Beautiful Voyager

What happens when the version of success you built your life around suddenly stops working? In this episode of the Anxious Achiever podcast, host Morra Aarons-Mele and I talk about ego death, anxiety, nervous system healing, and what it means to let go of the need to prove yourself. We cover all the hits: career humiliation, social media comparison, identity, chronic pain, and the process of reali...

In this episode, I sit down with the somatic psychotherapist, writer, and teacher  Ailey Jolie to explore the evolving intersection of trauma, embodiment, and technology. Ailey shares her journey from eating disorder recovery to psychedelic-assisted research to writing, and her commitment to bringing body-based wisdom into mainstream psychology. She reflects on leaving modeling and medicine after...

Sean Hershey is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York who specializes in using mind-body work to help his clients end their chronic pain and, in his words, "truly learn to be themselves." He's the host of a new podcast called The Mind-Body Medicine for Chronic Pain , and in that podcast he works to, piece by piece, share the principles and practices of mindbody healing. I lo...

In this episode of the Anxious Achiever podcast Morra and I dig into some of the new techniques for managing stress and anxiety I first wrote about in the Beautiful Voyager Stress Relief Cheat Sheets on Substack.  I love Morra’s description of the episode: “In the high stakes world of technology companies, a lot of lip service is paid to well-being and mental health. But Meredith Arthur has been r...

Special guest episode from NYC-based nonprofit Girls Write Now!  In this episode of the Writing Our Way to Wellness podcast series, Meredith finds herself in the role of interviewee instead of interviewer. This wide-spanning conversation between Meredith and Girls Write Now Staff Member Vahni Kurra covers everything from the pitfalls of ambitions to mental health memes; the connection between phys...

Obi is offering our podcast listeners a special discount! Find a trained peer supporter on peers.net who understands exactly what you're going through, then use code "BEVOYA" to book up to 4 FREE SESSIONS and share it with any teen or young adult in your life who could benefit from some extra support. A bit about this episode: I've been wanting to speak with Obi Felten on this...

Megan Cornish is a former social worker and writer who's been tackling big questions about how mental health is discussed on Linkedin . That's where she caught my eye: I loved her authentic, honest voice and risk-taking in what tends to be a pretty stuffy and status-quo environment. I felt like Megan was wrestling with the same kinds of things I was about the "industry" of ment...

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, illustrator, and the author of the new book, Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest . In this conversation, we dig into what rest really means and why it's not just napping, for example. We talk about her path to writing and her first book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection .  X...

Kevin Kelly is best known for co-founding the award-winning Wired magazine  in 1993, but his work spans widely beyond that. He's the founder of the Cool Tools website and podcast (which I've appeared on in the past!), which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. He also puts out the Recomendo newsletter with Claudia Dawson, who has also appeared on this podcast. He's the co-ch...

B Dukes is so many things. A queer, non-binary filmmaker, a photographer, an activist, a student, and a healer. They tell the incredible story of their journey from a child in the backwoods of South Carolina to the world of Silicon tech...with many stops in between. We talk about what ancestral healing means, the fascinating world of psychedelics being used to address trauma, and B's travel a...

Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Ph. D., is a Senior Research Scientist and Director of the Creativity and Emotions lab at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Born in Croatia, Zorana shares cultural perceptions of creativity. Her research centers on the role of emotions in creative work. Zorana and I were lucky enough to get to work together on the How We Feel app , out now and free to all. I&a...

Jeffrey Sparr is a father, husband, mental health advocate, teacher, and nonprofit founder who used his early experiences with OCD to fuel his life as a self-taught artist. In this conversation, Jeffrey and I talk about what he's learned from helping people use creativity as a means of self-expression and what an unlikely candidate he was for this kind of work. Through  PeaceLove Foundation  ...

Claudia Dawson is a psychonaut -- and if you don't know what that is, you should listen to this podcast. She co-produces one of my favorite weekly newsletters, Recomendo, which features 6 tools for thought each week. She's the Founding Editor of a publication called Phantom Kangaroo, "an eerie place for poems." In this conversation, we cover everything from the Carlsbad Caverns...

