Mardou has a new book, and we discuss its contents. Find more about mardou at ifscomics.com or order the book at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714479/past-tense-by-sacha-mardou/
Also mentioned in the episode:
– National Alliance on Mental Illness
– The Opal app for limiting app usage
In this episode of the Anxiety Book Club, host Josh Malina talks with Steve Duke, founder of the Hemingway Group and author of the weekly substack, the Hemingway Report. They delve into the complexities of scaling mental health innovations, the importance of business strategy for mental health startups, and why some promising companies fail. Steve shares insights from his personal journey with OCD, the role of brand in mental health, and the latest trends in mental health technology and innovation.
Find Steve on LinkedIn here and check out his substack here.
Did you know that you have a nerve that runs from your brain stem to nearly all of your organs, that helps you shift from fight to flight, to freeze? Well, my guest this month, Dr. Stephen Porges, originator of the Polyvagal Theory, certainly does. Together we discuss the importance of this nerve in your mental health, or ill-health, and how autonomic nerve system regulation undergirds much of the way we feel.
In Episode 51, I speak with Anson Whitmer, co-founder of the men’s mental health app, Mental. We talk about Anson’s graduate research, depression in men, mental health culture, how the mental health app can provide a comfortable space for men in the world of mental health, the multitude of things that effect mental health, including lifestyle issues, what bonding looks for in men, the usefulness of cold water, Anson’s personal interest in mental health, rates of suicide in men, the future of AI coaching, the AI infrastructure of Mental’s coaching models
In this episode of the podcast, I chat with Oren Jay Sofer about his brand new book, Your Heart Was Made For This. Oren is a teacher of buddhist mindfulness and author of the previously featured Say What You Mean, which appeared on the podcast as Episode 23. In this episode, we discuss:
- Oren’s motivation for writing the book
- The external expression of the dharma
- The benefits and skill of renunciation
- How equanimity is not about managing expectations, but instead about being more fully with reality, i.e. enthusiasm is not in conflict with equanimity
- The merits of marrying equanimity with beginners mind
- How formal practice creates opportunities in the present moment
- The value of ritual according to the buddha
- Judaism and relationship to the sacred
The book: https://a.co/d/drecH1G
In this episode, I am joined by therapist, author, and professor Mary Pipher to discuss her memoir, A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence. We discuss her early childhood, participation in activism during the Vietnam War, her tenure as a therapist, her relationship with nature, light and grace, her focus on her family and, more recently, on non-attachment.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Martha Sweezy, IFS therapist, author and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. We discuss her book, Internal Family Systems Therapy for Shame and Guilt. These topics are covered:
- The multiplicity hypothesis of IFS
- The difference between some Buddhist traditions and IFS
- The ontology of IFS
- The shame cycle
- Soothing parts
- Shaming parts
- Outward shaming parts
- “Scouting” managerial parts
- The kinds of burdens of parts
- How children are self-referential
- Karlen Lyons-Ruth’s research
- The usefulness (or not) of shame
In this episode, I talk with trauma specialist Dr. Frank Anderson about his book Transcending Trauma: Healing Complex PTSD with Internal Family Systems. We discuss:
– What is complex post traumatic stress disorder?
– How widespread some kind of trauma or overwhelming experience is
– The usefulness of empathy vs compassion, especially in clinical settings
– The importance and non-importance of distance between client and clinician
– The difference between IFS and other modalities with regard to the clinician’s mental capacities, or “therapist parts”
– The multiplicity hypothesis of internal family systems
– The difference between grasping the tools of IFS while learning the model and grasping the core message
In this episode, I chat with Sharon Salzberg about her latest book, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom.
We discuss how useful self compassion is, the difference between remorse and guilt, urge surfing, the limits of mindfulness, the practice of looking directly at difficult feelings, why we might not label hardships as gifts, and the difference between equanimity and resignation, among other topics. Enjoy!
