Episodes
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As 2022 comes to a close, everyone is talking about their goals and resolutions; but we’re not going to talk about that here. Instead, Maryellen wants to talk about how freaking hard change is. She discusses:
How we avoid change
How she thinks change is difficult because it’s uncomfortable, and we don’t like feeling uncomfortable
Some big personal news/personal change: she sold her therapy practice
Needing time to sit with that change and recover
How she’s dealing with change, including reminding herself that uncomfortable does not equal bad, and that taking a step back can be a good thing to propel you forward
Lastly, Maryellen explains that she needs to also take a step back from the podcast in order to properly rest and reconfigure. She truly believes this isn’t goodbye, but see you later. It’s all going to be okay—no ish.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
For many of us, the holidays are full of joy and love. However, holidays where grief and sadness dominate are also a reality for many, yet far less discussed. As the holiday season approaches, Maryellen wants to talk about grief. She hopes this episode sheds light on all the different faces of grief, and how, even during the most wonderful time of year, it’s okay not to be okay. This episode highlights:
Holidays without a loved one
How people grieve more than death
Grieving differences in family dynamics, and the reality of our expectations
How holidays are ripe with traditions and pressure to be in the holiday spirit, which can trigger people
What to do with our grief
That grief needs time
How, if we ignore our feelings, they don’t go away, but instead come out in different ways
That grief looks different for everyone
How, often people grieving want to be alone, but the number one thing we need when grieving is other people
Common symptoms of grief
That it’s okay to distract yourself from grief, too
How grief is so much more complicated than just the 5 stages commonly identified
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Missing episodes?
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You’ve heard it a million times: your physical health is important for your mental health, and vice versa. But do you know why, or what exactly they do to one another? Today, Maryellen wants to talk about that link, and discuss a few more details that you may not think of, including:
The importance of sleep
Eating patterns
Heightened autonomic nervous system = our brain releasing cortisol into our blood stream
Parasympathetic nervous system being repressed
Frustrations with the random gimmicks that promise to “cure all”
Forgetting when we need to do the simple things for ourselves
The value of therapy
Tired as F*ck: Burnout at the Hands of Diet, Self-Help, and Hustle Culture by Caroline Dooner
Knowing when your body needs rest
How our bodies communicate to us, but it’s up to us to listen
Taking the time to check in with yourself
How, if we can start to be aware, we can take better care of ourselves
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Trauma is serious, scary, and there are not enough services in place to support those suffering. Today, Maryellen wants to normalize it a bit more, show a different perspective, and explain why some people will suffer in situations that maybe you wouldn’t. In discussing trauma Maryellen covers:
The subjective nature of trauma and how it lacks a clear definition
DMing an influencer to correct them on a trauma comment
Big T’s and little T’s
How, for each person, different things can be traumatic and that’s okay
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): a trauma therapy based off of Structural Dissociation Theory
Excerpts from My Dark Vanessa by Elizabeth Russel (TW: sexual assault)
The importance of recognizing the little T’s
How little T’s affect us and change our behavior
If you’re struggling, please reach out to a therapist. Visit psychologytoday.com or therapyden.com for a good place to start.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Maryellen has had to make some big decisions lately, and a friend asked her how she was making them. That made her stop and question just how exactly she was making these decisions, and if she was listening to herself as much as she was to everyone around her. When people suggest you listen to your gut, it can be difficult; especially if you struggle with anxiety. What was helping Maryellen the most was actually journaling, something she’s gotten back in to recently, and speaks about today. She discusses:
How we make decisions
The ways we can journal in non-productive ways
Her history with journaling
Journaling as a tool to understand yourself and organize your thoughts
Different types of journals
Tips to avoid spiraling when journaling
How we operate on autopilot
Understanding what is a gut instinct vs. what is anxiety
Processing events and making decisions
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Today the creative mind behind the brand Adulting With ADHD, Sarah Snyder-Castañeda, joins Maryellen to discuss what ADHD really looks like. When you hear ADHD, many people instinctively and stereotypically think of a young child who can’t sit still, but it’s far more nuanced and affects people of all ages. The two discuss:
How Sarah came up with the brand
What ADHD truly is
The lack of diagnoses and treatment with adults
The difficulty and grief that can come with being diagnosed at an older age
Medication and the polarizing opinions surrounding it
The importance of talking about your struggles
Common ADHD symptoms in adults
The relationship between ADHD and hormones
Advice for adults being diagnosed for the first time, or for parents whose child is being diagnosed
The importance of being careful with the information you consume…TikTok is not a reliable source
Their Okay-ish moments of the week!
