Stuff You Should Know About Therapy

If you want to learn to have a successful relationship, you need to start taking responsibility for everything. You can only control what you do, not what anyone else does — not even your romantic partner.  Support this podcast

Remember: good relationships don’t fall out of the sky. Good relationships require growth, work, and change. Here are just 7 habits of a successful relationship. Support this podcast

We need to reward hard discussions, not punish them; we need to value our honesty over our partner’s comfort; and we need to remind ourselves that “easy” is not the goal. The goal is depth.  Support this podcast

A trusting relationship is not something you find fully formed in a perfect Tinder profile just a few more swipes away. Trust is something you build with a person who is roughly in the same spot on their journey in life as you are. Support this podcast

In order to find someone to partner with us, we have to do the work to make ourselves whole, on our own. Only then can we partake in a healthy, lasting relationship.  Support this podcast

There are hundreds of apps for every sort of person. You can even filter for all the qualities you are looking for, down to the color of someone’s hair. More and more individuals are using these apps, and they are more advanced than ever. We should all be happily dating, right? Support this podcast

Many times in life, the shame that we carry with us isn’t even our own. It is the shame of others projected onto us. In order to let go of this, we have to recognize what is ours and what isn’t Support this podcast

Vulnerability is one of the paradoxical aspects of life, values, and character. By showing our weakness, we prove ourselves strong. Only a strong person would show weakness, right? That’s why vulnerability is so powerful.  Support this podcast

Shame is an indicator that we are out of alignment with our deeply held values, whether we realize it or not. This may sound like a simple fix, but it can take months, years, and is really the work of a lifetime.  Support this podcast

In order to really open up to someone about shame, we have to feel 2 things: 1) Feel like we are being heard 2) Feel like we are not being judged. Support this podcast

Often the source of shame is deeply buried in our past. Long ago, when we were dependent children or teens, something hit us emotionally and left us feeling afraid, inferior, or feeling like we are not enough. Support this podcast

Shame and gratitude can’t be held in your mind at the same time. If you don’t believe me, try it! If you feel like you can’t feel grateful right now, I would say that gratitude is one of the emotions that you can train yourself to feel.  Support this podcast

Shame can be a central problem in our lives without us even knowing it. Are you having trouble at work, or do you struggle in a relationship, or are you cycling wildly between self-love and self-hatred? That could all be unaddressed shame. Let’s look at how we can tell and what we can do if we think that is what we are dealing with. Support this podcast

Get your sexual fears behind you! And I don’t mean forget about them, I mean stop letting them get in the way of the life you want to live. How do we do that? By writing down and verbalizing our fears and goals. Support this podcast

For some of us, love can be like a drug. Unlike other drugs, we can’t live without love. Abstinence is not an option, then. How do we live with love in a sober way?  Support this podcast

While tinder can be a place of really unhealthy dating habits, with the right outlook, it can be done very well and can lead you to healthy, lasting love. Let’s look at the common pitfalls, how to avoid them, and at the things to do instead. Support this podcast

Love is not always a sexual feeling, and sexual feelings are not always about love. Support this podcast

Do you have thoughts that you are not proud of? Guess what? You’re human and that’s completely normal. The issue arises when we decide we have a problem with ourselves. We think we are somehow a bad person because we had an unwanted thought. Support this podcast

On this special episode, we take a detour of the normal format and have an informal discussion with myself and with Taylor Foreman, head writer for the podcast! Support this podcast

If our goal is to stay with our current partner, be it marriage or just a commitment to each other, then we need to work on our self-image. This is not a trivial matter, either. We need to get brutally honest about whether all of us; I mean everything that makes us, us; is in it for the long-run. Support this podcast

What are our values? Because some people don’t know, and if we aren’t clear about them, they can easily slip to something like “power” or “control.”  Support this podcast

Talking about how the sex isn’t good doesn’t mean you’re not meant to be. It just means you need to work on the sex life! Everything that is mentionable is manageable. Mention it. Manage it.  Support this podcast

