A Loving Disruption with Elena Kunkel Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:06:23 -0700 en-us © 2026 A Loving Disruption with Elena Kunkel yes a94a9415-c9a4-54de-ae13-f932d91e433a Elena Kunkel episodic false A Loving Disruption starts with a claim I can’t leave alone: the opposite of depression isn’t happiness. It’s expression. 

By expression, I mean having access to all of yourself - your appetite, anger, humor, ideas, desire, taste, conviction - and letting those things have consequences. They change what you make, what you say, what you choose, what you refuse, how you love, and what you contribute.

I’m interested in the distance between functioning and feeling fully alive. How can someone be wildly capable and still feel like she’s managing her life from behind glass? What cracks it wide open? Why can making something honest bring you back into your body? Why do we become vague around the things we mean most? And what happens when fear has been holding the pen for so long that we mistake its voice for our own?

Each week, I follow those questions with people who have spent their lives approaching them from different directions: artists, founders, neuroscientists, somatic practitioners, coaches, philosophers, astrologers, Human Design people, and others who know something about what brings a person online. And what shuts her down.

They have different language for the same strange gap. I want to hear where their answers touch. Where they contradict each other. What each one can see that the others can’t.

This is the experiment: externally processing and testing the idea messily here, in my own life and with the sharpest people I can get in the room, until the language becomes specific enough to reach you when you feel far from yourself—and useful enough to help you find your way back.

]]> Buzzsprout (https://www.buzzsprout.com) Elena Kunkel https://storage.buzzsprout.com/vqsq1zqn4inmvynxbcizzo4wiuw3?.jpg A Loving Disruption with Elena Kunkel Success Is None of Your Business Success Is None of Your Business My six-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “Mom, what can I do where I can win a trophy?”

It was wildly convicting because I could hear my own relationship with work inside that question. How often have I made the prize, the proof, or the outcome the whole point?

So I went down a rabbit hole to find out what science says actually happens when we make success our business. Turns out, it can make us less creative before we even begin, interfere with skills we already know how to use, and leave us more interested in checking whether the work succeeded than continuing to make it.

This episode is about what success quietly costs the work, and the questions that can bring us back to what we actually set out to create.

]]> My six-year-old daughter looked at me and asked, “Mom, what can I do where I can win a trophy?”

It was wildly convicting because I could hear my own relationship with work inside that question. How often have I made the prize, the proof, or the outcome the whole point?

So I went down a rabbit hole to find out what science says actually happens when we make success our business. Turns out, it can make us less creative before we even begin, interfere with skills we already know how to use, and leave us more interested in checking whether the work succeeded than continuing to make it.

This episode is about what success quietly costs the work, and the questions that can bring us back to what we actually set out to create.

]]> Elena Kunkel Buzzsprout-19595094 Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:00:00 -0700 1719 full false Stuckness Is Either Arrogance or Avoidance Stuckness Is Either Arrogance or Avoidance Which one is it for you?

The opposite of depression isn't happiness. It's expression.

This is the first episode of A Loving Disruption, and I'm starting with the question that rearranged my life. It was 2021, my daughter was one, and I walked into a 96 hour conference I did not want to attend, feeling stuck on a cellular level. A psychological sniper Jean Marie Jobs walked up to me and asked why I was there. I said I was stuck. She said stuckness is usually a symptom of two things, arrogance or avoidance, and asked me which one it was.

I've been unpacking that answer ever since.

In this one: why arrogance is really unwillingness, what the five frenemies cost you (look good, be right, be liked, stay safe, stay in control), why creating from a "not" traps your brain, and the question I ask myself every time I get stuck.

The closing question: if you were being more courageous today, what would you be doing?

Send me a voice note on Instagram @elenakunkel. I actually listen and respond to them.

]]> Which one is it for you?

The opposite of depression isn't happiness. It's expression.

This is the first episode of A Loving Disruption, and I'm starting with the question that rearranged my life. It was 2021, my daughter was one, and I walked into a 96 hour conference I did not want to attend, feeling stuck on a cellular level. A psychological sniper Jean Marie Jobs walked up to me and asked why I was there. I said I was stuck. She said stuckness is usually a symptom of two things, arrogance or avoidance, and asked me which one it was.

I've been unpacking that answer ever since.

In this one: why arrogance is really unwillingness, what the five frenemies cost you (look good, be right, be liked, stay safe, stay in control), why creating from a "not" traps your brain, and the question I ask myself every time I get stuck.

The closing question: if you were being more courageous today, what would you be doing?

Send me a voice note on Instagram @elenakunkel. I actually listen and respond to them.

]]> Elena Kunkel Buzzsprout-19535241 Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0700 1117 full false