A Therapist Walks Into a Bar

A Therapist Walks Into a Bar isn't quite back but I'm doing a little resurrection in order to share something very special that I think you'll like - Marsification: A tale of planetary grief. Marsification was created and written by sound artist, musician, and psychotherapist Lily Sloane and writer, teacher, bodyworker and facilitator Zara Zimbardo. Lily and Zara live in the San Francisco Bay Area...

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to talk about the end. It’s the end of the third season of this podcast. A season full of stories about what it’s like to be living in these minds and bodies. But it’s also the final episode of this show. I want to quickly add, before you have a chance to react, “at least for now!” I want to imply the show could come back to make this ending feel like not...

When it comes to making babies, it can often feel like there are only 2 choices and you have to feel 100% happy with your choice once you’ve made it. Oh, and also, no matter what choice you make, people will judge you. While I grapple with my own uncertain future, Nuala has made a decision that doesn't fit neatly into any category. The choice to have children is not quite like other choices in lif...

In this Radical Short I talk to Dave Nadelberg, co-founder of the stage show, television series, books, movie and more that make up Mortified. In the last episode of A Therapist Walks Into a Bar, "The Presence of Past," I shared some clips from my performance in the stage show in Oakland. But this thing, where people get on stage and read from their adolescent diaries, share poems, songs, plays th...

There’s this cliche, that all therapists want to do is make you talk about the past. Even though I often reassure new clients that I won’t make them talk about anything they don’t want to, it’s not untrue - a lot of us do want to know about your past. Because the past is never actually in the past and the present and the future are intricately tied to it. But like any historical research, piecing...

Radical Shorts are a glimpse into some of the incredible conversations I’m having with all kinds of interesting people on my sister show, Radical Advice, a weekly live show on BFF.FM. In this Radical Short, San Francisco and Berkeley based psychotherapist, Larry Lariosa, and I try to answer a listener-submitted question a lot of us are struggling with right now: “I can't handle the news but I can'...

When performing is a normal part of all our lives, on stage or off, what does it mean to be authentic? What is a “true self”? I’m hoping an opera singing drag performing therapist, some strangers in a bar, and a dead psychoanalyst can help me figure it out. This episode features San Francisco drag performing artist, Dusty Porn (aka San Francisco psychotherapist Paul Ziller). To watch Dusty's perfo...

For this Radical Short, we time travel all the way back to February, when my colleague Lauren Selfridge, host and creator of the podcast This Is Not What I Ordered, joined me in the studio and we answered a listener question about why feeling is important - even if it does hurt sometimes. Produced by Lily Sloane Find This Is Not What I Ordered at www.thisisnotwhatiordered.com and all the podcast l...

In the last episode, we explored defense mechanisms - all the things we do to cope psychologically with various threats in our day to day lives. One of the biggest threats we find ourselves defending against as conscious beings is the unknown in its many forms. So in this episode we’re gonna dig into all of that excitement - like, how we develop narratives and strategies to get through uncertainty...

In a new bonus segment of A Therapist Walks Into a Bar, which will release on the third Wednesday of each month, I pull the best moments from my sister show, Radical Advice, which airs live on Tuesdays from 10am-noon PST. You can tune in at BFF.fm. This time, San Francisco psychotherapist, Brian Thompson, and I call his mom, Noreen, a psychiatric nurse, for help answering a listener's question abo...

For decades, the field of psychology has been interested in understanding the myriad creative strategies we employ to cope with life's inevitable discomforts. But right now, I wonder if I can convince you that your defense mechanisms might be the key to knowing who you are as an individual and who WE are as a collective. And maybe, just maybe the ways we defend ourselves against the things that sc...

We've all got baggage. And as a psychotherapist in private practice, I help people unpack a lot of it in my office. But what if I went out looking for it? From complete strangers? In this episode, you'll learn all about the emotional baggage I collected in my Halloween costume this year. Produced: Lily Sloane Editorial Support: Nuala Sawyer, Dani Scoville, and Emily Shaw Music and Sound Design: Li...

Here's the return of an old favorite just in time for Halloween season! Ghosts. You’ve seen the movies, nervously giggled and gasped over the stories at slumber parties, or like me, cowered in your sleeping bag in the other room to avoid hearing about it. Maybe you’ve even had an encounter with something you’d call a ghost. According to a 2009 Pew Research Study, 18% of Americans say they’ve seen...

