The Work of Being Human

This week, we dive into the root causes of anxiety. So often, it's rooted in a belief that life is supposed to be pleasurable, easy, and satisfying all the time . This is a recipe for anxiety. Or we think that we're supposed to have an easy time of it, that things should generally go in our favor. This also is a recipe for anxiety. And then we feel anxious because we're anxious, and it's a miserab...

This week, we have the distinct honor of hearing Jeremy Lister tell us about his journey from addiction to sobriety to self-love to ongoing self-care. Jeremy is a living example of the miracle of recovery. I remember hearing it said in a 12-step meeting, "Recovery simply means recovering what was lost." Jeremy walks us through his journey of losing much and then gaining even more. His humility, co...

The field of mental health spends more time identifying illnesses than focusing on health. We address symptoms, but we never seem to focus on the conditions required for human beings to thrive. In this episode, we're going to bottom line it: what conditions are necessary for humans to thrive? (There are basically two.) And we're going to talk about how you can create the conditions required in you...

Folks have some interesting ideas about human emotions! "They're all irrelevant." "Emotions do not represent truth." "Your emotions are not valid." No, they're not. Well, sometimes they do. And yes, they are. Today we dive into the role of human emotions, what we can learn from them, how to work with them, and we take a look at four different personality patterns that cause us to undervalue or ove...

This week, we dive into the internal sense of the self that allows us to relate to others. Just as the physical body has parameters, we explore what that means in the realm of the mental/emotional self. When we are caring for ourselves, who or what exactly are we caring for? And when we set boundaries, what exactly are we protecting? What is the self? Why is it worth protecting? We need a point of...

Happy new year! For our first episode of 2023, we take a deep dive into what it means to actually reform and reinvent yourself. I'm going to challenge the notion that you need a "new you" in this new year, but we DO get into what actually needs to change if we're going to evolve more and more into an authentic version of ourselves. This week, we take a look at the power of our narratives and the a...

Well, Folks! We're winding down our year with a final installment of the yearly inventory. This week, we're going to look at how far we've come. All changes aren't happy ones. Sometimes the toughest decisions we've made this year have amounted to the most growth and peace we'll experience going forward in 2023. THANK YOU for allowing me to be a part of your lives and your passage forward. Congratu...

Our third week of taking our yearly, personal inventory... this week we look at the Fun & Play in our lives, our Finances, and our Home Environment. All three areas will have a direct and significant effect on our mental health. PURCHASE THE TOOLBOX HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Toolbox-Tools-Build-Relationships-Repair/dp/1736381318/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2L0L1KX3WJ6UO&keywords=vanessa+londino&amp...

This week we dive deeply into inventorying our life's work, our community engagements, and our holistic health. Let's ask ourselves how we're doing in these areas. It's so easy for us to turn on auto-pilot and just live day to day without much conscious thought. The yearly inventory gives us a chance to stop the craziness of life and ask ourselves: how's it going? In various dimensions of life, we...

This week, after sharing some details about a significant breakthrough I experienced, we dive into our annual, year-end inventory. We examine two dimensions of human experience: our spirituality and our love/intimacy in relationships.  Order the Toolbox here: https://www.amazon.com/Toolbox-Tools-Build-Relationships-Repair/dp/1736381318/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=vanessa+londino&qid=1670208641&am...

Well this episode was fueled by guilt! I mulled over this all week... I spoke about the holidays with such enthusiasm in my last podcast, and that was so insensitive to folks who dread the holidays with every fiber of their being. Indeed, they are a tough time of year for many. When I reflected on it, I realized I used to dread the holidays too, but for years now - with healthy relationships in my...

A recent conversation with a client got me thinking... the therapeutic frame is a term therapists use to describe the elements of therapy that make the relationship and the setting safe and predictable for our clients. Things like length of session, cost, and a non-judgmental stance are elements that our clients count on. This provides the framework for us to do our work. It's got to be predictabl...

