The SelfWork Podcast

Trigger Warning: If you choose to listen to this episode on sibling sexual abuse, please keep your own self-care in mind. I’ll have international sexual abuse hotline numbers in the show notes: But the US hotline is  1-800-656-4673. Sibling sexual abuse is a complex and painful subject that's vastly underreported. And it can happen in any home, anywhere. How is it different than normal sexual...

How much do you count on people "liking" or "following" you or the videos you put on Instagram, FB or TikTok?  And are you really happy or does your life appear to others as happy? Is your self-esteem found in the present or does it lie in the amount of positive attention something gets on social media? This of course is part of creating the persona of perfectionism that I stress i...

Today’s podcast is one that, if you’ve been listening to SelfWork for a while, you know that this topic has been my own personal passion – as it’s closely aligned with my work on perfectly hidden depression. We’ll talk about ten fears you face when you choose to give up or ease out of being or looking as if you're in total control. Those ten fears are: The fear of vulnerabilty The fear of unce...

If there’s ever been a time when we need to manage our emotions, it’s now. None of us are sure what these next few months will bring – or even 2021 – and that’s true on many fronts. So this week’s podcast is on managing your feelings. The term for doing this in psychology is emotional intelligence, aka EQ. Here's the definition: the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emoti...

There’s an  exciting new product on the market – especially for anyone who has suffered with horrible PTSD-based nightmares. I should first tell you I have no relationship with the makers of this product. But since I've treated many patients with both PTSD and CPTSD, I know how exhausting and frightening these nightmares are. It’s a newly approved product by the FDA for just this use; however,...

Thank you to all of you who contacted me these past two or three weeks! This week’s episode is a conversation – not literally  - but I’ve heard from so many of you about the last couple of SelfWork podcasts, I wanted to respond. You sent me your stories of your own struggles with a therapist, especially about termination and boundaries; I was very moved to address the core issues of what went wron...

Wow. Sometimes when I pick a subject for SelfWork, I have to dig deep to find research that I can bring that will add clarity or give you what’s new out there on the subject. People pleasing?  There are YouTube videos galore and all kinds of other resources. Most everyone agreed on how it starts - with an anxious/insecure attachment to a parent. We'll define what exactly a people pleaser is, a...

Here's a bonus episode for you during the holidays!  I couldn’t think of a better guest than Shann Vander Leek. She’s the cohost of the extremely popular podcast AnxietySlayer and the website AnxietySlayer.com. Her gentleness and broad knowledge of all things calming is incredible. She and her partner Ananga have created a complete experience of teaching you the how-to of what you can do right...

Today's SelfWork, sponsored by BetterHelp, focuses on why, how and why you might choose to end therapy, or more concisely, to leave a particular therapist. We'll cover some "good" reasons to leave, reasons that either have to do with the success you've experienced or reaching your goals, as well as the ones that have to do with disappointment with or even misbehavior or unethic...

I'd planned to do this episode of SelfWork on developing trust in others. But as I researched the question, I realized that first, you have to make sure you can trust your own decision-making. And your gut. I found the work of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (who made the most sense to me) on how you can determine if you can trust your gut or not.  There are three questions that need a &#34...

Sometimes my own life offers a topic to me; I was definitely struggling to not be dragged down by my own rumination this past weekend. So many of us are spending hours worrying about Covid, politics, the future, finances, about jobs. The list is endless. So today, in this episode, sponsored once again by BetterHelp, we’re going to talk about rumination. Is it ever helpful? Or is it something that’...

YGTG is five minutes of jam-packed info about one concept or idea or behavior - and today it's about emotional bandwidth. People are using the term emotional bandwidth to reveal that they can't tolerate certain emotions or discussions. It's a short cut way of saying, "I can't be there for you right now." But when does it become an almost too impersonal or detached way of ab...

Challenging your assumptions can lead to remarkable change – and can break emotional paralysis. On SelfWork today, sponsored by BetterHelp, we're going to talk about doing the dishes. Yes you heard me – dishes. One of my FB closed group members very aptly posted the story you're about to hear as a way of coping with the stress of the pandemic – to look at your own life through a different...

Whether or not you believe that dreams have meaning (and almost half of Americans think that’s true…), you probably have had many types of dreams. Today, in another episode sponsored by BetterHelp, we're going to talk about the diverse categories of dreams  – and then the proposed “meaning” of those very dreams. We'll look into what can bring nightmares on as well as the most recent resear...

A  few weeks ago, a patient looked at me and said, “I realized that what I needed  - I’d had all along. It’s like the ruby red slippers. You simply have to know their power and your own power.” I haven’t been able to get that notion out of my head since that session. We all have the capacity to learn, to understand, to see and to have confidence in ourselves - but we can sabotage and discount our...

Trigger Alert: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse, so please listen with care . Movember is a movement whose focus is to raise concern and awareness about the state of men's health, both medical and mental, in the United States. I myself have seen firsthand how extremely difficult it is for many men to seek help or open up at all about what’s going on with them. So I thought about w...

I’ve been surprised over the years about the things people believe about alcohol use that’s very old-school. For example, that for the use of alcohol to be a problem, you’ve got to be lying in a ditch somewhere, having lost your job and friends. Or if you can go a long time without drinking, then you don’t have an issue. Statistics show that one out of every eight people in the US fit criteria for...

I originally wrote this in July of 2016 in the wake of natural disasters, shootings, and tragedies overseas. I’m offering it again to you today with a few nods to what we are going through together as the world faces this pandemic. I wish you all well. I sat down to write early this morning, and could only think of the many tragedies, caused by humans and by nature, that have been occurring for th...

I thought today might be a great day to post an episode about acting maturely, as we in the US have gone through a very divisive election and hopefully will be trying to mend and heal and carry on. I'll be back next week and can't wait to fill you in on what's been happening! This is a very early episode... but the message is one that's a thread throughout my clinical work with pat...

Today is the first anniversary of Perfectly Hidden Depression's  publication and I'm honored to tell you that it's being translated into seven more languages, including Korean, Hungarian, and Russian. So in this episode, sponsored by BetterHelp, and when we're on a bit of vacation, I'm reposting your questions and my answers about PHD. The first is from a writer who is losing h...

We're on vacation so I've selected several of my favorite podcasts from the first 100 episodes. Again sponsored by BetterHelp, they're my favorites either because of some personal reason or they lay out a practical "what you can do about it" approach! We'll be back November 13th with fresh episodes but I hope you really enjoy this blast from the past. There's lots of in...

We're on vacation so I've chosen several podcasts to feature during our absence that are special to me and are from the "early" years (or the first 100 podcasts that you may not have listened to...). “Always be humble and kind” was a huge country hit several years ago, and I talk in this episode about making mistakes but then using them to actually learn something about yourself  -...

We're on vacation! So I've chosen a few podcasts that were part of the first one hundred episodes that were either near and dear to me or were definite "what to do about it" episodes - the "how to" episodes. Since this week is my birthday week, I decided to feature one of my favs on aging where I use my own life and experience to highlight a point. This one is not talking a...

We're on vacation! So I've chosen a few podcasts that were part of the first one hundred episodes that were either near and dear to me or were definite "what to do about it" episodes - the "how to" episodes. Since this week is my birthday week, I decided to feature one of my favs on aging where I use my own life and experience to highlight a point. This one is not talking a...

This "The Gist" is coming out on my own birthday - so perhaps that's why I wanted to know more about what makes our biological clocks tick a bit louder. Pregnancy and midlife obviously jump to mind as probably the most well-known times when your sense of time and maybe even urgency about it may influence your choices. So we'll talk about how to manage that ticking - so you make goo...