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My guest this week is Dr. Paul Kesselman, a clinical psychologist and close friend of mine. It was Paul’s second time on the podcast (the previous episode is here) and another great discussion. This time we focused on how to keep open lines of communication with our kids.
Topics we discussed included:
The advantages of keeping open dialogue with our kids Creating a safe environment for our kids to talk with us The downside of coming to our kids with an agenda Talking at, to, or with kids Making sure children are engaged when we’re speaking with them Capitalizing on moments when our kids are available to talk with us How early to start thinking about open dialogue with children Many children’s preference to go to Mom to talk rather than Dad How to deal respond when our kids do something wrong Shifting from content to process with our kids Remembering our goals in our interactions with our children Our expectations for how children “should” respond to our critiques and corrections Letting kids know we’re there while also respecting their privacy and space The downsides of jumping in to fix or resolve things for our kids The book Paul referenced, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee (affiliate link)Paul Kesselman, PsyD, completed his doctoral degree in psychology at Yeshiva University. He has taught college level courses in child psychology. He has been working in private practice seeing individuals, families, and running groups since 2003.
Paul works with children as young as four years of age and sees children, pre- teens, adolescents, families, young adults, and adults. He has also conducted research studies on social anxiety at New York State Psychiatric Institute.
Paul grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He and his wife have five children; he enjoys spending time with his family, listening to music, and playing baseball when he is not helping patients and families.
He has a passion for his work and enjoys the opportunity to work with issues such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, learning issues, OCD, anger issues, impulse control disorders, school avoidance and refusal, and adjustments issues.
Paul has spoken at both public and private area schools on a variety of topics including ADHD, anxiety, special needs children, and school anxiety.
Learn more about Paul and his therapy practice at his website.
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My guest this week is Dr. Nadia Colburn, a poet and author of a new book of poetry entitled I Say the Sky (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
Developing greater interest in poetry later in life Turning to poetry as a spiritual or devotional practice The ability of poetry to express or point to things that are difficult to capture The emotional connection that poetry can inspire Presence that exists outside of traditional narrative Readings from Nadia’s books Wanting to live and yet forgetting we’re alive right here and now Mistaking the world for a task Making the body more spacious so it can contain more The ongoing life of the past into the present The dialogue between writing and meditation Letting go of the desire to show that we’re good and acceptable Nadia’s description and evocation of the experience of anxiety in her poem “Anxiety” The missingness of poetry, according to Kieran SetiyaNadia Colburn, PhD, is also the author of The High Shelf.
Her poetry and prose have appeared in more than 80 publications, including the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Spirituality & Health, Lion’s Roar, and the Yale Review.
Nadia holds a PhD in English from Columbia University. She is the founder of Align Your Story writing school, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement.
Learn more about Nadia at her website, where you can also find meditations and other free resources.
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My guest this week is Dr. Carla Naumburg, a clinical social worker and author with a brand new book called How to Stop Freaking Out: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Cool When Life Feels Chaotic. This is an excellent guide for young people who are struggling with overwhelming emotions.
Topics we discussed included:
The defining features of a freak-out The balance between acknowledging big emotions and controlling freak-outs The difficulty in controlling an active freak-out The role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in regulating emotions and behavior Fight, flight, freeze, flip-out, and fix as different manifestations of freaking out Why freak-outs happen in spite of the costs Handling the triggers that can push our buttons Checking in with your body as a way to manage emotions The power of thoughts, for good and for ill The crucial difference between feelings and thoughts Whether it’s helpful to express anger through, e.g., punching a pillowCarla Naumburg, PhD, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and the author of five books, including the bestselling How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t With Your Kids.
Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN, and Mindful Magazine, among other places.
Carla lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters.
