The SelfWork Podcast

How To Be Enough , a new book by Ellen Hendriksen is a must-read for anyone struggling with perfectionism and shame. She's a clinical psychologist at Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, and the author of a new book, How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists .  She's already a very successful author having published the book How To Be Your...

What is body dysmorphia? If you've irrationally felt, "I hate the way ....... looks or is," and you're talking about your own body, then you may be struggling with body dysmorphia. You can have a huge preoccupation with whatever defect your mind is telling you that you have – and can spend lots of time and money and energy to try and “fix” the problem. But tragically, the medicine...

Given the wave of mental health awareness that has occurred over the last decade or more, is depression getting easier to talk about? In some ways, yes. But in other important ways… it doesn’t seem to be. There are plenty of reasons that are the essentially the same as they've been for a while. But there’s one that’s emerged only recently… the idea that a mental illness diagnosis becomes an id...

What's success for men? Lucas Krump would say that what's missing for many men is connection, with their emotions but also with each other. Who's Lucas Krump? He's the Chief Growth Officer at EVRYMAN, a global community that fosters men's personal growth and emotional wellness. Lucas has been instrumental in expanding EVRYMAN's mission, offering retreats, online programs, a...

I'm a shrink. And today, I want to talk about the hit show Shrinking. Most of the time, I hear the term "shrink" used in a funny, almost endearing way. It’s like when people call me “Doc” instead of my name. It’s a term that binds us but also keeps boundaries clear. I’d like to give you my thoughts on the Apple TV show Shrinking . And even more so, its message – that the people who are...

Parenting is hard. It may be the most ambiguous job you’ll ever have. Not only do you have to wait literally years to see what the “finished product” truly is – you have to get through adolescence and social media influence and screen time and drug use and hurt from relationships and broken bones and just basic screw-ups on your part – but there’s no guaranteed rule book. Parenting has stages.. ....

Therapy-misspeak – overusing the terms used by psychologists and doctors and therapists – has blown up in recent years. Words that are used in the mental health world to diagnose or describe certain mental illnesses or traits of mental illnesses have become part of everyday language. But not in a good or accurate way. The trend seems to be leading… not to better mental health – but to a dilution o...

ADHD in women is finally being diagnosed for what it is and has been! Understood.org, a leading resource for people with learning and thinking differences, has launched a new podcast series,  Climbing the Walls , a new limited-series investigative podcast. Hosted by health and science journalist and documentarian  Danielle Elliot , the podcast explores what led to new ADHD diagnoses among women ag...

Do you know how to heal from an affair? This episode is once again motivated by a wonderful question from a listener. He’s a guy whose been in a relationship for many years – had an affair – or as he says “I cheated." But he now realizes that he still has deep feelings for his girlfriend. He wants to know how the two of them need to approach reconciliation together. I was struck by his sinceri...

Today's episode is about watching my mother disappear. She wasn't a magician; she didn't physically leave all of us. She disappeared after she very bravely went into rehab and got off the massive amounts of prescription drugs she'd been taking for decades. My mother would've been 100 years of age this week, a feat she wouldn't have liked as she hated aging. I think of her a...

Do you chat with a bot these days? Is AI feeling like therapy to you? Here's a new "You get the gist" segment of SelfWork! I was surprised the other day by someone saying that – in their battle with an upcoming divorce and ongoing separation – that they’d been talking with an AI chatbot. And that it was helping in its own way. It reminded me a little bit of the first time a new client...

Conflict can work for you and help you create more intimacy in your relationship. I’ve worked with so many couples on how to work through conflict. And there are definite things to do and things not to do. As I said in the last episod e (which you might want to listen to if you haven’t..) a relationship that avoids conflict, where one or both people don’t talk about the elephant in the room, is al...

 In this episode, we’re going to focus on nine very real consequences or dangers of avoiding conflict in partnerships, in marriages, and in committed relationships. It’s a response to a listener’s question – and I’ll read a part of her email. In general, conflict-avoidant relationships also become intimacy-avoidant relationships. Avoiding the conflict can stem from fear of the loss of the relation...