In this episode, I chat with Amy Edelstein, author and creator of the Inner Strength System — a program for teaching mindfulness to high school aged students. We discuss her book, The Conscious Classroom, and about the impact of her program (over 20,000 students in Philadelphia), the intricacies of its implementation and the special challenges facing teenagers today.
In this episode, me and John Astin discover what everything is made of; or we give it a real college try! John works in the field of effortless mindfulness, an approach to present moment awareness that is truly amazing. Enjoy!
John’s Website: https://www.johnastin.com/
The book: https://a.co/d/i0jJ7U4
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My email: joshuamalina@gmail.com
Podcast website: https://anxietybookclub.com/
In this episode of the podcast, guest Dr. Sally Winston and I discuss a component of anxiety she has identified as “Anticipatory Anxiety” — which can be a bear to root out. Enjoy!
In this episode, I interview stand up comedian, dad, and psychonaut Stuart Preston about his one man show — The Stoned Ape Show — and his booklet, The Grief Trip, about the death of his son and how psychedelics have helped him to heal with loss. We have a frank discussion covering psychedelics — including mushrooms, peyote and ayahuasca — as well as suicide, how to talk about it (spoiler: we should), shame, privacy and other mental health concerns.
Find Stuart here: https://stonedapecomedy.com/
In this episode, I speak with Chief Clinical Officer Athena Robinson at Woebot Health. Woebot is a therapist in your pocket; a conversational agent; someone to tell your woes to! I’ve been using Woebot for the last few months, and it honestly has helped me — to reframe unrealistic thoughts, get grounded, and feel supported. Give it a whirl — it’s free. And I hope you enjoy the episode.
In Episode 40 of the podcast, I speak with author and therapist Natasha Senra-Pereira about her riveting memoir, Talk Therapy is Not Enough. We chat about her journey of healing, including her work with alternative therapy approaches, including somatic healing, Internal Family Systems, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), psychedelics and more. It’s a fun book and fun conversation, and I hope you’ll enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed chatting with Natasha.
Her Therapy Practice:
The Book:
In this episode, me and the amazing Sacha Mardou (known as Mardou in her comic books), discuss her contribution to art and mental health via her ifscomics.com, her previous books (here and here), and her forthcoming memoir. We discuss her personal path to healing (which also comes by way of anxiety), and how the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model and her description of her sessions via art has led to some serious healing. I really enjoyed this chat, and I hope you do to!
Also mentioned:
In this episode, I talk with philosopher Kieran Setiya about his very new book, Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way. We discuss hope, pain, illness, moral philosophy, stoicism, grief, FOMO, and much more. Enjoy!
Kieran’s Podcast
Kieran’s Website
http://www.ksetiya.net/
Kieran’s Twitter
In a bit of a departure for the podcast, this episode goes local, and explores how community mental health operates at a single organization, San Mar Family and Community Services in Boonsboro, Maryland. San Mar provides a diverse collection of services, including foster care support and outpatient mental health. My guests are CEO Keith Fanjoy and Director Jerica Washington, who explain the ins and outs of this special organization, including the philosophy of “Wraparound” services that inform much of its approach to community well being. Enjoy!
In this episode, I discuss a variety of practice that seeks to take the “meditator” out of meditation. Loch Kelly, author and meditation teacher, introduces us to a kind of meditation that helps us awaken immediately and without strenuous effort. Enjoy our conversation, and find out more about Loch at his website, or through his book.
In this episode, I speak with author and science journalist James Kingsland about his newest book, “Am I Dreaming?: The Science of Altered States, from Psychedelics to Virtual Reality, and Beyond”. We discuss how our brains behave under the influences of these alternative realities, and what the scientific community has found about their therapeutic benefits.
In this episode, we welcome Dr. Judson Brewer back to the podcast to understand anxiety and worry as a habit, and how to unravel them. Dr. Jud uses neuroscience to identify the ways that mindfulness can help us unlearn unskillful behaviors like worrying, and let curiosity disenchant our minds with the experience of ruminative habit loops.