In light of the recent emboldening of white supremacist groups in the US, Seeing White II revisits the topic of whiteness as explored in Episode 1: Seeing White. What do white people need to do right now to show up and fight internalized and externalized fascism and white supremacy? This episode features excerpts from my interview with Zara Zimbardo, adjunct faculty at California Institute of Inte...

Communities of gay men and the larger LGBTQ communities continue to face challenges from trauma to addiction, to ongoing discrimination. But that's not the full picture. In this episode we explore the challenges while also talking about the incredible strengths and resilience of gay men. We headed to a few bars in the Castro during Pride Week and asked some of the men we met to tell us their stori...

Most of us know what it means when we say a person went “unconscious” or “lost consciousness”. But deeply imbedded in the roots of psychology’s history is the idea of The Unconscious - a psychological phenomena that is inherent to the human psyche and whether we like it or not, influences a tremendous amount of our behavior from who we fall in love with to racial discrimination. As part of the ong...

Dating can be this overly-complicated, painful, confusing, ungrounded, whirlwind. Honestly, it can feel really hopeless at times. In this episode we talk with our experts about how to make this process less of a clusterf#ck and navigate the dating world with a fresh perspective. This episode's experts are: Nate Bagley, creator of The Loveumentary and The First Seven Years Eve Peters, founder and C...

When was the last time you cried? How about the last time you cried in front of someone else? Most of us have mixed experiences with crying - whether it’s our own tears or seeing them in someone else. And a lot of this is impacted by gender norms and expectations. In this episode we bring back Jesse Rhodes, host of the podcast Man-ish, to share his latest two-part series about crying in politics....

If you’ve been feeling anxious, overwhelmed, shut down, angry, hurt, or scared since the new administration took over, you’re not alone. We’re dedicating this episode to sifting through some of what this political chaos and noise stirs in us and how we can show up and fight the good fight while practicing self-care so we don’t have to escape into the Alaskan wilderness. As our guest Kip Williams s...

Almost no one is free from beliefs, rules and attitudes about food. But some of us have experienced an undue amount of emotional pain as a result, riding this rollercoaster of harshly conditional self-love. And some people develop full blown eating disorders where rules, punishment, and rebellion formulate some of the most wretched, soul-destroying patterns to break free from. But ultimately, whet...

Wrapping up a very troubling year, "Very Dark, Very Appropriate" explores why we love listening to really sad music and how this can actually be good for us. This episode's featured guest is Stacey McGuirl, musician and San Francisco based psychotherapist. Visit www.staceymcguirl.com for more. Keep digging into the sadness with these helpful links: Nick Cave lecture: The Secret Life of the Love So...

Ghosts. You’ve seen the movies, nervously giggled and gasped over the stories at slumber parties, or like me, cowered in your sleeping bag in the other room to avoid hearing about it. Maybe you’ve even had an encounter with something you’d call a ghost. According to a 2009 Pew Research Study, 18% of Americans say they’ve seen a ghost and 29% believe they’ve been in touch with the dead. That’s pret...

If I say body image, what do you think of? Stomach fat? Thigh gap? Laser hair removal? You probably think of women. And for good reason. Because women get a lot of pressure to look a certain way. But this happens to men too. And that’s worth talking about. In this episode, we’ll hone in on one aspect of men’s body image: hair loss. First, we’ll take a look inside the thriving hair loss prevention...

A Therapist Walks Into a Bar Presents: A Brief Psycho-Education There are lots of cliches about therapy, but one of the most popular...well, it’s true. We DO ask “how does that make you feel?” A lot. In this brief episode, I'll talk about why we ask and why it's important to learn how to tell the difference between thoughts and feelings. Thank you Jesse Rhodes, Abby Thompson, Molly Merson, Talia R...

We All Use Something is an episode about the what, when, where, and why of our substance use and a revolutionary approach to substance abuse treatment called Harm Reduction Therapy. Most of us use something - be it drugs/alcohol, food, exercise, gambling, Facebook - to try to cope with difficult feelings. Maybe we want to feel less of something or more of something else. So how can we help ourselv...