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My guest this week is Diane Manser, a long-time high school teacher with an important message that she shares in her recent book, I Didn’t Sign Up for This: One Classroom Teacher’s Journey Through Emotional Fatigue to Personal Empowerment (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
What led Diane to become a teacher The best and hardest aspects of teaching The point at which my guest started to wonder what she had signed up for Aspects of teaching that can lead to frustration and burnout Some of the needs and expectations that teachers can bring to the classroom Embracing organic developments while teaching Teaching as a both/and experience that is both rewarding and challenging Experiencing of meanness from students The emotional elements of being a teacher Learning to recognize the familiar reactions we have to certain types of people How being a teacher can force a person to grow on a personal levelDiane Manser is a devoted high school English teacher in the Philadelphia suburbs, focusing most of her teaching career in the ninth grade.
She is the founder of Teaching is Emotional, which encourages educational leaders, current teachers, and emerging teachers to support teachers’ emotional strength as they navigate a challenging profession.
Diane loves to be the sunshine in people’s days and to find joy in the simplest of moments.
She relishes summertime at the beach, self-discovery podcasts and non-fiction books, TV watching with her husband, and playing with her kids.
Find Diane online at her website and join her private Facebook group Teaching Is Emotional.
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My guest this week is Dr. Scott Rick, an associate professor of marketing and author of a great book called Tightwads and Spendthrifts: Navigating the Money Minefield in Real Relationships (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
Why our relationship with money is often complicated, no matter how much we have Where our attitudes toward money and spending come from Mental and emotional tendencies that predispose a person to being a tightwad The tendency to act more like one’s parents as one moves through adulthood My own tightwad tendencies, on the tightwad-spendthrift scale The daily suffering that tightwads experience from not spending money The lack of distress that spendthrifts feel about spending money The tendency to unfairly criticize spendthrifts more than tightwads Spendthrifts shopping for things they might need The extent to which being a spendthrift or tightwad may be domain specific Possible generational or situational effects on spending attitudes and habits The experiences that tightwads often miss out on Feeling like we have more money when we’re willing to spend it The tendency to treat a raise and higher cost of living differently, especially for spendthrifts Shopping momentum and what-the-hell behavior among spendthrifts Why spendthrifts tend not to learn from their overspending Why spending regret tends to be different for material things vs. experiences Personality correlates of spendthrifts and tightwads Why tightwads and spendthrifts often wind up together in romantic relationships Whether it’s better for couples to have joint or separate bank accounts The degree of financial transparency that is ideal for couplesScott Rick, PhD, is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.
Scott received his PhD in Behavioral Decision Research from Carnegie Mellon in 2007, and he then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Wharton.
His research focuses on understanding the emotional causes and consequences of consumer financial decision-making, with a particular interest in the behavior of tightwads and spendthrifts.
The overarching goal of his work is to understand when and why consumers behave differently than they should behave (defined by an economically rational benchmark, a happiness-maximizing benchmark, or by how people think they should behave), and to develop marketing and policy interventions to improve consumers’ decision making and well-being.
Find Scott online at his website where you can learn more about his work.
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My guest this week is philosopher and counselor Dr. Samir Chopra, author of the fascinating new book, Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
The extent to which we are experiencing unique levels of anxiety in human history Philosophical inquiry that springs from anxiety The unconscious cognitive work we do to make the world sensible and navigable My guest’s loss of both parents fairly early in life and the consequences on his psyche Comparing our experienced misfortunes to the visible misfortunes of others The fear of not making the best use of our lives Being in the moment as an antidote to continual anxiety The Buddhist explanation of why anxiety can persist even when all is well Freedom from suffering through seeing the persistence of self as an illusion Managing and reducing anxiety vs. living with it Viewing anxiety as an ever-present entity in one’s lifeSamir Chopra, PhD, is a philosophical counselor and professor emeritus of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
He’s the author and coauthor of many books, including Shyam Benegal, A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents, and Eye on Cricket.
His essays have appeared in the Nation, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, Psyche, and other publications.
Find Samir online at his website where you can learn more about his work and contact him about counseling sessions.