Join me in conversation with Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor, associate professor of psychology at University of Arizona, and expert in the neuroscience of grief and loss. We discuss what happens to our brains when we lose those close to us, and how to explain grieving behavior, including what makes it so challenging. We also dispel some myths about the grieving process and add nuance to the conventional wisdom around what to expect during the “normal” grieving process.
Join me for another fun and informative conversation with Dr. Patricia Zurita Ona to talk about her latest book, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for High Achieving Behaviors. We talk about ACT, mentorship, anger, shame, when emotions fuse with identity, fear of failure, the scope of perfectionism, how perfectionists see their self worth, how perfectionism can be socially acceptable
Book link: https://www.amazon.com/Acceptance-Commitment-Perfectionism-High-Achieving-Behaviors/dp/0367369222
Buckle your seatbelts! In this incredible interview with Dr. Richard Schwartz, creator of the now popular therapeutic method Internal Family Systems (IFS), we talk about the world he has discovered inside his and his patients’ minds, whether to understand these descriptions as useful metaphors for deep work or as bona fide depictions of the characters that live in our minds! To boot, Dr. Schwartz helps me find an exile of my own. This episode is unlike anyone ever recorded on the podcast before — I hope you enjoy!
People talk a lot about compassion these days. But how do you cultivate it? And why would you want to? On this episode, I sit down with Sara Owens Woodard, PhD, psychologist, consultant and teacher of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). CCT is a Stanford developed, 8 week course on how to cultivate more compassionate in your own life — toward yourself, your loved ones, and even the guy on the street. Enjoy!
Please enjoy my conversation with best selling author and memoirist Christie Tate as we discuss her book, Group: How One Therapist and Circle of Strangers Saved My Life. We discuss shame, secrecy, therapy, sex, and more. Books and other links from our conversation:
Her reccomendations:
In Episode 28, me and Dr. Z (aka Patricia Zurita Ona) discuss all things anxiety, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the limits of positive psychology, how to get unstuck with a nifty grounding exercise, and her own origins and relationship to anxious thoughts. Also, we recorded a video!
https://contextualscience.org/
In Episode 27 of the Anxiety Book Club, we chat once again with the very wise, and very fun to talk to — Eowyn Ahlstrom — mindfulness instructor and author of a recently published book of poetry, Mindscapes: Practice Poems.
We discuss her poetry, the histrionics of the mind, the mental peace that can be cultivated through dedicated practice, the paradoxes encountered while sharing our lives with others, compassion, kindness, and so much more.
I hope you enjoy the episode, and if you want to read all of Eowyn’s poems, you can find the book for sale on her website here, or in Kindle version here.
In episode 25, I talk with Adam Chekroud about the mental health tech company he co-founded in 2016, Spring Health. Spring Health offers behavioral health treatment to clients through their employers. They are harnessing the power of data to give mental health providers more information about how to treat incoming clients to maximize a successful outcome. We talk about the state of mental health in the US, what companies like Adam’s are doing to improve it, and what the future holds. It’s an optimistic picture, so please tune in!
Research paper: exercise and mental health
Is managing our anxiety all about meditating on a cushion? Exercising? Sleeping well? Having our needs met? Hanging out with loved ones? Being supported by our community? Living a life of purpose and meaning? According to this month’s author, Hala Khouri, it involves bits and pieces of all those things. Listen here for a discussion about the many elements that can help us heal from anxiety and emotional disregulation, and about the mythology of trying to heal all on our own.
Resources mentioned in the show:
In Episode 23, guest and author Oren Jay Sofer walks us through how to arrive, be present and communicate with others in our lives in ways that foster connection. Oren’s personal journey into mindfulness and non-violent communication (NVC) is inspiring and worth knowing about, as I found myself in a lot of what he described. Find some tools for getting your needs met in this episode of the podcast!
