Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living | Vincent Deary, PhD

Dec 5, 2024

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Life can be hard when we are sick. But even when we aren't, life can still wear us down in quiet, surprising ways. Indeed, major traumas are relatively rare, and it's the moments when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to prolonged periods of stress, that we fall into a spiral of exhaustion, fatigue, burnout, and hopelessness.

Vincent Deary, PhD is an author and health psychologist who explores the mundane struggles of everyday life. His writings blend clinical insight, literary finesse and wisdom drawn from philosophy and art to illuminate how the wear and tear of life affect all of us, and how we can navigate through it all. He is the author of How We Are (2024), which explores the power of human routines and the challenges of personal change, and How We Break (2024), which delves into how individuals cope when pushed to their limits.

Over the course of our conversation, we discuss what the clinical work of health psychology looks like, what happens to our minds when we deal with stressors in life, the importance of storytelling for psychological growth, balancing self-improvement with self-acceptance, the role of constitutional luck in our search for happiness, the importance of restorative rest, how clinicians can cope with grief and guilt from their work, and more. By bringing an empathetic lens to the complexities of modern existence, Vincent helps us create a path through difficult times.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

2:43 - What health psychology is and how Deary became drawn to this field

18:58 - Deary’s motivations for exploring the emotional toll of experiencing life in his writings

22:42 - The benefit of approaching each patient as a “case”

31:46 - Finding a balance between self-improvement and self-acceptance

38:10 - Using the bio-psycho-social model to explain our capacities for weathering stress

43:14 - Fostering a healthier perspective on work-life balance

50:55 - The importance of community and institutional support in helping people process compassion fatigue

58:05 - Strategies for connecting more deeply with patients within a clinical setting

Vincent Deary can be found on Twitter/X at @vincentdeary.

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