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My guest this week is Dr. Marla Deibler, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety. We discussed her excellent new book, The BFRB Recovery Workbook (affiliate link). Check out the publisher’s website where you can download many free worksheets and resources.
Topics we discussed included:
When a body-focused repetitive behavior becomes a diagnosable disorder Common physical consequences of BFRBs Behaviors associated with the hair-pulling of trichotillomania, a type of BFRB The buildup of hair in the digestive system (trichobezoar) from ingesting hair What makes BFRBs so hard to stop The rewarding feeling that often accompanies BFRBs Fixing something with a BFRB that doesn’t feel quite right Why willpower alone is usually not enough to stop BFRBs Ambivalence in the process of change: wanting to change and not wanting to change The importance of a functional analysis to understand what drives behaviors Wanting to jump to fixing a problematic behavior before understanding it The importance of awareness for treatment Practicing incompatible responses to interrupt the habit of BFRBs The relation of BFRBs to OCD and other types of compulsive behaviors The important role of acceptance and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) The problems of using punishment to shape behaviorMarla W. Deibler, PsyD, ABPP, is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Board-Certified in Behavioral and Cognitive Psychology, and Founder/Executive Director of The Center for Emotional Health of Greater Philadelphia.
Marla serves on the Faculty of the Behavior Therapy Training Institute (BTTI) of the International OCD Foundation.
She serves as President of the Board of Directors of OCD NJ, the NJ affiliate of the IOCDF, Consultant for the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome, Visiting Clinical Supervisor at the Rutgers University Psychological Services Clinic, and Executive Council member of the ACBS OCD SIG.
She is co-author of The BFRB Recovery Workbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Effective Recovery from Hair Pulling, Skin Picking, Nail Biting, and Other Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.
Find Marla online at her website.
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My guest this week is Dr. Alissa Jerud, a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating anxiety.
Topics we discussed included:
The anxiety conditions Alissa treats Anxiety related to pregnancy and fertility The difficulty of experiencing miscarriage My guest’s own experience of two miscarriages The conditioned anxiety after the first loss Pregnancy as a perfect setup for anxiety Dealing with the desire to avoid distressing reminders The benefits of facing certain things that are painful Talking with others about difficult experiences Learning to sit with uncertainty Accepting the possibility that things might not go the way we want them to Ways that we try to subtly protect ourselves from anxiety or disappointment Embracing the good and the bad—opening to all of it The benefits and limitations of cognitive techniques for dealing with worry The willingness to talk with and listen to those who have experienced miscarriageAlissa Jerud, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist working in private practice and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania.
She completed her doctoral training at the University of Washington and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety.
In her private practice, Alissa specializes in exposure-based treatment of anxiety-related disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), social anxiety, panic disorder, specific phobias, and generalized anxiety.
Additionally, she specializes in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills training, which includes skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.
Alissa is passionate about helping as many people as possible, not only through her clinical work, but also through her writing and speaking engagements. She enjoys training other clinicians in exposure-based treatments and frequently gives workshops on anxiety, stress, mental health, parenting, and social support to companies large and small.
She especially enjoys helping parents (including herself) learn to accept, regulate, and tolerate their emotions, as well as their children’s.
Find Alissa online at her website.
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My guest this week for part 5 of our series on mindful awareness is Ethan Nichtern, author of a new book called Confidence: Holding Your Seat Through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
Confidence as trusting we can navigate our own minds Making friends with our inner experience Equanimity as realizing that everything affects you The eight worldly winds or forces: Pleasure/pain Praise/blame Influence/insignificance Success/failure Showing up and working with whatever happens to us Mindfulness leading one to feel more but suffer less The first arrow/second arrow metaphor from Buddhism Not pretending something painful is not painful The normalness of reacting to the eight worldly winds Being willing to admit that we’re having an experience we’re having Why hope can be a trap just as much fear is The stress that comes with the possibility of good things The longing to be OK … in every way … forever The incredible power in just knowing what our mind is doing Mindfulness as a good way to practice working with the mindEthan Nichtern is a renowned contemporary Buddhist teacher and the author of The Dharma of the Princess Bride, One City, and the widely acclaimed The Road Home (affiliate link).