Sex and love are different things, obviously. However, we all have a notion in our heads that they should be together. Or maybe we rebelled from that idea and think that sex is perfectly fine without love. I’m not here to make a moral claim either way, but let’s talk about why we have the inclination that they should be linked together. Is there any validity to that?  Support this podcast

Sex and love are tied together as one is the expression of the other. Yes, you can have sex without love, but it is like dancing without music--weird, awkward, and no one enjoys it. Support this podcast

Sex isn’t meant to be a performance. There are no grades. In fact, the more honest we can be to ourselves, the more sex will feel like real and intimate connection! Support this podcast

When we come from a place of security and joy, not out of obligation or resentment, we want to make our partner feel good, and vice versa.  Support this podcast

We have to know what our desires really are before we can find healthy ways to express them, and in order to do that, we have to look closely at the shame that keeps our desires hidden from us. Support this podcast

This self care journey never ends. It isn’t a game that we can win and stop playing. It is a river that goes on and on, some wins, some losses. We should embrace the journey of self-care as truly never-ending, and stop waiting for the day we will be “fixed.” Support this podcast

If you are lost in the darkness now, I want to say that it can get better. And sometimes it looks like big epiphanies and breakthroughs, but mostly it looks like doing just a tiny bit better every day. If you couldn’t get out of bed yesterday, and today you got up and made yourself coffee, you are a winner in my book. You only have yourself to make proud, and I hope you do. I hope we can all stop comparing ourselves to others so much, because we should never compare someone’s highlight reel to our bloopers.  Support this podcast

Giving ourselves time for self-care, benefits not only our friends and family, but every single person we come in contact with, and every person they come in contact with. When we do it, know we are performing a radical good! Support this podcast

I should rest when I feel like resting! Doing things out of obligation is only going to breed resentment and low self-esteem. When we deny the signals in our bodies to some outside force, our subconscious mind internalizes it. It tells us that other people’s wants and goals are more important than me and what I want. Support this podcast

We can't draw from an empty well. A lot of people see their wells as empty and, in a panic, try to drink from everyone else’s well. It can be an act of compassion to give these people water, it is an even greater act of compassion to show these people that their own well can always be refilled. Support this podcast

If we always prioritize what is urgent over what is important, then we will create a life that is a never ending rat race. If we always accept being rushed, then people will feel emboldened to rush us even more and rush us next time. Set a boundary! Kids love boundaries, and so do adults. When people know where our boundaries are, they respect us even more, and we will feel our lives filling up with what is important, and not what is urgent. Support this podcast

Self-care, or lack thereof, is either a virtuous cycle, or a vicious one. It’s hard to state how important self-care is, and how valuable compounding effort is and how devastating downward spirals can be. Support this podcast

The unglamorous truth about self-care is that it is a whole lot like brushing your teeth. While often not the most exciting thing, it can become something done automatically if we set ourselves up properly. Unlike brushing our teeth, self-care is going to look a little different for everyone. Support this podcast

BONUS EPISODE: What are your personal values? Support this podcast

I want to talk about expectations of healing and how they can make a whole new set of problems. If you scar a tree, the scar never goes away or even gets smaller, the tree just gets bigger. That’s what we have to do--grow, and get bigger than our scars. Support this podcast

I want to talk about making meaning out of grief. As we begin to talk about normal life, or getting used to what might be a new normal, we naturally want to begin to place these events into a place in our minds. Where we place it is the meaning we give it. While we can’t control what happens to us, we can--at least partially--control how we take meaning from the events of our lives. Support this podcast

Joy will come back to all of us in ways that we can’t currently imagine. It might be hard to believe, but one day we will look back on this time and be grateful for it, because we will know that it will have shaped how we will have turned out. When we experience loss, we are making room for the next thing to enter our world. The only way that it won’t come into our life, is if we won’t let go of what used to be. Support this podcast

Sharing what hurts us with people we trust is often the very best way to grow. There is strength in vulnerability, as difficult as that is to see at times. It actually takes more strength to sit quietly with someone without trying to fix them. The way we share our grief, and deal with it when it is shared with us, are some of the most important moments in our lives. Support this podcast

