Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

“All the time I work with dying people, and only a few of them know they are dying.”  On this episode of Being Well, Soto Zen teacher Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison joins Forrest and Rick to explore living, dying, and personal practice in the midst of our beautiful, challenging, messy lives.    About our Guest: Sensei Koshin is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and co-founder of the Ne...

We’re living in an anxious time, and part of the reason we’re anxious is because there are very real challenges we face both individually and collectively. But we’re also affected by the natural tendencies of the brain, which is easily influenced by fear and threat. On this episode of Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson focus on how we can see threats clearly and be the “right amount” of conce...

These days couples often shoot for 50/50 in their relationships: an even split of responsibilities in the home or at work. But 50/50 often leads to fights over fairness, and this fixation on fairness can be the death of many relationships. On this episode of Being Well, Forrest and Dr. Rick are joined by Nate and Kaley Klemp to explore how we can build fun, fulfilling, and truly equitable relation...

If you’re the kind of person who listens to mental health podcasts, you’re more likely than average to get pulled into an impromptu “helping role” with your family and friends. Sometimes we seek out these roles, but they can also be uncomfortable or one-sided. And sometimes we get stuck playing a role for someone else that we never wanted in the first place. On this episode of Being Well, Forrest...

It’s one thing to feel good about what we do, and another to feel truly worthy from the inside out. When we increase our self-worth it allows us to take our needs more seriously, get on our own side, and change our lives for the better.  On this episode of Being Well, Rick and Forrest explore how we can develop a more durable sense of self-worth. They talk about self-worth vs. self-esteem, what ca...

Diego Perez, widely known by his pen name Yung Pueblo, joins Forrest to explore how we can deepen our personal practice, refine the mind, break old patterns, relax the self, and feel lighter than we were before. This was one of my absolute favorite conversations I’ve had on the podcast, and being with Diego was a real pleasure. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. About our Guest: Diego Perez is...

We all make mistakes in life. When we do it's important to take appropriate responsibility, feel the "wince," and make amends as we can. But after we've done that...then what? Many people find it easier to forgive others than they do to truly forgive themselves, and it's not uncommon to be burdened by excessive shame and guilt that has outlived its expiration date. On this episode Dr. Rick and For...

On today’s episode of Being Well, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the author of The Body Keeps the Score, joins Rick and Forrest to explore how trauma keeps us stuck, and how we can use imagination, self-expression, and creativity to break away from those old patterns. Along the way they talk about using somatic and non-cognitive interventions, internalized abuse, the value of a developmental perspective...

On this episode of Being Well, Rick and Forrest answer questions from listeners. They explore what they’re still working on in their relationship, how we can disengage from obsessive thoughts and old patterns, Rick’s thoughts on psychedelics and how they can be used with discernment, their views on whether human nature is innately cooperative or competitive, and much more. If you’d like to ask a q...

In 2016 Jason Kander was a rising star in the Democratic Party. After narrowly losing the race to become one of Missouri’s Senators, he began laying the groundwork for a Presidential run. Jason unexpectedly pivoted to declaring his candidacy for the 2019 Kansas City mayoral election, and quickly became the clear favorite. Three months into that campaign he ended his candidacy and stepped back from...

On the previous episode of Being Well, we talked about how to identify our wants and needs...but identifying our needs is just the first step. After that comes the tricky business of coming to terms with those needs, and communicating them effectively to other people. In this episode, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson explore best practices for claiming and expressing our needs. This includes how to nav...

Everyone has needs, but many people find it difficult to identify what authentically matters to them. Even when we can identify them, shame or fear often stops us from expressing those needs to others or taking the practical steps that would help us achieve them. Meeting our needs is a major source of well-being, and people who can identify their needs are more likely to get them met. On today’s e...

Renowned physician Dr. Gabor Maté joins Rick and Forrest to explore the many problems for our bodies and minds that arise out of our modern culture, and what we can do to meet our needs, heal ourselves, and become more whole. They discuss our increasing separation from one another, issues with aspects of the medical model, the true nature of addiction, the developmental needs of children, the myth...

We all have narcissistic traits. Having some sense of our own specialness isn’t just normal, it’s actually psychologically healthy. The problems start when people go beyond normal levels, and become addicted to feeling special. On this episode, Forrest is joined by Dr. Craig Malkin to explore narcissism and narcissistic traits. They talk about the different forms narcissism takes, the difference b...

We all experience big, difficult feelings, from common emotions like uncertainty, anger, despair, and regret, to difficult experiences like the pains of comparison, burnout, and perfectionism. On today’s episode of Being Well Podcast, Forrest is joined by the wonderful author, coach, and content creator Mollie West Duffy to explore how we can accept those big feelings, learn to live alongside them...

Receiving a diagnosis can be emotionally challenging, and leave a person with a lot of understandable questions: What does this mean? What do I do now? How do I relate to this? On this episode Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson explore what a diagnosis is, how the diagnostic process works, the limitations of diagnosing someone, dealing with the emotions that come up, and how we can better think about and...

There’s been an explosion of interest in psychedelics over the last 10 years, and phrases like “psychedelic-assisted therapy” have gone from the relative fringes of the mental health conversation to bursting into the mainstream. Alongside a great deal of hype is a growing body of research revealing the potential of substances like psilocybin and MDMA as novel treatments for depression, addiction,...

The median life expectancy for a man living in the United States is roughly 80 years. That works out to 960 months, 4,160 weeks, or about 29,000 days. Rick is sneaking up on 70 years old, which means, on average, he's got about 10 years – or 520 weeks – left.  Putting the time we have left into simple numbers can be both a bit daunting and remarkably clarifying. When you're in the middle of them,...

Shame is one of the most complex and difficult emotions we experience on a regular basis, and one that can have seriously negative impacts on our sense of self-worth and ability to experience healthy connection with others. On this episode of Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson take a deep dive into what shame is, how it develops, and what distinguishes it from guilt and other related emotions...

There’s a lot of loss in the world these days, both in our individual lives and in our broader communities, and with those losses comes grief. Grief is one of the most challenging emotions to be with, and it can be difficult to offer generalized advice because everyone's experience of grief is profoundly unique.  On today’s episode of Being Well, Forrest is joined by one of the world’s leading res...

One of the most important and challenging skills we can develop is learning to regulate our strong emotions. While it’s very natural to have fluctuations in how we feel about others and ourselves, for some people these ups and downs are particularly intense. At clinical levels, this is known as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  BPD is characterized by a pattern of instability in a person’s e...

One of the most important skills we can develop is learning how to learn–how to update old beliefs about ourselves, take in new information, and build psychological resources like courage, gratitude, and confidence. We have experiences from which we could potentially learn all the time, but how often are we able to actually implement lasting change from our positive experiences? On this episode of...

When a child is particularly emotionally intelligent, and a parent is particularly emotionally vulnerable, an inversion of the typical relationship can occur where the child devotes themselves to meeting the parent’s needs rather than the other way around. This can lead the child to lose touch with their own wants and needs – with their authentic self – which then leads to underlying feelings of w...

A little while ago, we had an episode on self-awareness where Rick emphasized how the majority of what people have to become self-aware of is the good inside themselves. The point felt significant enough to expand into a full episode about how to connect with our best parts. On this episode of Being Well, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson focus on how to accept, appreciate, and connect with our positive...

Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD) is the result of the slow accumulation of many small traumatic experiences over time. On our most popular Being Well episode to date, Dr. Rick and Forrest Hanson explored the details of CPTSD with Pete Walker, and on today’s episode, Forrest is joined by his partner Elizabeth Ferreira to discuss the topic through a more personal lens. Elizabeth shares...