Since 2002, Ethan has taught meditation and Buddhist psychology classes and workshops in New York City and around North America.
He has lectured at meditation/yoga centers, conferences, and universities including Brown, Yale, and NYU.
Ethan has been featured by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, Vogue, and Business Insider, and has written for the Huffington Post, Beliefnet, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and more. He lives in Brooklyn.
Find Ethan online at his website and find his courses at Dharma Moon.
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My guest this week is Amanda Knox, author of the New York Times bestselling book Waiting to be Heard (affiliate link). Amanda’s name is probably familiar to you because she was in the news a lot over a decade ago when she was tried for murder in Italy. Even though she was convicted, it turned out the charges were completely false, and eventually she was fully exonerated.
Topics we discussed included:
Amanda’s history of being falsely accused of murder The power of the anchoring bias in maintaining false impressions My guest’s feelings toward the prosecutor on her case Letting go of the need for other people to believe certain things about us The fundamental insight that there is nothing between you and your well-being Figuring out what we can give or take action on, instead of waiting for others to give us what we need Deciding not to be the victim Discovering what no one can take away from you The inherent opportunity in any kind of experience The deep empathy that comes from Amanda’s experience Grieving the loss of the life that could have been The freedom of recognizing that everything is in flux all the time Realizing that this actually is my life, and choosing intentionally to live it Tolerating anything for short bouts of time (with reference to The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) My guest’s relationship with comedy “Hurt Feelings” by Flight of the Conchords Laughing at the absurdity of our self-seriousnessAmanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, and co-host, with her partner Christopher Robinson, of the podcast Labyrinths.
Between 2007 and 2015, she spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit.
She has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics.
She sits on the board of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice.
Find Amanda online on X/Twitter and Instagram and on her website, and check out her excellent podcast Labyrinths that she co-hosts with Christopher Robinson.
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My guest this week is Brett Larkin, yoga instructor and author of Yoga Life: : Habits, Poses, and Breathwork to Channel Joy Amidst the Chaos (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
Practicing yoga with awareness The appeal of yoga for helping us remember that we’re more than our minds and brains Yoga as a “science laboratory” to observe what’s happening internally and how one responds to life The moment my guest discovered what yoga can teach us about ourselves How to distinguish our highest Self from the inner strategist that keeps us in unhelpful patterns Looking for opportunities to move through life in a new way Crafting a yoga practice to offer you what you need 20 minutes as a thoroughly adequate length of yoga practice Self-care and being one’s own parents The complementary energies of the masculine (Shiva) and feminine (Shakti) Balancing acceptance and change, as in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Prioritizing the breath in yoga as a means to awareness The non-optimal inhibited breathing we often get trapped in A brief guided experience in healthy breathing Discovering through yoga that there is a healthier way to liveBrett Larkin is the founder of Uplifted Yoga and the author of Yoga Life.
She has trained thousands of yoga teachers, and her training has set the standard for quality online certification since 2015.
Brett’s award-winning YouTube channel has with over half a million subscribers, and her Uplifed Yoga Podcast empowers listeners to actively design their lives using yoga’s ancient wisdom.
Yoga enthusiasts love her courses on Kundalini, Prenatal Yoga, and the Uplifted Yoga Academy.
Learn more about Brett and her practice at her website.
