Shrink Wrapped, Unsealed

Welcome to Shrink Wrapped—where mental health meets “We’re all just doing our best, okay?” 

Being the daughter of a counselor means you either become incredibly self-aware or just really good at dodging deep conversations- I chose both. But it also means you've got a front-row seat to unfiltered brain dumps, life lessons, and more unsolicited advice than you ever asked for. And now, I’m flipping the script—bringing the humor, the honesty, and the “well, that explains a lot” moments straight to you.

We’re diving in to the real, the messy, and sometimes hilarious side of mental health—the things you wish someone would just say out loud. No toxic positivity, no sugarcoating, zero judgment and just the right amount of dark humor.

So, if you’ve ever side-eyed a self-help book, cried in your car, or stress-ate an entire pizza in the name of “self-care,” you’re in the right place. Let’s get into it.

Thanks for pushing play on Shrink Wrapped, a place where we can talk about all the deep, messy, weird, and sometimes uncomfortably real parts of life—but, like, in a way that won’t make you feel like you’re trapped in a self-help seminar. 

I’m Michelle, your host, overthinker-in-chief, and, perhaps most interestingly, I'm the daughter of a counselor; which means I’ve spent my life involuntarily absorbing way too much about human behavior. If you’ve ever found yourself analyzing a conversation after it ended, wondering if your boundaries are too rigid or non-existent, or Googling whether your attachment style is secretly running (or ruining?) your life… welcome. This podcast is where we're going to unpack all the messy, complicated, hilarious, and occasionally uncomfortable parts of being human—without the preachy self-help vibes.

And yes, you heard that right- here I am, a fully grown adult, the daughter of a counselor, who has way too much insight into why people do the things they do, and yet, I still don’t have my own life together. So, what do we do when we don’t have our lives together? That’s right. We start a podcast so we can talk about all the ways we don't have our lives together.. Together.

This show is for anyone who has ever: 

- Spent hours replaying an awkward interaction from five years ago

- Said “yes” to something they didn’t want to do and then gotten irrationally mad about it later

- Or Googled “Why am I like this?” at least once this week

Each week, we’ll be diving into topics like why boundaries are so hard, why we attract the same types of relationships over and over, and whether it’s possible to actually stop overanalyzing that one text message (spoiler: it’s hard, but yes). I’ll share things I’ve learned, talk to interesting people who know more than I do, and probably overshare just a little. Maybe a lot. We’ll see how brave I’m feeling.

We're also going to spend time diving into different diagnoses from the DSM-V (that's the great big book of everything that counselors use to tell you what they think is in the driver's seat of your brain)- but fear not, we're not just reading from a textbook here- I'm not taking you back to grade school. We're going to learn together about what these disorders are, and are not, according to both the diagnostic criteria, as well as anecdotal evidence; we're also going to talk about what the media gets wrong when they show us these disorders- because gasp believe it or not, not everything on the internet is true!

And while we're learning things together, and having our little yap sessions, we're also going to talk our way through journaling. If you're anything like me, journaling is incredibly hard, even with those little prompts at the top of the page! So we're going to do this together, and I'm going to talk us all through these journal entries together. Even more than just the entries, we're going to talk about why they're important- why it's important that we sit down and force our brains to think our way through these topics, even when they're hard and we don't really want to. Spoiler alert: it's going to be hard for me, too, and you're probably going to get to watch me face some hard truths in real time; but that's what this podcast is- real, honest, and human.

So, if you’re into personal growth, learning about mental health, but don’t want to be talked down to; if you like a little emotional depth with a side of sarcasm, and if you’re just trying to figure things out without losing your mind, then congratulations, you're in the right place.

Alright, let’s get into it before I start questioning this decision, too.

So who the heck am I, and why the heck should you listen to me?

…these are the same questions I've been asking myself for literally years now; and, babe, the honest truth here? I'm not convinced that you should listen to me… Except, I think maybe we're all here together for a reason. I made all these silly little choices that led me to buying this equipment and sitting in this room yapping into this microphone at you, and you pushed play and here we are. So now? Now I'm gonna give you a little lore drop and let you know why I think we're actually here together- and another spoiler? It's not just the whole daughter of a counselor angle.

Since we're only just meeting, this isn't a trauma dump, and you're absolutely not getting my whole life story.. Yet.. I don't think I'm quite that brave… But you're going to need to trust me to guide you through this journey, so you need to get to know me. So here's the not so TLDR (because frankly, I'm incapable of making a story short)- the highlights reel, if you will. I didn't grow up with my mom being a counselor- she made that choice later in life, after struggling to understand me growing up; I'm a late diagnosed AuDHD girlie. I live for the chaos, but I also desperately need my routines- in short? My nervous system is a wreck. But the thing is, I understand people. I've spent my life studying people, watching them (it's not creepy, I promise). I'm absolutely fascinated by what makes humans.. Well.. Human. I sometimes complain, as many of us do, that I hate people; and yet, I will still stop at any given moment anywhere at all to talk to anyone. As a result, I've had the privilege to meet so many absolutely amazing people who are wildly interesting,