Larz May is the founder of an incredible mental health nonprofit called #HalfTheStory . The nonprofit's mission is to empower the next generation’s relationship with social media through advocacy, education, and providing access to resources. What I love about Larz is her ability to cut through social media's rapidly evolving landscape and point to deeper truths, in a very timely manner....

Rosie Acosta has studied and taught yoga and mindfulness around the world. She is the  award-winning podcast host of Radically Love and the author of You Are Radically Loved: A Healing Journey to Self-Love. A first generation Mexican-American, Rosie grew up in East LA in the 1990's. We talk about how she taught herself to reframe her perspective as a kid, and how those lessons have played out...

Could there be a more natural and intuitive connection than mine with the Anxiety Sisters ? I don't think so. Abbe Greenberg and Maggie Sarachek have built an online community of 200K people and host a popular podcast called The Spin Cycle. In their work, they blend their personal experience with their professional training as counselors, mental health advocates, researchers, and educators. T...

Jessica Poundstone is an artist who lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Named a Top 100 artist by Saatchi Art, Jessica has found creative process through intuition and exploration. She says, "I work on each image until I feel everything click into place: that feeling of 'rightness' tells me it’s done" -- I love that. Jessica's journey through the world of corporate jobs a...

Dr James Kaufman is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut and the author/editor of more than 50 books, including Creativity 101 and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity with Robert Sternberg. In this podcast, we talk about the connection between mental health and creativity, a topic that endlessly fascinates me. It was an honor to talk to one of the world experts o...

Peter M. Krask , a New York-based writer and photographer, is the founder of an unusual consulting business called The Creativity Guide . Using his twenty years of experience in theater, television, visual art, and business, Krask acts as a personal "project whisperer" for creatives and entrepreneurs. His consulting work is informed by the practical know-how of a seasoned creative direct...

Michael Phillips Moskowitz is the founder of AeBeZe, a cutting-edge research product lab dedicated to establishing a new mental health standard called "Digital Nutrition™." Their app, Moodrise, brings together curated images, videos, and audio to positively affect brain chemistry. Michael has also served as a Middle East foreign policy research analyst at think tanks in the United States...

Zach and Michael Zakar call themselves the "Middle Eastern Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen,"  which gives you a taste of how funny they are. Writers, models, and actors, the Zakar Twins most recent book, "How to Be Fucking Happy," is out now. I love this line from their book description, "Happiness takes practice, so grab a pen because you're writing this story too."...

Maurice Chiang is the CEO and Co-Founder of Prairie Health, a new startup bringing genetic testing to a patient-centered approach to mental health. This is incredibly promising and forward-looking! Genetic testing provides useful information to psychiatrists and prescribing physicians about  to how to treat people with varied cultural backgrounds. Did you know that American women are often prescri...

Kevin Dedner is the Founder & CEO of Hurdle, a startup dedicated to building a pipeline of mental health professionals who understand how to help people  with varied cultural backgrounds. On the Hurdle website are the thoughtful words: "Your culture will always be honored." Kevin's path to this work is fascinating. In this interview I describe him as a superhero who has fought s...

Pelumi, whose full given name is Oluwapelumi Ajibade, is a research coordinator at the University of Washington, where she is involved in fascinating work about interracial communication and anxiety. In this conversation, we cover all kinds of things including Pelumi's experiences as a Nigerian-American woman, her future as an obstetrician (fingers crossed), the podcast she started when COVID...

Do you or someone you love have bipolar disorder? If so, this episode is for you.  Dr Bill Selig is a clinical psychologist in the Bay Area and author of the new book "When Your Partner Has Bipolar Disorder." In this episode Bill and I talk about changing perceptions of bipolar disorder, the best new treatments, and the relationship to creativity (which was also the topic of his disserta...