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My guest this week is psychologist Dr. Steve Taylor, author of the new book, The Adventure: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
The practical components of “enlightenment” or “spiritual awakening” Commonalities across different spiritual traditions The unease and anxiety created by a sense of separateness from the world and others The fundamental background unease humans tend to feel The hijacking of spiritual awakening by the ego Aligning yourself with the organic impulse toward growth and greater awareness The process of waking up and transforming through intense suffering The naturalness of waking up, which often happens spontaneously Disidentification with the thought mind as the first step in spiritual awakening The difference between identifying vs. deidentifying with a worry The power of emptying one’s mind The relative amount of time spent in absorption, abstraction, and awareness A “gentle mental nudge” to spend more time in awareness Accepting your non-acceptance and embracing your imperfectionsSteve Taylor, PhD, is the author of many bestselling books.
He’s senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Beckett University and the chair of the Transpersonal Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society.
Steve’s articles and essays have been published in over 100 academic journals, magazines, and newspapers.
He blogs for Scientific American and Psychology Today.
Visit him online at his website.
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My guest this week is psychologist Dr. Beth Kurland, author of the new book, You Don’t Have to Change to Change Everything: Six Ways to Shift Your Vantage Point, Stop Striving for Happy, and Find True Well-Being (affiliate link). We begin with a calming guided meditation that Beth led.
Topics we discussed included:
The assumption that not feeling at ease is a personal failure Being with our distress without being swallowed up by it Cultivating well-being in the absence of happiness The role of self-compassion in well-being Recognizing and connecting with a deeper part of ourselves, whether we call is Self, spirit, or soul Seeing the world from our Wise Self Living from our head vs. being more connected to and aware of the body Contraction vs. expansion in the area around the heart Why we don’t habitually run toward our body and wise Self as refuges A simple practice for coming back into one’s body Proper breathing for calming the nervous systemBeth Kurland, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with three decades of experience.
She is also a TEDx and public speaker, a mind-body coach, and an author of three award-winning books: Dancing on The Tightrope; The Transformative Power of Ten Minutes; and Gifts of the Rain Puddle.
Beth blogs for Psychology Today and is the creator of the Well-Being Toolkit online program. She lives in the Boston area.
For more, visit her website.
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My guest this week is Dr. Peter Levine, who is well-known for being the developer of Somatic Experiencing. He’s also the author of a new book: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey (affiliate link), which we focused on in this very enjoyable and meaningful discussion.
Peter shared about how his own wounds from early in life were a big part of what led him into the field of trauma therapy. We explored how the healing continues, even now in Peter’s ninth decade.
Topics we discussed included:
What Peter means when he describes himself as a modern “Chiron” Using our own wounds in life as we’re working to help others Getting to trauma memories and healing through embodiment in somatic experiencing The horrific trauma Peter experienced early in his life The dream that led Peter to share this book rather than writing it only for his own healing The significance of dreams for waking life Learning to attend to the promptings of the unconscious mind The relation between somatic experiencing and an approach like cognitive behavioral therapy The role of the vagus nerve in the trauma response and in healing Using the body to encounter our traumas in a healing way Why a union of the body and mind tends to reduce anxiety The disconnection we so often experience between our minds and bodies Peter’s reaction to a meditation workshop several decades ago The idea of “living your dying” Connections between death and the divine The promises and pitfalls of psychedelicsPeter Levine, PhD, is the renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing.
He holds a doctorate in medical and biological Physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a doctorate in psychology from International University.
The recipient of four lifetime achievement awards, he is the author of several books, including Waking the Tiger, which has now been printed in 33 countries and has sold over a million copies.
Learn more about:
Peter Levine Somatic Experiencing An Autobiography of Trauma -
My guest this week for part 4 of our series on midlife is Dr. Tim Windsor. Tim has done many research studies on adult development and how we change in midlife and older age. I took so much from this conversation as Tim described what we know about how to have a great second half of life.