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Dennis Tirch, a compassion focused clinical therapist and all around mensch, who has managed to bring an enormous amount of kindness and caring attention to the world of anxiety treatment and exposure and response prevention. Through years of clinical practice, he manages to marry eastern and western psychology to treat patients in a way that focuses on helping them activate their in-born compassion systems. This episode is an absolute gem; please listen and share!
Song at the end, “Mushroom Princess Dance Master”, credit to Dr. Tirch.
In this episode, we explore three different acronyms and practices, DARE, DEAF, and RAIN, which can really help upset minds during a difficult experience. Warning: this is a very practical episode!
In this episode, my guest Dr. John Shook helps us get acquainted with one of the leading figures in psychology and philosophy in the 20th century, William James. We talk about emotions, the brain and pragmatism.
You can find Dr. Shook on Youtube by searching for “John Shook Humanism” or contact him via email at jshook@pragmatism.org. The book can be found on Amazon, here.
Apparently, compassion and self-compassion are important parts of a mindful way of living. It’s not just your attention that counts, but the quality of that attention. Is your focus like a deadly sniper? Or a loving teddy bear? Some strange combination of both?
In this episode, Shauna Shapiro, PhD helps us understand how the two are connected, and how she was able to cultivate both in her own life. We discuss the effects of mindfulness on physical and emotional pain, what it means to be “intentional”, and how to get started with mindfulness and self-compassion with a very simple, morning practice.
Find the book here, or more about Shauna at her website or Instragram.
Do you have a sticky mind? Like the floor of a movie theatre? Like your sourdough ball before it has time to rise? In this episode of the Anxiety Book Club, we have a conversation with Dr. Sally Winston, where we dive deeply into issues of reassurance seeking and compulsive checking, both difficult symptoms of an anxious or obsessive mind.
Specifically, we talk about the treatment of OCD — specifically in those who seek reassurance in unproductive ways, and who suffer as a result of not being certain about life’s challenges and opportunities.
Dr. Winston has been working with sticky minds for over 40 years, and REALLY knows what she is talking about. The book is great, and so was our conversation. Enjoy!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-sticky-mind
https://adaa.org/webinar/consumer/overcoming-intrusive-thoughts
https://www.anxietyandstress.com/
Are our feelings true? Are they reliable? Does honoring them lead us to pleasure or pain? Or is it more complicated than that? In this episode of the Anxiety Book Club, I am joined by fan of the podcast and longtime friend Nigel Tu, to discuss Robert Wright’s incredible Why Buddhism is True, a candid and scientifically compelling account of the psychological mechanisms and benefits of following the mindful path. I REALLY like this book, and I’m not sure the episode truly does it justice, so I encourage you to go out and get it yourself!
Are your standards “high beyond reach or reason”? Well, you may be suffering from perfectionism. In some areas of my life, I have paid an enormous cost because of my inability to see what is plainly good enough. I hope that in today’s conversation with Dr. Martin Antony about his book, When Perfect Isn’t Good Enough, you will find some entertainment and perhaps also something helpful if you struggle with this affliction.
Antony’s newest book.
Ever wondered what makes us uniquely human, and why it sucks so much? Dr. Mark Leary, professor emeritus of psychology from Duke University, explains the evolutionary history of human being’s ability to worry, regret and generally understand themselves in the third person.
“Fat”, “Overweight”, “Living in a larger body”. What are these terms and what do they have to do with your health? This conversation with Rebecca Hill, PsyD grad student at Nova Southeastern, follows on from last month’s episode with Christy Harrison. We discuss her soon to be published research manual (fingers crossed) about how medical professionals should engage people at all weights and sizes.