One of my best friends, who has known me for a number of years that makes us both uncomfortable to say out loud, recently compared me to Forrest Gump. And honestly? He's not wrong. We laughed really hard about it in the moment, because it was just silly, but the more we dove into the analogy, the more we both realized that it was spot on. So in honor of that midnight conversation, I'm going to break it down for you here (also because I know he's listening to this, and he's going to laugh):

Point One: I have a fiercely protective Momma

Point Two: I ran a lot- I ran track in high school

Point Three: I have a quirky best friend who has special interests- his name is Bob, and he's actually written a book, and I'll probably try to have him on as a guest at some point

Point Four: I have a dog, and he has very short legs, and when we brought him home, I said I was gonna call him Lieutenant Dan, and then proceeded to tell him "Lt Dan, you ain't got no legs!" (I still do this to this day, and it's been nearly 2 years now)

Point Five: It's not my story to tell, but someone very close to me was very very sick at one point

Point Six: If I sat down on a bench, anyone who sat down next to me would be unable to help themselves- they would simply have to talk to me; people are just drawn to me

Point Seven: My life story sounds fake. If I were to sit down and tell my life story from start to finish, it would sound like a completely made up story that someone just wrote as a script for a made for TV movie or something

The point is, I've been through a lot, both good, bad, and truly awful- it runs the gamut. You know how sometimes people will ask you "if you could go back in time and do something different, what would you do?" or something along those lines? My answer? I would do nothing differently. Ever. Because if I had done even one thing differently at any point, I wouldn't be who I am, where I am, I wouldn't have what I have, know the people that I do, and honestly? That thought is devastating to me. I believe that every day is a new set of choices that are available for you to make, and you're going to make the right choice for you in every moment. I believe that it's ok to make mistakes, and that you have to make mistakes in order to grow. I believe that love isn’t a finite resource; it's not a pie that people keep taking slices out of, and then suddenly there's none left. I believe that we have to make the choices that we can live with in the end, even if other people don't agree with them. I believe that when you stop learning new things, when you stop growing as a person, that's when you start dying (and I've been informed by multiple people that I'm not allowed to die, so we're all just gonna have to learn everything together).

Do I think you should trust me? Maybe. Probably. Honestly, I would trust me. I have an uncanny intuition. It's kind of my thing, you can ask anyone who knows me in real life- it's kind of freaky. But in reality, that's just born from the fact that I have massive anxiety about being wrong, so I only ever speak up when I know for 100% fact that I am 100% correct without a shadow of a doubt. So am I always right? Yes. But am I also always anxiety? Also yes.

In January of 2024, I founded a church. It's called The First Church of Heaux (that's spelled H-E-A-U-X, for the record), and I wanted to build a community that was built on 6 basic commandments that all essentially center around doing what's right for you and living in love. I wanted a community for the disenfranchised- the people who believed in something, and wanted a place to belong, a place they could heal, with people who supported them and loved them regardless of their story.

I started to build out a podcast that talked about mental health, talked about all of these things,  and then some, I had guests lined up and ready to work with me, people were excited… and then… nothing. I got busy (this is not an excuse, I really did get busy, and had very little time), but I also got in my own head, and in my own way. You know that little voice in the back of your head that just shouts rude things to you all the time? I named mine Kevin. Kevin is… well, frankly, he's the worst, and I have to tell him all the time to shut up. But I let Kevin stand fully in my way. Because, after all, who would want to listen to me? Why would anyone listen to me? I'm literally no one, right?

Except, here we are. Here you are. Here Shrink Wrapped is.

Shrink Wrapped is the culmination of all of my friends and loved ones begging me to share my stories, my talents, my voice, and my perspective with you- the world.

So here I am in my own little corner, just me, and stupid Kevin, and this microphone; and for the first time in a long time, I feel like maybe, just maybe, someone out there might want to hear me, might need to hear me. And if that someone is you? I'm really glad you're here. If it's not you, I'm still really glad you're here- stick around, I bet you'll find some really cool stuff later on as the show goes on (no, really, I already have the first like 95 episodes planned out already, and ideas for even more are percolating constantly and being added).

I really do want to build a community here- If you want to see a text transcript of this episode (and every subsequent episode), you can click the link in the show notes, and it should pop you over to a webpage where you can join the ONeil Counseling app. That's where you can find the blog posts of the podcast episodes, there's an RSS feed of the podcast itself, but there's also a community there that you can join and interact with- there's a forum, groups (you can create a group, join a group, etc); it's kind of like its own little social media spot.

If you liked this episode, then definitely stick around for next week when we talk about therapy. Not just therapy, though- how to tell when you need therapy. It's gonna be so super fun, I promise.

I know everyone says the whole "like, share, subscribe" spiel, but I hear that's how you have to do things in order to get algorithms to like you, and to get notified of when new episodes come out, so you might want to go ahead and do that stuff if you think you want to hear more of what I have to say (and if you stuck around this long? I'm pretty sure you definitely want to hear more of what I have to say). I believe this episode should be up on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and on the ONeil Counseling app, and that's where we should be for the foreseeable future!

Thank you so much again for pushing play on Shrink Wrapped, and pop in next week to hear me yap about needing therapy.. Er- how you know you might need therapy.