The world is slowly beginning to open again, and some of us will be returning to old patterns in bits and pieces. Change is always hard, even if it is the change that you were hoping for. Some of us are beginning to face the realities of our new situations, economic or otherwise, and I want to remind everyone to process and feel. Don’t brush past your emotions, because they always find a way out. Support this podcast

Today we are going to dive into coping skills, and how they help us in the short term and in the long term. Both methods have their place in our lives, and the key to overcoming grief is knowing how and when to use each of them. Ultimately, as we will see, having a long-term mindset when it comes to grief, along with almost anything in life, is the fastest way to recovery.  Support this podcast

I want to do a more practical overview of the 5 stages of grief, as they are commonly understood, so that we can have a better grasp of what to expect as grief unfolds. While not all stages will always manifest (sometimes quickly or subconsciously), it can be a good tool and guide to understanding how you or your loved ones are unfolding in their reactions to trauma. Support this podcast

Grief is the experience of loss. A lot of times when we think of grief, we think of the loss of a loved one. While that is common, and a lot of us might be dealing with that very thing, it can also be the loss of a job, a role in life, a time in our lives (like college) or anything that comes to an end. Since everything in life comes to an end, grief is an inescapable part of life. Support this podcast

Our focus for today, which is coping. As fear and panic melt into monotony and new routines, it is important that we set ourselves up to deal with more subtle versions of stress; such as household tension, boredom, loneliness, guilt, and even being triggered into depression, or having our depression worsen. There are tested and proven ways to help us avoid the worst of these more negative feelings, and I want to talk about some of them and how to most easily incorporate them into our lives. Support this podcast

A lot of the country has been asked to stay indoors and to practice social distancing and there is a lot of uncertainty. I hope this podcast can service as a voice in the dark or just comforting sense of normalcy during all of this. Today we're going to be talking about collective trauma. It's a unique time, a historic time, in which we're all experiencing the same disruption. I want to talk about how every tragedy is an opportunity for beauty and strength. Collective trauma gives us an especially clear opportunity to handle the trauma, not only for our own sake, but for the sake those we love and everyone we associate with. We can choose to focus on things we can control, we can see this as a reminder of the inherent uncertainty of life, and we can see it as an opportunity to step up and be strong for those who may be struggling.  Support this podcast

I want to dive more into stress and how we all have stress in our lives. Stress isn’t something to get rid of or be angry at; in fact, that will only tighten its hold on your life. The purpose of stress for all of us is to keep us away from danger and make sure that we are safe. It comes out differently for everyone, and learning to recognize the way it manifests in you can be the different between suffering from too much stress, or letting an occasional bout of stress inform you. Let’s talk about the difference. Support this podcast

I want to talk about how to deal with trauma when it comes to sharing it with other people. I will discuss what the differences between empathy and sympathy are, what it takes to share with others--trust and courage--and how that relates to understanding, but not necessarily agreeing. It’s not about fixing people, or having others try to fix us, rather it’s about having someone be there and be present as we work through these things on our own. Some of the greatest healing can happen almost on its own in the calm presence of a good listener. Support this podcast

Today I want to talk about things that can trigger our stress and what we can do to recognize it, and how to deal with it. Often our stress triggers go totally unnoticed, and being mindful of them is the first and biggest step in making sure that stress does not dominate our days and lives.  Support this podcast

I'd like to talk this week about healthy ways to cope with and work through our trauma. As I mentioned last week everyone experiences trauma differently, so naturally, everyone heals differently. Because of this, there is no one right way to heal from and overcome trauma. Rather, what is important is that we do heal. Support this podcast

Welcome back! Thank you for joining me again. With everything going on, I want to talk about stress. A lot of us are under stress in various amounts and for various times through the last few weeks and months. Our feelings, especially our negative ones, don’t just go away because we want them to. There is always a reason for our stress. Our job is to understand and give awareness to the stress we feel. I want to talk about when stress makes sense and when it doesn’t and what we can do when it isn’t helping us or those around us.  Support this podcast