Today on SelfWork, we're talking with a mother and father whose beloved daughter Ella, at age 24, died by suicide. And how they've dedicated their lives to suicide prevention. I was introduced to Martha and Chris Thomas through a family member who told me about their daughter’s suicide. They’ve chosen a path, along with their son Solomon, an NFL football player, to try and keep any other f...

If you want to find out how to heal your mind through your body, this interview with the very kind and compassionate Karden Rabin is a must-listen. Drawing on decades of research in neuroplasticity, psychology, trauma, behavior, clinical experience with clients, and their own personal journeys of recovering from chronic illness and pain, Jennifer and Karden teach readers how to learn and ‘speak’ t...

Emotional manipulation can be hard to figure out. But when you do, it's also hard to know what to do about it. So today, I’m going to use two such questions from listeners to give you some ideas. First is from a mom who took care of her granddaughter a lot early on – and now feels that her daughter and her relationship has become toxic and the daughter is withholding her child from her. Second...

Today we’re going to focus on the feeling that you're not important - a feeling likely created by how you were parented. How does this happen? Your parents' careers came first. The parents themselves came first for one another, only caring for the child as a secondhand and almost bothersome activity. Your being wasn’t celebrated – instead what you could achieve got some notice, as long as...

Today on SelfWork, we’re focusing on self-doubt and how to grow from failure. Or what you’re calling failure. But labeling something as a failure can be used in several different ways , can’t it? It can be motivating, or it can stop you in your tracks. It can cause tremendous embarrassment, even shame, or you can use it to grow. What you tell yourself about failure has such a strong impact on whet...

One of the hardest tasks we take on as humans is raising children. Many of us do a pretty good job of raising children. But many of us don't. Sadly, our kids are often left to become adults themselves and bear the scars of our anger, our addictions, or our neglect. And if they don't do something differently than we did, they can perpetuate the problem. Raising children poorly can then be p...

There are many lessons learned about grief through my work in the last 34 years of being a therapist. And today, I want to share them with you in this 439th episode of SelfWork. Some common questions that I'll cover are: Is it ever “too late” to grieve? Does your grief mean that your faith isn’t strong enough or that you are failing? Is there a right way to grieve? Is there a right way to resp...

Are you working toward success? My guest on SelfWork today is a career expert - Laura Gassner Otting - I've already been influenced by her new book WonderHell in quite a wonderful way! Laura’s secret superpower is seeing your greatness and reflecting it back on you, so that you can get “unstuck” — and achieve extraordinary results. A regular contributor to Good Morning America, the TODAY Show,...

Today we're going to talk about the fairly sticky subject of the difference between expectations, demands, and boundaries . In this "second time around" episode, Christine Mathias, Dr. Margaret's communication manager, lets us in to how her younger self struggled with setting good boundaries - and why this particular episode meant a lot to her. So, what is the difference between ex...

Today on SelfWork, the focus is on how to work through disappointment. John Crowley, my friend and incredible production engineer , chose this episode as one of his "second time around" favorites to present to you in my absence. My immense gratitude to him for taking the wheel! What are the seven steps to work through disappointment? Here they are! Grieve first. Start getting perspective r...

How are you supposed to live a normal life when "home" was chaos? That's the topic of today's SelfWork. and it's triggered by a very frank email from a listener whose kept his chaos secret for many years. We can tend to keep secret the fact that home was chaos – you can fear being judged for it, even though you didn’t cause it. Please heed a trigger warning; the story is hard t...

Today we're going to focus on how to find community and belonging by finding or creating a "third space." What's that? Many of you don’t remember the 1983 hit show Cheers. It was about a local Boston bar run by a recovering alcoholic who was still very much a playboy. The bar was peopled by everyone from a grandiose psychiatrist, a retired coach, a rather superior-feeling grad stud...