Things we discussed included:
My guest’s research in lifespan developmental psychology Optimizing one’s potential to live well in later adulthood How Tim came to this area of research The challenges and opportunities that come with an aging population The U-shaped curve in happiness across adulthood The struggles we often face in midlife The socio-emotional selectivity theory of Laura Carstensen at Stanford The downturn in happiness that’s typical of oldest old age Variability in the slopes of well-being across adulthood Organizing our lives in ways that maximize well-being in the second half of life Developing psychological immunity in older age Emotion regulation in older age The benefits of using “positive reappraisal” to rethink one’s perspective The goodness-of-fit between situation and emotion regulation strategy The average increases in mindfulness with older age and the research of Leeann Mahlo Coping through accommodation or assimilation Using momentary ecological assessment to measure how mindful acceptance affects one’s reactions to daily hassles Awareness of losses and gains in older age How my guest’s research influences his behavior as he looks toward older ageTim Windsor, PhD, is a Professor in Psychology and Deputy Director of the Flinders Institute of Mental Health and Wellbeing at Flinders University.
His research focuses on examining social and psychological resources that promote well-being in older adulthood, links between views on aging, health and well-being, and developing interventions to promote engagement with life.
He is Director of the Generations Research Initiative at Flinders and is a Distinguished Member the Australian Association of Gerontology, and a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.
Learn more about Tim and his research at his faculty website.
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My guest this week is Nick Davies, back for his third time on the podcast. This time we focused on issues related to midlife, as this is part 3 of our series on that topic.
Things we discussed included:
Nick’s personal backstory and his decision to make a big change in his mid-thirties Asking the right questions that can lead us to fulfillment The danger of “normality” that doesn’t serve us well Waiting for life to open up for you vs. creating the life you want Unhelpful beliefs that can lead us to take a passive role in our own lives Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior Setting up your environment in a way that helps you flourish (e.g. life-giving relationships) Knowing when to change ourselves vs. changing the situation Returning to my clinical practice with a different mindsetNick Davies is a Tony Robbins-trained coach with over 20 years of experience in the corporate world.
Nick’s sweet spot for delivering value is working with high achieving financial advisors who want to add zero’s to their business but aren’t willing to sacrifice their health or time with family,
Growing up in England, living across 3 continents and 5 locations, Nick takes the lessons from his extensive exposure to people and business, and applies them to his life and his clients.
His focus is to get to the heart of what people really want. Nick believes most of us leave our personal and business potential on the table and settle – and is on a mission to relieve the suffering that can bring. With over 3500 hours of coaching and counting, Nick has worked with many different types of people and businesses to create massive awareness and abundance in those areas.
He believes in holding high standards for himself and his clients. That means a focus on results, but also a focus on compassion.
Find Nick online at LinkedIn.
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My guest this week is Dr. Kieran Setiya, a philosophy professor at MIT and author of Midlife: A Philosophical Guide (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
The extent to which midlife is a time of crisis Elliott Jaques’s coining of the term “midlife crisis” in 1965 Data showing that life satisfaction is U-shaped, with a low in middle age Common significant challenges in midlife Past, Present, and Future The feeling of having missed out on other possible lives The tremendous loss we would experience if missing out were not possible The power of philosophy in the self-help space The poetic quality of Kieran’s writing and its likely origins The overvaluing of having options for their own sake, even if it costs us in absolute satisfaction Value beyond removing problems and suffering A vision of life beyond striving for “neutral” The tension between feeling like what we do matters, and yet life feels completely pointless The profundity of hobbies as gratuitous activities that aren’t aimed at solving problems What my guest has found is worth doing beyond addressing unmet needs The distinction between telic (project) and atelic (process) activities The societal pressure and value to be project-focused Why we’re bothered by our nonexistence after death much more than our nonexistence before birth Understanding what it would really mean to be immortal How the arc of a life is different from a movie or a bookKieran Setiya, PhD, is professor and philosophy section head at MIT.
He works mainly in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind.
Kieran’s other books include Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, Knowing Right from Wrong, and Life Is Hard, which was named one of the best books of 2022 by the Economist and the New Yorker.
