Think Act Be Podcast

My guest this week is Dr. Yael Schonbrun, a clinical psychologist with an excellent new book entitled Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection (When Everything Feels Like Too Much). This episode is part 2 in a 4-part series on parenting. As you’ll hear in our discussion, Yael has a gift for both/and thinking. She acknowledges the conflict between our roles as parents and people who work for pay, and also underscores the ways that these roles can be mutually enriching.

My guest this week is Dr. Rebecca Schrag Hershberg, author of the excellent book for parents, The Tantrum Survival Guide (affiliate link). Rebecca shared some of her top tips for being a more effective parent, which starts with the simple recognition that we all struggle at times in our relationships with our kids. One of the biggest takeaways is about being present with our kids and finding ways to pause when emotions are high so that we can make better choices. (Which sounds a lot like what we try to help our kids with as parents!)

This week I’m flying solo on the podcast. It’s great to be back with you and I have a few updates since the last episode. I’ll also tell you more about my new book, Mindful Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which will be released on Dec. 6, 2022, and I read a passage from the first chapter. In the rest of the episode I share with you some of the most effective ways to manage constant and uncontrollable worry.

My guest this week is Dr. Rachel Turow, author of the forthcoming book, The Self-Talk Workout: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Dissolve Self-Criticism and Transform the Voice in Your Head (affiliate link). In this final part of our series on managing stress, we explored how the way we talk to ourselves is closely tied to our stress levels. Rachel shared some powerful exercises for practicing self-kindness, including a guided exercise you can take part in. Toward the end she described ways to combine techniques to get the most out of them. 

My guest this week is Rebecca Ward, author of the book The Paper Tiger Syndrome: How to Liberate Yourself from the Illusion of Fear (affiliate link). Rebecca has a lot of expertise in effective stress management, and we explored the somatic-based approach she uses to help people regulate their body in order to manage stress. We also discussed the vagus nerve, which plays a central role in how we deal with stress, and it's of special interest to me based on some of my own health challenges. Toward the end of the conversation we talked about ways to develop more adaptive survival strategies for dealing with life's many challenges.

My guest this week is Dr. Alice Boyes, back on the podcast for the third time for our series on managing stress. I wanted to talk with Alice because she has a phenomenal new book called Stress-Free Productivity (affiliate link), and she shares lots of great advice for how to get things done without stressing yourself out. We also talked about how trauma can affect our stress reactions, and how to be more self-compassionate toward ourselves when we’re struggling. Alice is a good friend and a real expert in her field, so I’m happy to share her latest thinking with you.

My guest this week for Part 1 in our series on managing stress is clinical psychologist Dr. Melissa Hunt. We discussed her work on treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which is common, poorly understood, and rarely treated effectively. As Melissa described so well, unmanaged IBS can be incredibly distressing and debilitating. Fortunately there is effective treatment, including a protocol that Melissa developed based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). She does a great job describing the big principles that this approach is based on, and why it’s so helpful. As we explored, stress is intimately connected to IBS, and finding more effective ways to deal with stress—including the stress of IBS itself—is an integral part of evidence-based treatment.

My guest this week is clinical psychologist Dr. Daisy Singla. We talked about the exciting research that Daisy is doing, both in North America and throughout the world. I think what I love most about her work is that she’s finding truly innovative ways to address the global mental health care crisis. There are just too many of us in need of help to be able to meet these needs with the current model of long, expensive therapy with a highly trained specialist. Much of our conversation focused on interventions for perinatal depression, but the techniques that work in this context are helpful in general. I think you'll find a lot of value in this discussion.

My guest this week for part three of this series on depression is Dr. Willem Kuyken. He knows all about depression, both from his personal experience since early in life as well as from his extensive research. In this episode you’ll hear about mindfulness for depression, which Willem explains so clearly, and why it’s so helpful. The benefits of being mindful extend not just to managing depression but to all of life, including helping us to deal with life’s pain and disappointments that all of us will experience at times. Toward the end he shares one of his favorite mindfulness practices, which I really loved. I got so much out of this conversation, and I think you will, too.

My guest this week is therapist and author Dr. Carissa Gustafson, who wrote an excellent book called Reclaim Your Life: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in 7 Weeks (affiliate link). We focused on using ACT to treat depression, since this is the second installment of our series on effective ways to manage depression. As you’ll hear, ACT is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, but it has a really different emphasis, especially in how we deal with the negative thoughts that are so common and distressing in depression. Instead of working to change the thoughts themselves, we focus on changing our relationship with our thoughts, as Carissa explains. We also talk about how we can move through low energy and low motivation and do what’s important to us when our mood is so low, and how sometimes we need to let our hearts break so they can open. I know you’ll take a lot from this episode.