How I Built This

If you’re curious how UNRAVEL came together, this is the story behind it.


UNRAVEL began in March 2025 as an idea for a workshop-focused website. This concept went through multiple iterations as I started building the site in June before it took its current shape. The first version launched on August 7, 2025.

The idea came out of years of trying to understand the patterns I kept seeing in myself and the people around me. What something looks like in a relationship often doesn’t line up with what it actually means. The psychologically correct choice frequently feels like it would be emotional suicide, and the behavior that looks harmless on the surface is often doing the most damage. We think we understand why we do what we do, but the truth is, usually, we don’t.

I wanted to explain how our system works under the surface; how emotional states interpret our experiences, assign meaning to them, and shape our beliefs, how threat responses override logic, and why the body pushes people toward the very patterns that hurt them, then tells them this time is somehow different. Threat responses don’t just override logic, they rewrite it, and most people have no idea that’s what’s happening. That’s what pushed this project to grow into a full educational platform built around models that map the internal processes behind unhealthy dynamics.

I knew UNRAVEL had to be built the way people actually learn—through pattern recognition, emotional interpretation, and nervous-system logic, not just spouting facts.

I didn’t come into this with a design team or a technical background. I ran a children’s gymnastics center for 18 months and worked in office management for six years while earning my master’s in psychology, so I’m used to wearing a lot of hats at once. But building UNRAVEL meant learning entirely new skill sets from scratch, such as branding, visual design, and web development. Every page, character, model, and visual element was created, written, or refined by me.

The deeper problem behind UNRAVEL was simple: the way we teach people about relationships doesn’t match how people actually learn. Most of what’s out there—formal programs, therapy language on social media, self-help books, even well-intentioned psychological explanations—is fragmented, oversimplified, or flat-out wrong. It tells people what is happening externally and ties it to their conscious thoughts and beliefs, but not what’s happening internally using the nervous system’s memory, which is what’s actually running the show.

We’ve all had relationships, so it’s easy to assume our experiences have taught us the right lessons. The familiarity makes things feel obvious even when they aren’t. And because simple explanations are more comfortable, people often dismiss the context or nuance as “overthinking,” even though that’s usually where the truth actually lives.

Fear, conditioning, and familiarity distort how we understand our own patterns. Individual differences shape what we notice, what we ignore, what we minimize, and what we mistake for logic. The information to explain it exists, but it’s spread across disciplines, buried in academic research, or diluted by oversimplified advice. There wasn't one place that cut through the noise and brought it all together. I built UNRAVEL to fill that gap.

What I Built

UNRAVEL isn’t just a collection of informative web pages. It’s a system. I built it with four layers so people can enter from wherever they are—what they’re experiencing, what they’re feeling, or what they’re trying to understand. Each layer supports the others and serves a distinct purpose in how people learn and make sense of relational patterns.

Journeys These are the guided entry points. They walk people through the arcs of real relational experiences, from confusing relationship patterns to understanding their own internal dynamics to supporting a friend. They are structured in a stepwise way that maps to how people actually live through this stuff.

Foundations These explain the psychology, neuroscience, and internal mechanics that drive reactions, beliefs, interpretations, and emotions. They are the building blocks of human behavior.

Models & Frameworks These explain how the internal systems create our lived experiences. They show how things derail, what the harmful patterns actually mean, and why they often repeat themselves.

Bob & Sally The relational characters make up the narrative layer that brings the models to life and makes abstract patterns emotionally recognizable. They let people see themselves without defensiveness and so the material can land without shame.

Why I Built it This Way

I built UNRAVEL the way you build something when there’s no blueprint: by reverse-engineering what wasn’t working. I started with the outcomes and worked backwards to the systems. Every model and explanation had to be created from scratch.

A lot of what’s out there is oversimplified and harmful, lacking context and nuance. People often lean on profound sounding quotes while having no idea what they even mean. Breaking down complicated dynamics into clear, relatable language without dumbing anything down became the only way any of this would work. You won’t find pop-psychology here.

I built journeys instead of chapters, because people learn through narratives and experience not lectures. I used characters because they let you project yourself onto them without shame and see your own patterns play out at a safe distance. They keep things from getting too heavy so the material sinks in rather than overwhelms. And I avoid anything that leans on fear, shame, or moralizing; none of that helps people change.

My voice is what matters most in all of this. I aim to be honest and direct while avoiding clinical jargon. I emphasize compassion and empathy rather than judgment and blame, but without overlooking accountability. There’s a little wry wit mixed in, not for humor’s sake but because a touch of levity lowers defensiveness and helps the truth land.

This platform needed to help people see themselves clearly, understand how and why things happen, and stay human enough to create hope and inspire change.

We misread our feelings constantly, and our behavior is driven more by emotions than people want to believe. Knowledge isn’t helpful on its own.

A lot of this is counterintuitive and can lead people to the exact wrong conclusions. Accurate conclusions require understanding how the facts translate into feelings and how those feelings drive thoughts and behaviors.

That is what UNRAVEL was designed to do.