Kieran has also written about stand-up comedy, HP Lovecraft, baseball, free will, and the meaning of life.
Find Kieran online at his website and on Substack.
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My guest this week is Dr. James Hollis, a therapist and author of many books, including Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
Common struggles one tends to experience in midlife The part of our psyche (soul) that knows us better than we know ourselves The agenda of the first and second halves of an average-length life Why certain issues tend to arise at midlife and not sooner The Buddha’s experiences before and after enlightenment Missing out on the opportunity to find a different solution to unaddressed problems Asking metaphorically what the gods intend through us Living in harmony with our inevitable mortality The Self working to overthrow the ego Asking what the symptoms we’re having are pointing to or asking of us Depression as a reorienting of energies when we’re at odds with ourselves Why popular culture ideas about intimate relationships tend to lead to unhappiness The contrasting realities of “being in love with” and loving another person What it means to leave one’s family of origin for the second time The projection that is part of the origin of any relationship The growth that often comes through challenges and pain The cost to ourselves and our loved ones of denying our calling Aligning vocation with one’s work life How to successfully navigate the challenges of midlifeJames Hollis, PhD, is a Jungian analyst based in Washington, DC.
He is the author of many books, including his latest, A Life of Meaning (affiliate link).
Find Jim online at his website.
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My guest this week is Dr. Joel Minden, a clinical psychologist, therapist, author of Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss (affiliate link), and frequent guest on the podcast. This conversation focused on men in therapy.
Topics we discussed included:
The extent to which men tend to be interested in and open to psychotherapy Fears that men might bring to therapy The significant overlap in the issues men and women deal with and what brings them to therapy The challenge of dealing effectively with anger More frequent externalizing disorders among men, e.g., substance use, aggression Gender differences in suicide attempts and death by suicide Male/female differences in therapy based on roles, e.g., mom vs. dad, husband vs. wife Variability among men or women compared to average differences between men and women Changes over time in men’s attitudes toward and participation in therapy Trying to suppress strong or difficult emotions Deflecting the thread of a discussion when running into difficult material The idea of reclaiming an “alpha” masculinity Confusion and uncertainty about what it means to be a male in our society The benefit of normalization in therapy and in lifeJoel Minden, PhD, is a clinical psychologist specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety and related disorders.
He is the author of Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss (affiliate link), founder of the Chico Center for Cognitive Behavior Therapy, diplomate of The Academy of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at California State University, Chico.
Find Joel online at his website and read his blog on Psychology Today.
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My guest this week is Dr. Michelle Drapkin, a clinical psychologist, therapist, and author of an excellent new workbook called The Motivational Interviewing Path to Personal Change: The Essential Workbook for Creating the Life You Want (affiliate link).
Topics we discussed included:
What motivational interviewing (MI) is and why the name is misleading Ambivalence toward change and how it’s addressed with MI Living our values in the midst of our ambivalence Finding different and more productive avenues to pursue our values Prochaska and DiClemente and the Stages of Change model Pre-contemplation Contemplation Preparation Action Maintenance Why change is not a completely linear process How much of our behavior is conscious and intentional vs. automatic Realizing that it’s normal for the mind to think of off-the-wall things The meaning (or meaninglessness) of dreams The book The Alchemist What led Michelle to adapt MI for a self-help workbook The practice of “rolling with resistance,” now renamed “dancing with discord” Encouraging change talk vs. trying to convince someone they have to changeMichelle Drapkin, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified psychologist who owns and operates the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, and has worked in behavioral science for over 20 years.
She has held various roles as a behavioral scientist in industry, including leading the development and deployment of behavior change interventions at Johnson & Johnson.
Michelle was a national motivational interviewing (MI) trainer at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania.
She completed her PhD in clinical psychology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and joined the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) in 2008. She has trained thousands of health care professionals and industry leaders in MI.
Find Michelle online at her website and on LinkedIn.
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