To learn more visit adultingwithadhd.com and check out The Adulting With ADHD podcast.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Have you noticed a change in your workplace culture or your personal stress levels since the pandemic? Working from home has caused many organizational shifts, in both good ways and bad. Organizational psychologist Dr. Shanna Teel joins Maryellen to discuss leadership coaching, burnout, and more, including:
What an organizational psychologist does
If organizations are really willing to bring on an organizational psychologist
Changes within organizations as a result the pandemic
How leaders who practiced empathy prior to Covid succeeded at leading during the pandemic
Dr. Teel’s thoughts on the quiet quitting trend
The high expectations of the next generation in the workplace
Misuse of stress vs. burnout
Signs of burnout
If burnout has changed with people working from home
Cognitive fatigue and how it depletes us
Be sure to follow Dr. Shanna Teel on social media @drshannateel and visit drshanna.com
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
Licensed marriage and family therapist Kelley Stevens joins Maryellen on the pod this week to discuss being both a private practice therapist, and a consultant for therapists! This episode is as hilarious as it is informative, and we hope it inspires you to “do the thing!”—whatever that may be. Maryellen and Kelley get in to:
Working remotely
Opening a private practice
The difference between private practices and settings such as hospitals or clinics
Issues with insurance
Everything that goes in to a therapist’s rate
Advocating for yourself with your insurance company
Marketing for therapists
How the first therapist you meet might not be the best fit, but to not give up
Advice Kelley offers to therapists the most
The intimidation of making a business plan
Okay-ish moments of the week (warning: they both involve poop...)
If you don’t want to use your insurance but need a lower rate, be sure to check out Open Path Psychotherapy Collective at openpathcollective.org.
Be sure to follow Kelley on Instagram @theprivatepracticepro and visit theprivatepracticepro.com.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
This week is all about mindfulness! And before you roll your eyes and pause the podcast, bear with us. Maryellen used to feel the exact same way! But since she’s come to understand it more, she really appreciates the value it can bring to your life. However, mindfulness is something she’s been letting fall to the wayside lately, so she wanted to make a conscious effort (hey, mindfulness!) to discuss it today. This episode gets into:
The definition of mindfulness
How it started in religious beliefs
Jon Kabat-Zinn bringing it to the western world
How one of his books helped to change her view on mindfulness
What mindfulness means to Maryellen
How our brains filter information in order to keep moving
How, in order to de-stress, sometimes we actually need to notice everything around us
How mindfulness helps people with anxiety by bringing them in to the present
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
TW: self-harm, bipolar disorder, psychosis, suicidal thoughts
Today Maryellen is joined by a special guest, bipolar advocate Tatyana Frost. Tatyana runs the popular Instagram account, @havingbipolar, and opens up to the OKAY-ISH community about her journey of acceptance and advocacy. The two discuss:
Tatyana’s first experience talking about her diagnosis
Starting her Instagram during quarantine
How she felt when she was first diagnosed
Her parent’s reaction to the diagnosis and their relationship
How disorders such as depression, anxiety, and ADHD are widely accepted and discussed, but bipolar didn’t make it on the “acceptance train”
How, while a lifelong condition, bipolar disorder is still treatable
The importance of taking your medication when you have bipolar disorder
How Tatyana keeps herself stable
How the introduction of lithium changed the game for bipolar disorder
What psychosis means and how it can manifest
Advice for someone who was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder
Advice for family members of someone who was just diagnosed with bipolar disorder
Be sure to follow Tatyana on Instagram @havingbipolar.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
This week is a big one as Maryellen celebrates her birthday! Be sure to send your best wishes over on Instagram! In the spirit of celebration, your host takes a moment to sincerely thank everyone who listens to and supports the show. We couldn’t do this without you!!
The episode today is all about communication, something most of us do all day, every day, in a bunch of different ways! Maryellen explores:
Why do we communicate?
Is making your point productive?
How often are we communicating without listening?
How often are we communicating the same thing in different ways?
How often are we actually communicating about different things?
How much of our communication is about the other person?
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
The commercials are rolling, the panic is setting in, it’s that time of year again — back to school! If you’re like us and have no idea where the summer went, worry not, because registered social worker, Brianna Urquhart, is here to talk about how to keep ourselves okay-ish when the seasons are changing. The two chat:
Common things people do in this change of season that don’t work
How to get prepared and start off strong without setting yourself up for failure
Realistic “self-care” strategies
Debunking common fears about back to school
The pressure of doing everything perfectly
Anti-therapy therapy advice
How rigidity is never going to benefit you
Okay-ish moments in their lives
You can follow Brianna on social media @simply_socialwork and check out simplysocialwork.ca for links to her blog, YouTube, and how to work with her virtually across Ontario, Canada.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow your host on Instagram @maryellendance. To submit questions or stories, send her a DM! Plus, be sure to check out maryellendance.com for more resources. -
If you find yourself so focused on other people’s needs that yours aren’t a priority, this episode is for you! This week is a big one as we’re celebrating 2 years of OKAY-ISH! We are so excited for what’s in store, including some really awesome guests. Maryellen has been seeing ads all over social media lately to “learn how to stop being a people pleaser” which serves as the episode inspiration for the week! Maryellen chats:
What is a people pleaser?
At what point is it a bad thing?
