is not to try harder. It's learning to deal with these wounds at the core. Our nervous system is responding to these wounds. The moment you believe you're not good enough, you start feeling anxiety. And that anxiety is made up of emotions which are made up of neurochemical reactions like norepinephrine and adrenaline and cortisol. And these neurochemicals signal to your body, okay, time to brace for this stressful or painful event. And in turn, you are now dysregulated. And so, as you go through this, we can't just be always regulating our nervous systems, although we can do that. We have to learn to rewire our wounds. Now, there's multiple ways of doing this, but I'm going to give you one exercise to leave you off. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to make a list of what your biggest fear is. The wounds that pop up for you, maybe you're afraid of, like I said, not being chosen or feeling good enough or feeling unloved or unworthy of somebody or rejected. And I want you to draw a line down your page. And on the other side of that line, I want you to ask yourself, where do I do this to myself? Where do I make myself feel not good enough? Maybe by prioritizing everybody else above myself. Where do I not choose myself by putting everybody else's needs first and maybe putting my dreams and personal goals on the back burner? Where do I make myself feel unloved because I don't take time to be with myself? I want you to get really clear about the way. Ways you may be treating yourself that way. And I want you to draw a third line down your page. And I want you to ask yourself, what am I going to start to do differently? And if through repetition and emotion over time, we treat ourselves differently, it feels differently in our bodies, and we commit to it, especially for more than 21 days in a row, as a baseline starting point. This is going to help you begin the process of rewiring your behaviors. And indirectly, through changing your behaviors, it will impact at a much deeper level, these wounds. This is a beautiful place to start so that you can finally drop that urge to chase and start feeling differently, because you will stop feeling like you are just chasing relief from rejection by hoping that somebody gives you approval outside of you. And instead, you'll be able to sit with yourself and recognize that we cannot live life chasing relief through other people's approval of us. That is the most fragile and unpredictable thing we can ever chase. And that is not love. That is you trying to control control your wounds internally with something outside of you. And we cannot solve an inside problem with an outside fix. But I just want you to know you can change this pattern if you feel like this has been causing you pain and suffering. Hope is not gone. This is a solvable problem because doing that chasing at the expense of abandoning yourself is not healing, that's losing your heart. If this has been a video that was a little confronting, I want you to know you are not broken, you are simply patterned. And when you change the belief underneath this and those behavioral patterns, you will stop looking for proof that people like you or that you're worthy because of other people's approval. And you will instead build a sense of confidence from the inside out. And that is something you deserve to have access to just like everybody else. And in turn, you'll feel like you actually can uphold your standards and wait for the right people to enter your life to so you can build truly better and more fulfilling relationships. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to subscribe, rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform, share it with friends and family who are on their journey of personal development and growth and thank you for listening. Next week we'll be back with more insights to guide you on your journey. And until then, keep practicing our tools and strategies to change your subconscious mind and apply some of the powerful learnings from this podcast so that you experience real life transformation.