Rebecca’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embodied_re/?hl=en
Her clinic/lab at Nova: scplab.wordpress.com
Her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-hill-552223121/
Join me in a conversation with Dr. Susan Campbell, psychologist, relationship coach and author of this month’s books — Getting Real and Five Minute Relationship Repair. We talk about how to be authentic in our relation to ourselves and others through thoughtful, heartfelt speech that prioritizes our needs and helps us successfully navigate distressing situations with our friends, family and significant others.
Find out more about Dr. Campbell at her website.
Join me and Dr. Jud as we explore the science behind mindfulness and how we can leverage it to intervene in the carrying out of bad habits in our own lives, learning from his research in treating smoking, cocaine use, anxiety and other addictions. Find out more about Dr. Jud at his website or the book, The Craving Mind.
Listen to my conversation with myself about the highly popular text on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, The Happiness Project by Dr. Russ Harris.
Do you know what mindfulness is? It is a big idea that can be hard to grasp and gets thrown around cavalierly. In this episode I speak with Eowyn Ahlstrom, a longtime Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction instructor, retreat leader and assistant director for community and online programs at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University.
Episode 8 is here! And it’s about sleeping. So if you’ve been having trouble in the old bed, give it a listen. We’ve got a great interview with a smart and empathic physician out of Colorado, Dr. Colleen Ehrnstrom, using evidence based practices to help you develop a healthier relationship with being unconscious!
This episode is a departure from the normal author interview. This time I interview my good friend and neighbor, Rebecca Hill, about her journey to becoming a clinical psychologist.
We cover a lot of ground here, with some good advice for those thinking of becoming mental health practitioners, as well as Rebecca’s personal struggles and achievements in getting her to where she is today.
Rebecca’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-hill-552223121/
This is a special episode. I interview Julie Simon, author of When Food is Comfort: How to Nurture Yourself Mindfully, Rewire Your Brain, and End Emotional Eating. This is the podcast’s first book on emotional eating, and its’s a gem.
Julie helps us understand why many of us reach for food in times of distress — simply, because we don’t have the right tools for managing upsetting emotions in healthy ways. I’ve been an emotional eater / stress eater / binge eater for a long time, and despite a healthy mindfulness practice, I still struggle with how to deal with life’s ups and downs without looking for a caloric escape.
It turns out it’s a lot about love and how we talk to ourselves. Many of us have not been raised with nurturing voices in our heads — steady, reliable, loving voices that provide comfort when life goes pear shaped. “Rewiring your brain” to include an additional voice of comfort and support goes a long way in helping you to cope without needing an unhealthy, external source of pleasure, like food.
Through practice, and honing the seven skills that Julie outlines in her book, there is great hope that we can fill the gaps in our self care practice to add a soothing voice to the “committee” of characters in our heads.
I hope you enjoy!
You can find more about Julie, her books and her therapeutic practice at her website, https://overeatingrecovery.com/.
This question, or variants of it — “Will I be ok?”, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok?”, “Tell me everything will be fine / will work out / will be ok” — are uttered every day. We know them well. We get a feeling — fear, perhaps — and we want reassurance. In my household, we did this a lot. I remember asking my mom all the time if things were going to be ok, and her reassuring me that, of course, they will.
31 years on this planet, and I guess things are “ok” — and every time I doubted whether or not I would be ok, I always turned out “ok”? And that’s what has gotten me interested in thinking more about what it means to be “ok” and it’s opposite — maybe, “not ok”?
“Ok” doesn’t mean happy, or great — it’s less than that. It means fine, or maybe content, or neutral — neither very bad or very good. Of course, when we want to know if things will be ok, or if we will be ok, the alternative we are concerned about is not that things will be amazing, but that — at least in my case — they will be catastrophically bad. Have you heard about this phrase, catastrophizing? It’s a good one.
I catastrophize. I suffer from perfectionism. The slightest possibility that things could go pear shaped, that they would admit some kind of risk would send me reeling. Pure panic. Not about all things, of course, but those things that really effect what I value — my privacy, my freedom, my time — things I guard so closely I am AFRAID of their being compromised. I’m afraid that if they are compromised, then I somehow won’t be ok.
