The SelfWork Podcast

Ashley Stahl is a counterterrorism professional turned career coach, spokesperson, and author of the bestselling book,  You Turn: Get Unstuck, Discover Your Direction, Design Your Dream Career . Through her two viral TEDx speeches, her online courses, and her podcast, the You Turn Podcast, she’s been able to support clients in 31 countries in discovering their best career path, upgrading their con...

Many people these days are on an SSRI, a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. Like Lexapro. Or Prozac. But there is some danger that needs mostly to be known to be prevented. There's a condition called serotonin syndrome, where you have too much serotonin in your system, that can be very dangerous. It doesn't happen that often, but you need to know the symptoms and catch it before it w...

This is the 250th episode of SelfWork. And frankly, I'm amazed. So, that made me wonder... where does willpower come from? Can you learn to have more willpower? What makes something worth sacrificing for? What can cause you to forego immediate gratification for something where you’ll obtain or earn or enjoy something in the future? Is it your “fault” if you struggle with willpower? If you’ve l...

Today we’re focused on how on the power of words can calm or basically how to self-soothe. I stopped to think about “soothers” with words in our culture , such as Mister Rogers, Aibileen Clark from the movie The Help, and even more recently and comically, Ted Lasso. What they did or do reminds us of what we can do to calm ourselves. Dr. Dan Siegel, a psychiatrist, author, researcher and integrativ...

  This episode is my response to a review that was left on SelfWork this week. They write, “ Thank you for taking the time to make this podcast. I’ve tried therapy at least five times in the last ten years for anxiety, depression and grief. I could never stick with therapy. But since discovering your podcast and binging on the episodes that resonate, I feel much more confident about taking on ther...

When I was a kid, I went to a Presbyterian church every Sunday and grew up there. Sunday School, church, youth group – the whole program. That’s not the subject for this episode, however. The topic today is self-forgiveness. Why did I bring up my church memories? Because I was very thoughtful about the whole thing, and remember asking my mother this question: “How can I hear me knocking on God’s d...

Every day I receive a bunch of emails from publicists, publishing houses, or teachers on every subject you could think of to suggest either themselves or their client to be a guest on SelfWork. It's a flattering problems to have. But some are very unique, like this one from LinkedIn's Scott Shute. "Hi Dr. Margaret, I hope this finds you in the middle of a smile." That got my attent...

Sometimes I receive an email that tears at my heartstrings. And this week was one of those times. I’ll read you the email – the heads up is that it’s about a sudden and totally unexpected suicide that led its writer to reach out to me about perfectly hidden depression with the question – Can someone hide depression, even suicidal thinking, from themselves? I’ll give my unequivocal answer. Our list...

Today we're going to focus on why we lie to each other, to ourselves and even in therapy. We'll touch on severe manipulative lying, called pathological lying, and compulsive lying, but most of the episode we'll discuss plain old lying. I found two wonderful articles on the subject and their links are below. Hopefully understanding the "why" might help you realize that there are...

On today's You Get the Gist, I’m wanting to make a couple of points that may or may not have occurred to you while you heard about or you were watching Simone Biles’ journey at the Olympics. First, I wondered what your first thought might’ve been when you heard Ms. Biles had initially opted out. And we fairly quickly learned it was because of her concerns about her focus – basically her impair...

This week was very hard  as one of my close family members died suddenly. I didn’t know if I’d have the energy or even the ability to do a podcast. So, I looked for one that I might add on to - maybe about grief. And I found this podcast from a year and a half ago that fit. I'll focus first on what I've learned from many who are mourning about what can be a very difficult aspect of grief a...

Do you or someone you know apologize all the time? This can stem from several dynamics – if you’re in an abusive relationship currently or there was trauma in your childhood where you’ve grown up believing that the fault when relationships or events go sour is somehow all yours. There’s also the presence of anxiety or more specifically OCD, or what’s termed “the spotlight effect”. We’ll talk about...

