What are you made of? What qualities and decisions got you through your hardest times? The hardship we face in our lives has the ability to refine us into gold or define us as victims. When we focus on our struggles without noticing our strengths, we're only telling ourselves half the story. This week, we tackle the qualities in our humanity that allow us to overcome. We're going to look at grit: where passion meets perseverance. And we're going to unfold and discover the well of strength we all...
Feb 20, 2023•39 min
Shame is a painfully universal experience. Every living human being battles feelings of shame, thoughts of being inadequate, not measuring up, being "bad," weak, or inherently unlovable. It grows inside us from childhood. Every shaming word, every experience of failure, every moment of abuse (if there was abuse), and comparison with others drives home the message: "You're not good enough." Sometimes it's just, "You're not good." It's like a bubble in the middle of our lives, inflating without ou...
Feb 13, 2023•34 min
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 miserable soup. Instead, let's take a look at the reality of how life really is, the nature of human beings...
Feb 06, 2023•44 min
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, common sense, and gut level honesty drive the message home: we can change our lives, one day at a time...
Jan 30, 2023•49 min
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 your own life for your own thriving. The goal isn't the absence of mental illness. The goal is health. ...
Jan 23, 2023•53 min
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 overvalue our emotions. What we need is balance. In this week's episode, we get intimate with those pes...
Jan 16, 2023•1 hr 1 min
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 reference. In this week's episode, I walk through my own development of an internal point of refere...
Jan 09, 2023•54 min
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 autonomy we possess to change.
Jan 02, 2023•48 min
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. Congratulations on making it through another year! I'll be with you next week in 2023.
Dec 26, 2022•53 min
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&qid=1671420164&sprefix=vanessa+londino%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-1 SIGN UP FOR TOOLBOX WORKSHOPS HER...
Dec 19, 2022•56 min
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 need a focused amount of time to look at where we've come and plan ahead. Growth happens on purpose...
Dec 12, 2022•51 min
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&sprefix=vanessa+lon%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1
Dec 05, 2022•59 min
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 life and better boundaries - I've looked forward to the holiday season with joy. This week, we expl...
Nov 28, 2022•58 min
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 predictable. It got me thinking about relationships in general: is there a frame? What elements have to be in ...
Nov 21, 2022•50 min
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 what WE need or want, and the effect on our mental health is catastrophic. We become distanced from ou...
Nov 14, 2022•1 hr 4 min
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 forced to take a side. We're going about this the wrong way... the path forward is not through angr...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 6 min
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 wounded, traumatized, or simply because we've never been taught. Our sexuality goes underground, out o...
Oct 31, 2022•1 hr 7 min
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. Learning our role, admitting what we felt as children, and offering ourselves a conscious choice now - ...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 20 min
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 look at what growth looks like for each role. In the presence of chronic dysfunction, our roles emerge...
Oct 17, 2022•57 min
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, to really feel them and not medicate, undervalue, or minimize them. This ability - to actually and r...
Oct 10, 2022•48 min
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 our minds and hearts in such a way that the time and energy we invest will be going to good use....
Oct 03, 2022•50 min
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.
Sep 26, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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. How well we listen to our own bodies will largely determine how we heal.
Sep 19, 2022•47 min
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 the end of the proverbial rainbow. Growing in mental health is all about the process. This week, we...
Sep 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min
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 we see them coming. We'll examine each tool in detail and then move into how we can protect ourselve...
Sep 05, 2022•1 hr
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, Patrick went deeper. This is a story about how a busy entrepreneur wove healing into every aspect of his l...
Aug 29, 2022•59 min
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 remotely what we want. We're grieving lost connection. We're grieving what can never be, and we're l...
Aug 22, 2022•47 min
This week we unpack the patterns of thought that get us into trouble. Using Aaron Beck's classic examples of "cognitive distortions," or distorted ways of thinking, we begin to see how our irrational thoughts can be driving our lives in unproductive ways. Clear-minded thinking is an essential for mental health and mental strength, but sometimes we don't catch the tricky thought traps we've fallen into. By learning what basic cognitive distortions are, we can learn to catch those thoughts and tra...
Aug 15, 2022•1 hr
This week we explore the important topic of how to stay centered in ourselves amidst the ever-changing landscape of life. We'll look at what it feels like when we aren't in our "core" self, what takes us out of it, and how to get back to our center and stay there. A life uncentered is a life adrift and distracted from being who we truly are. This week's episode will give you the tools to understand what knocks you off course and how to get back on. Buy the Toolbox: https://www.amazon.com/Toolbox...
Aug 08, 2022•44 min
Sometimes the most frustrating conflicts we have in our relationships are because we don't know what our rights are. We argue when we should be calmly stating our boundary. We overstep onto others' rights and wonder what we did wrong. This week, we unpack seven core "rights" in relationship and why they're so important. Knowing our rights gives us solid ground to stand on. We can build our relationships without apology or confusion.
Aug 01, 2022•51 min
