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.. . Today’s episode is on the stage of parenting, where you leave the “teaching” stage of parenting to t...
Jun 27, 2025•21 min•Ep. 452
Today, I'm excited to introduce SelfWork listeners to The Jordan Harbinger Show, which has become a regular listen on my walks. If you've been looking for another top rated podcast, we hope you'll give Jordan Harbinger a listen.
Jun 27, 2025•3 min
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 of the actual pain or hardship that is mental illness as well as to hinder you learning how to talk m...
Jun 20, 2025•23 min•Ep. 451
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 ages 20–49, which nearly doubled between 2020 and 2022 ( CDC ). Across six episodes, Elliot weaves toget...
Jun 13, 2025•44 min•Ep. 450
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 sincerity and honesty, and decided to feature his comments and question. There are very specific things I’ve le...
Jun 06, 2025•24 min•Ep. 449
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 lot but decided that, in an episode that I hope honors her, I wanted to describe how addictions to prescription drugs can h...
May 30, 2025•21 min•Ep. 448
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 told me that they’d met their spouse or dating partner online. It was said with some embarrassment or certainly ...
May 27, 2025•4 min
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 also avoiding (or not creating) intimacy. If they sense conflict, one or both will change the subject....
May 23, 2025•24 min•Ep. 447
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 relationship or defensiveness. And it can lead to everything from bitterness and resentment to affairs. Next ...
May 16, 2025•27 min•Ep. 446
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 family from living through the horrific pain they've experienced. And more importantly, to keep others who mi...
May 09, 2025•44 min•Ep. 442
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’ the language of the nervous system. Following a simple yet powerful approach called A I R , readers a...
May 02, 2025•42 min•Ep. 444
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 is from a woman who has “lots” kids with a man she’s been married to for many years. But she also write...
Apr 25, 2025•24 min•Ep. 443
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 you continued to be successful. Your parent was overly self-involved because of their own trauma or mental i...
Apr 18, 2025•22 min•Ep. 442
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 whether it leads you into depression, even apathy, or whether you take that failure in stride and integr...
Apr 11, 2025•25 min•Ep. 441
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 passed on. It's called transgenerational trauma. And it's very real. Hunter Clarke-Fields didn't want to do t...
Apr 04, 2025•40 min•Ep. 440
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 respond to someone’s grief? Do you ever get over grief? What’s the relationship between grief and shame? As ...
Mar 28, 2025•23 min•Ep. 439
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, Harvard Business Review, and Oprah Daily, Laura is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of three ...
Mar 21, 2025•44 min•Ep. 438
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 expectations, demands and boundaries? Here are some questions to ask yourself. What do you do when you feel disappoint...
Mar 14, 2025•28 min•Ep. 437
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 right off the bat. Consider and acknowledge what your own part was or is in creating the disappointment. That...
Mar 07, 2025•27 min•Ep. 436
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 to hear. And if there was significant trauma in your own childhood, then please listen carefully. You'll also listen to a...
Feb 28, 2025•23 min•Ep. 435
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 student, a mailman, and well... who knew what Norm did! . Characters fell in lust, in love, and out of love. But the str...
Feb 21, 2025•23 min•Ep. 434
Why is it so hard to treat eating disorders? We're going to find out today in this interview with Johanna Kandel, founder and director of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders. Kandel brings her own successful recovery from anorexia and bulimia to this interview whose message is that full recovery is possible. She's the author of book " Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder, but in her establishment of a thriving clinician-led service organization, she stresses that you can free yourself from id...
Feb 14, 2025•42 min•Ep. 433
Today the focus is on doctors and depression, with Dr. Pamela Buchanan as my guest, in a second episode in the "Careers That Kill" series, discussing medical providers, the pandemic, and depression. She's a board-certified physician, speaker and thought leader dedicated to transforming healthcare and championing mental well-being. She’s a TEDx speaker known for her powerful talk on “Emotional Flatline,” which explores the emotional toll of the high-stress ER during the pandemic, and the struggle...
Feb 07, 2025•34 min•Ep. 432
What is optimism fatigue? Is it a new a kind of depression? In this episode of SelfWork, I’m thinking aloud a bit with you … if what we’re experiencing is a new kind of depression – one that’s mixed in with anxiety and fatigue. What’s it called? Optimism fatigue. It may not be diagnosable, but as I’ve considered my own situation, I realize that I’m having to dig a little deeper to find comfort that I can offer to others. It’s not that I can’t find it. But it’s harder. There’s a big difference be...
Jan 31, 2025•20 min•Ep. 431
What was your "job" in your family? Most of us love to take tests like the Enneagram or the Myers/Briggs to find out what the test might have to say about our personality style or our strengths and vulnerabilities. But something you might also gravitate to – in thinking about what’s called your family of origin – or the family you grew up in – is talking about the roles each of the children played in the family - or what was your "job" in your family. The six most commonly agreed upon roles are ...
Jan 24, 2025•24 min•Ep. 430
What are seven good reasons to stop therapy? That's the focus of this week's SelfWork! It’s often a very moving moment when you leave therapy. Here’s someone that you’ve trusted and confided in for weeks or months – or sometimes even years. And it’s time to walk out of their office and do without that resource. As I like to say, it’s my job to do myself out of a job. And I celebrate with people I’ve worked with when they leave to hopefully use the skills learned, and enjoy the feelings of having...
Jan 17, 2025•24 min•Ep. 429
The focus today is on what I call "the shame and self-blame game." One listener told me recently that she wondered for a long time - “Did I allow my abuse?” How many of you feel to blame for your own abuse? And does that very shame and self-blame make it even more important to keep what happened secret? You bet it can. It’s this irrational shame we’re going to tackle. Because you’re looking back on what happened with the eyes of an adult - not through the eyes of the child you were. And that's a...
Jan 10, 2025•23 min•Ep. 372
We’re talking about sexual abuse today – to be more specific, the horrors of marital rape. Please if you have any kind of history of abuse which many of you I’m sure do – please listen cautiously as the facts of the case could be highly triggering for you. For international abuse hotlines please click here . You may have heard about the French woman, Gisèle Pelicot, who was the victim of multiple rapes – by multiple men including her husband – while drugged. This occurred over several years. All...
Jan 03, 2025•23 min•Ep. 362
You Only Die Once , written by positive psychologist Jodi Wellman, has this very important message - being aware of your last moment can help you live this one more fully. She's a devout believer in not wasting the time you have, not spending this moment in dread or apathy. Statistically speaking, we're given four thousand Mondays in our lifetime to live. So savoring those moments, realizing that every minute of every day holds meaning, is vital to your happiness. Both in her book, You Only Die ...
Dec 27, 2024•40 min•Ep. 358
Today we’re going to talk about loneliness – and how one article I read drew some conclusions about it that made a lot of sense to me. One major point – we can’t or shouldn’t harken back to older times and think we need to create those now. That’s not the answer. Cell phones, virtual meetings or classes, working from home, pandemic hangover – none of that is going to go away. We’re not suddenly going to help a neighbor raise a barn or birth a baby. So we’ve got to understand there’s no going bac...
Dec 20, 2024•24 min•Ep. 372
