Cracked Open: Becoming Intimate With Your SELF — 2026 Year-Long Monthly Challenge 🍒🪩🐣
What if becoming more intimate with your SELF was the skill that unlocked everything else?
In 2026, CouplesTherapy.co is launching a year-long, monthly challenge focused on becoming more intimate with our SELF. Month by month, we’ll look at our goo through psychological pieces of defensive mirrored glass and build awareness, choice, and connection.
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Cracked Open
The hero image on our homepage this month—January 2026—was designed with the help of our pretentious new friend, AI, as a visual aid to introduce this year’s theme: Cracked Open. A heart-shaped disco ball with a fragmented, mirrored surface—cracked open and revealing its soft, gooey center.
And that’s like us.
Soft like goo on the inside.
Covered on the outside with pieces of mirrored glass—each one performing an illusory custom-made defensive technique designed to shield our vulnerable center.
This year at CouplesTherapy.co, our defenders are due for their annual review. And most of them have gone unchecked for a lifetime! Can you imagine? It’s one thing for your boss to give you space—and that’s great—but it’s another thing altogether when you’ve worked your ass off, full-time, come rain or shine, only to have gone unnoticed.
So the question becomes:
Who’s the boss?
Is it our goo, or the mirrored glass?
And that’s what we’ll be exploring throughout 2026.
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Your Invitation
As your guide, I’ll lead you through a year-long, monthly series inviting you to reflect on aspects of your SELF—from your gooey center to your mirrored surface. Along the way, you’ll become more INTIMATE with your SELF.
Yes, I said the “I” word—intimate.
And becoming more intimate with yourself is what makes it possible to become more INTIMATE with ANOTHER and, ultimately, RELATIONAL.
In my experience, very few among us actually know what the “I” word means. Not to worry—unless you’re a Time Ball, it’s never too late. Truth be told, once upon a time, I needed a crash course myself—and I’m a work in progress.
As a Couples Therapist, I often see intimacy reduced to sex—and that’s not it. Many of us know you can have sex and feel no intimacy at all. If you were under the influence, you might not even remember the encounter. The same can be true in our own lives when unconscious defenders—like mind- and mood-altering substances, patterns, or behaviors—are running the show. They impair our ability to see clearly and consciously choose which direction we want to go.
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Curious what this looks like in practice?
Explore the full 2026 Challenge—and each monthly reflection—as they unfold on our site.
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The CouplesTherapy.co 2026 Challenge
Like this year’s big, interconnected Times Square Constellation Ball—full of eternally positive energy, with Waterford Crystal panels shining bright through engravings of infinite light, joy, and beginnings—CouplesTherapy.co is inviting you to become your own New Year’s Eve Ball in 2026!
This is a year-long, worthwhile pursuit with the right blend of dopaminergic motivation in the climb topped with sweet oxytocin and soft serotonin upon your arrival. By the time we reach the top on December 31, 2026, you’ll know what it truly means to be more INTIMATE with your SELF—and when your Ball drops on New Year’s Eve, you’ll be primed to rise again in 2027 and explore what it means to be INTIMATE with ANOTHER.
You can explore the full introduction and follow along with each monthly reflection in our 2026 Challenge section of the site. That’s where the journey lives—and where each new invitation will drop.
👉 Visit the 2026 Challenge section to begin.
To stay informed as each monthly reflection drops—sign up for The Cherry Press !
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It’s said the purpose of therapy is to make the unconscious conscious—for the sake of choice.
It’s also said the gift of therapy is awareness.
And the cost of therapy?
Awareness.
With that, you’re met with a choice. With every choice, there’s something to gain—and something to lose.
So move your Ball forward and make your decision!
This year, I hope you’ll join us.
You won’t want to miss it and EVERY MONTH COUNTS. Once more, when the Ball drops on December 31, 2026, we’ll be ready to rise again—in 2027, with our focus on becoming more INTIMATE with ANOTHER, and in 2028, on becoming more RELATIONAL.
Your monthly reflections live in our 2026 Challenge section.
We’ll meet you there—one month at a time.
With love and excitement for the year to come,
Jessica Hansen, LMFT
Founder, CouplesTherapy.co 🍒