For today's YGTG, or "You Get the Gist", I was pondering what a patient of mine said the other day. He had to struggle a bit with the idea that therapy – for him – felt a little self-indulgent. He followed quickly up by saying, “I know it’s because I rarely if ever focus on myself. And it feels a little odd doing it. But it’s also not an easy thing to do. And most self-indulgences are...

The Hidden Opponent is the name of D1 College Athlete Victoria Garrick's TedTalk. And it's powerful. Who is she? She's a former Division I Volleyball Player, TED Talk Speaker and has now become a social media Influencer, and mental health advocate. Those are the facts about Victoria Garrick. She’s young, she’s incredibly energetic and passionate. She’s highly competitive. And she’s str...

It’s been long known in the field of trauma that people who survive a car wreck, a mass shooting, or now, a worldwide viral pandemic – can often struggle with questions about why they survived, while someone right next to them, or someone they loved, did not. Parents who buried their children. Teachers who saw students gunned down. And of course, it’s a huge part of the PTSD felt by soldiers retur...

CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is all about discovering your mental mistakes or cognitive distortions - or as the CBT folks say, “Your stinkin' thinkin." And CBT is the most recommended therapeutic method to fend off depression. It makes sense. It’s fairly easy to understand. And their premise is that if you change what you believe, then the emotions and actions that follow will be dif...

We’re talking self-talk today on SelfWork;  What is it? And what can you do about it? A lot of people tell me they kinda “know” what it is, but haven't a clue how to change it. It feels as if it’s too elusive. How could you possibly rein in what your mind is telling you about something? Today, in this episode sponsored by Athletic Greens, I'll offer six steps for this process. But I want t...

As I wrote the book Perfectly Hidden Depression , I included over sixty specific exercises that would make reading it more of an emotional challenge, rather than one more chance to analyze. There are both action-oriented and reflective exercises and hopefully, you'd come away with a journal full of fresh insights, guidance on effecting real change in your life and support for taking risks. So...

In today’s SelfWork, sponsored by BetterHelp, we’re going to be talking about how to enrich your emotional life through self-compassion. So many people tell me that they don’t know how to begin to risk feelings that have been suppressed for years. But when you do, you expand the emotions available to you, and enrich your own emotional life. I gave some basics in Episode 102 – so there are other id...

Depression can steal your sense of vitality. Your "get up and go" or your motivation to reach goals that mean something to you can disappear. It's called anhedonia -- basically the lack of pleasure in (or motivation for) activities that used to mean something to you or to try on new challenges. But you don't have to be depressed for this to happen. Plain old insecurity can morph in...

During the last week of June 2021 and first full week of July, we’re taking a bit of vacation – my awesome engineer has a fabulous move to make – and I’m getting ready to teach my first course on PHD to therapists! In fact, if you’d like to sign up for this power-packed CEYou! conference, and get 15% of the whole thing – you can use this link and the coupon code “PresenterRef” – at least up until...

I remember taking the Enneagram years ago - and quite frankly, I got pretty defensive about the results. It's funny now to think about! "This isn't me," I sarcastically decided. But I learned a lot about not only that defensiveness but the great insights the Enneagram has to offer through this conversation with author, speaker and Enneagram expert Beth McCord. She and her husband J...

What are the Sunday Scaries? it's the phenomenon that so many experience at the end of the week, or perhaps more importantly, the end of the weekend – and the anticipation of entering the following work week. It’s very real, although it’s a little difficult to specifically define. Because it has lots of ways of being handled, or I guess not handled.. Whether you get angry, go to bed, escape th...

Today on SelfWork we’re going to be talking about what have been called “daddy issues” as Father’s Day is upcoming and many children will be honoring their fathers who were there for them and with whom they enjoyed an emotionally safe and stable relationship. We'll talk about how this term has been used in a pejorative way, and replace it with "parent issues," which is far more realist...

There's a fierce search out there to get yourself, to know who you are and how you impact others. It's why assessments like the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram are so popular. And how their language can become very personal and special to someone who uses it regularly. So, when I listened in on the first two episodes of  " The Me You Can't See"   , a new documentary on mental il...