We are in charge of our own happiness
Signs of being a people pleaser
Boundaries — they’re meant to keep people in, not push them away
No is not a dirty word & uncomfortable is not bad
Loved ones don’t want us to be people pleasers
Keeping our own needs a priority helps our relationships with others
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories, send us a DM! -
We’re going back to the basics again this week and chatting about self-regulation! Unfortunately, we can’t throw tantrums in the grocery store (I mean, you can, but...), so most of us have learned to self-regulate, or simply push things down — which is NOT what we want to do. So today, Maryellen gives everyone a refresher course on how to get up close and personal with our feelings and tried and true techniques to start exercising self-regulation. She dives into:
What is self-regulation?
Talked a lot about with little kids, not enough with adults
Are we actually learning techniques or just learning to hide our true feelings?
How do we actually self-regulate?
How do we know when to do these self-regulating techniques?
How do we know we are self-regulating in a way that’s productive?
The first step to regulating ourselves is recognizing what's going on
Start to learn how you respond to your feelings
HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired; if you are too much of any of these, it’s going to be more of a trigger
We have become so used to functioning when we haven’t had our basic needs met, but that is not a badge of honor
When we have to bite our tongue in a moment, it’s important to remember to come back and address the feeling
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories, send us a DM! -
This week Maryellen is super excited to do an episode full of listener questions! Doing episodes like these helps her to discover what type of content you want to hear! Enjoy this rapid-fire episode covering topics like:
How do you know if something is a chemical imbalance or something you can work through?
What is the difference between being really sad and being depressed?
How to encourage a friend to see a therapist
When to stop overthinking and trust your gut
How to know if I should see a counselor, therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist
I think I’m in love with my best friend, what do I do?
My best friend is marrying someone I can’t stand and I don’t know how to act
Advice for parents/friends/partners of someone dealing with severe anxiety/depression
I’m in love with my best friend’s fiancé, and I don’t know what to do
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com or send us a DM on Instagram! -
This week Maryellen opens up about a topic close to home, burnout as a therapist. While you may not be a therapist, you may be able to relate in your own way, as burnout has become all too common in this always-on culture. She also introduces a new segment, Therapissed, all about things that rub her the wrong way as a therapist, especially when she’s burnt out! Maryellen discusses:
“Leaving work at work” isn’t as easy as it sounds
Burnout won’t go away if you ignore it
Try to anticipate when you’ll need a mental health day; look out for yourself
Vicarious trauma that comes with engaging empathetically with survivors of trauma
We need to normalize and own our burnout
Substituting yoga/gym for therapy? No!
Frustration of being caught off guard and asked to provide advice
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com! -
This week Maryellen goes back to the basics, with therapy 101! There is so much misinformation out there that getting started can be overwhelming. We hope this episode is a useful resource that can give you some confidence in reaching out for help.
Having a mental health diagnosis doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you
There doesn’t have to be something “wrong with you” to go to therapy
We can't diagnose ourselves
Online therapy resources & platforms: proceed with caution
Life coaches, empowerment coaches, and mental health coaches aren’t therapists
What to talk about at your first session
Therapists are not mind readers
It's okay if you're not a match with your first therapist, don’t let that deter you
Starting therapy or medication is not a life sentence
Going to a therapist is not the best thing for emergencies
Psychiatric emergency line: 988
Lifeline if you’re feeling suicidal: 211
For help finding a therapist, visit psychologytoday.com, your primary care doctor, and contact your insurance company.
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com! -
We're begging you, please don’t self-diagnose from memes on the internet... Especially not codependency, because, heads up, codependency isn’t even a diagnosis!! This week Maryellen talks all about codependency and rewrites some “inspirational” quotes to reflect the truth:
What do people mean when they say "codependent"?
Codependency originated from alcoholics anonymous
Popularized with romantic relationships, but can be in all types of relationships
Unhealthy relationship dynamics don’t automatically make the relationship codependent
Ask yourself: does the power dynamic in this relationship feel equal?
The good news? We can change unhealthy relationship dynamics!
If you're suffering from abuse in your life, please call for support
National Domestic Violence Hotline (open 24/7): 800-799-SAFE. Text START to 88788
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com! -
TW: Domestic violence
This week Maryellen is joined by her sister-in-law to analyze the domestic violence portrayed in Colleen Hoover’s popular novel, It Ends with Us:
Why they thought it was a good depiction of a violent relationship
Trauma is not an excuse for abuse
There should be more therapy talk in this book
Correlation/schemas – the cycle of abuse
Romanticizing abuse and toxic sex
Red flags and green flags from the characters
Manipulation vs. trying to do something nice
Victim blaming
National Domestic Violence Hotline (open 24/7): 800-799-SAFE. Text START to 88788
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com! -
This week Maryellen talks all about the federal government’s ruling that abortion will now be decided by the states, and offers tips on keeping ourselves okay-ish throughout this scary time. This episode is all about:
Validating your feelings
The importance of not catastrophizing
Trauma Triggers
How to keep yourself “okay”
Living in a gray world
Being careful about how we talk about this
If you haven’t already, please follow, rate, and review the podcast, and follow us on Instagram @okayishpodcast. To submit questions or stories (anonymously if you’d like) visit okayishpodcast.com! - Show more