Nancy wrote me about a month ago requesting an episode on how to do the hard, hard work of breaking the habit of people pleasing. Nancy, this week is for you! People pleasing is a behavioral coping mechanism rooted in our response to fear. We fear rejection, anger, and abandonment, so we train our brains to anticipate and prioritize what others want and give it to them. We do this regardless of wh...

In direct and indirect ways, the debate surrounding transgenderism affects all of us. We have family members, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who identify as transgender. We hear terms like "dysphoria" and "cis-gendered" tossed around online and sometimes around the dinner table. We see celebrities, politicians, and thought leaders polarize themselves on both sides of this issue, and we feel...

When Marvin Gaye released "Sexual Healing," he crooned and moaned his message into our heads that we could be healed through sex. This week, our guest Dolly Josette leads us into a discussion on how this truly happens. So many of us live without an integrated sexual self. We've banished sexual knowledge of ourselves and sexual pleasure to the outer realms of our consciousness because we've been wo...

This week, we continue our exploration of dysfunctional family roles by unpacking the remaining roles: the Scapegoat, the Counselor/Caretaker, the Mascot, and the Lost Child. Our roles develop in an attempt to survive: this is the role we must play if the family unit is going to stay intact. As I've mentioned before, the big problem with roles is that you're rarely allowed to be anything else. Lea...

A listener of the podcast requested an episode on dysfunctional family roles. It was too much information for one episode, so I've broken it up into two. This week, we take a look at why and how we develop our dysfunctional roles and we dive into the role of "The Hero." Next week we'll round things out by exploring "The Scapegoat," "The Mascot," "The Lost Child," and "The Counselor." We'll also lo...

In the wake of my recent nuptials, I embarked on a bit of an emotional roller coaster of joy and sadness that the big day was over! In this episode, I walk you through the experience of complex emotions and the decision I had to make: to sit in it. This week, we tackle one of the hardest skills in the mental health toolbox: the ability and discipline to sit in our emotions and allow them to pass,...

So many of the struggles we run into in our relationships happen because we don't really know where the relationship stands. We think a relationship is closer, safer, or even more distant than it actually is. We trust when maybe we shouldn't, and we totally miss the golden opportunities for connection that are staring straight at us. This week we dive into how we can organize our relationships in...

This week we explore the devastating loss EVERYONE endures and how to regain what we've lost. Hardship in life changes us. We dive into the changes that occur, the loss of childhood innocence, and how we can be mentally healthy people who know how to recapture the essence of who we are and how to live. This week, our focus is on the treasure of simplicity.

Somewhere along the path of our lives, we lose contact with our inner voice. We stop listening to ourselves with curiosity, and we experience a high amount of shame when the wisdom and the pain that live within us speak up. Our episode today focuses on listening and cultivating an inner process you can count on for your whole life. We all receive signals from the body on a daily, even hourly basis...

Growing mentally stronger involves many dynamics and tasks: self-knowledge, honesty, integrity, and accountability. This week we focus on the one dynamic necessary to make lasting change: celebrating small wins. Too often, we save celebration for momentous affairs, but the truth is, when it comes to mental health and growth, we need to keep our eyes on our every day changes, not the pot of gold at...

This week, we unpack the toxic behaviors that people with a narcissistic personality structure use to control and manipulate. While narcissistic personalities can be "larger than life," they have relatively small toolboxes. Meaning: they don't have a lot of tricks up their sleeves, just the same damaging ones they use time and time again. Once we know what they are, we can be better prepared when...

Patrick is a talented visionary and entrepreneur in the Nashville design and construction world. His artistry graces the walls of some of the most famous homes in Nashville, but Patrick's journey toward self-satisfaction couldn't rest on work and success alone. He engaged the fight for his own heart when he entered therapy. Instead of merely expecting his hard-earned success to satisfy him, Patric...

We usually associate grief with death, but the truth is: life is a series of griefs. We are always in the process of grasping and grabbing hold of what we want AND letting go. This week, we dive into grief with a different perspective. Sometimes we have to grieve people while they're still living. We aren't grieving their passing; we're grieving that the relationship will never be exactly or even...