The Psychology of the Soul: Vanessa Bennett on Depth Healing, Motherhood, and Breaking Generational Patterns

Vanessa Bennett is a depth psychologist, therapist, and author of The Motherhood Myth.

In this conversation, Brett and Vanessa go all the way back. Vanessa grew up as a parentified child in a single-parent home — the overachiever who learned early that love was something you earned through achievement, not something freely given.

At 25, a close friend told her she always seemed angry. That one honest observation cracked her open. It sent her into therapy, yoga, Al-Anon, and eventually across the country — alone, at 30 — to leave her career in New York advertising, end a long-term relationship, and start over completely. Her work now sits at the intersection of depth psychology, spirituality, and the real, unfiltered experience of being human. And when she became a mother, two weeks before COVID lockdown, the myths she'd spent years studying became impossible to ignore. This is a conversation about what actually heals us. And what gets in the way.