But what does it really mean? If I am not ok, then what am I? Am I hurt, physically or mentally? Am I injured? Am I dead? Am I crying? Am I experiencing intense negative emotions that I wish I weren’t — I think it’s mostly the latter.
See, most of the things I (and my mind) am afraid of cannot hurt me — not in a physical way. The things that scare me can mostly just make me very uncomfortable mentally. There is no true risk — for me, again — of bodily injury. There is just a perceived future where I am not ok, where things are not ok.
But what I’ve learned, and what I hope to learn even better/righter/faster/stronger, is that short of injury and death, not ok doesn’t really exist. All those moments in the future that I fear, all those feelings and thoughts that I hope I don’t meet in the future — are just what they are — moments, thoughts and feelings.
Yes, it’s possible that they might/will be unpleasant. But they (thoughts, feelings) only live in my brain. They have no way of truly hurting me. There is no risk to having them. And, importantly, they are fleeting — just like the good times fade, so do their unhappy cousins.
So I’ve been thinking, what does it mean to be not ok? Not much.*
*I don’t mean to minimise psychological suffering. Indeed, I know how much it can hurt. I just mean to say that sometimes reassurance seeking for a future that doesn’t involve hard feelings/emotions might be misguided, and might also serve to make them scarier — since we are buying in to the fear, believing it, we may be adding energy to something that doesn’t deserve so much of our attention. See Reid Wilson’s Pendulum idea in Stopping the Noise in Your Head.
This is the project — record a roughly 45 minute long interview with an author about some book on mental health every month. Why do it?
- I like podcasts
- I always wanted to make a podcast
- For the first time in a long time, I feel passionate enough about a topic to put in the hours to make something creative
The mind is really an amazing thing. It’s capable of always remembering to lock the front door (thank you OCD!), calculating the tip at a restaurant, buying flowers for a peeved partner, climbing a ladder, regulating my breath, beating my heart … and yet it’s also capable of freaking out in the tamest of situations — laying in bed, talking to a friend, sitting on an airplane.
How did we get here? Why is my mind both so awesome and also so difficult to deal with sometimes? Genetics, childhood development, regular survival mechanisms gone awry?
This podcast is mostly a self exploration of these questions — a way of understanding and improving. The good thing for you, dear reader, is that your mind and my mind have some things in common.
Enjoy! I hope you like what you hear, and if you don’t — share your brain’s thoughts with mine! I’m sure I will feel some feelings. Leave a comment or email me at joshuamalina@gmail.com.
Enjoy my discussion with Dr. Reid Wilson, a scholar and influential figure in the field of anxiety. We discuss his book, Stopping the Noise in Your Head, and how to step into anxious moments to score points against the doubting disease.
Listen to my awesome interview with the wonderful Shala Nicely. We talk about her struggles and achievements with her own OCD as documented in her very accessible book, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? This book meant a lot to me, as I was able to identify with so much of what Shala writes, and it also let me know about the OCDF conference, which I attended and really enjoyed last year. Don’t miss this one!!
Real Love by Sharon Salzberg
Self love. Ever heard of it? Apparently it’s a good thing. I had wondered about this for awhile, especially after getting to know my inner critic — I know, I know, I’m throwing out a lot of pretty “groovy” phrases, but trust me this stuff is helpful.
This is a great one about anxiety, doubt and uncertainty. Author Jeff Bell takes us through his own trials with OCD and how he developed a solution to the nagging problem of the doubting disease.
Listen to my interview with Steven Hayes, a pivotal figure in the development of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a pioneering version of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy that can help sufferers of anxiety (and all humans) connect with the life they truly value — guided by the things that are important to them. The ACT methodology can help you move mindfully toward your goals, stepping forward courageously in your personal hero’s journey.
The book: https://www.amazon.com/Get-Your-Mind-Into-Life/dp/1572244259
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