Life Examined

This week, Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and co-author of “The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness,” talks about the merits of meditation. As a Zen practitioner Waldinger says meditation has helped him stay present, connect with the richness of life and worry less about the things that really don’t matter.

In today’s job market, “good communication skills” is often listed as a top requirement. This essential ability not only helps you connect and collaborate with others but also effectively express your needs within the workplace. Strong communicators can unite us, foster positivity, and create a sense of shared potential. Moreover, today’s technology has made communication more accessible and rapid than ever before.  Despite all the advances in tech, true connection remains elusive and we often fail to make meaningful connections with the people in our live who matter. The art of conversation is complex but science can offer insights into why these connections are so challenging to achieve. According to Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators; How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, “our ability to communicate with each other is the thing that has set our species apart and made us so successful compared to other species.” When Charles noticed challenges in his own communication, he turned to science for answers. Advances in neuroimaging have allowed neuroscientists and psychologists to uncover that “every discussion is made up of multiple different kinds of conversations,” and they tend to fall into three buckets. “Practical conversations where we're talking about solving problems, emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling,” and “social conversations, about how we interact with each other and interact with society.”  “Super communicators,” Duhigg says, have the ability to “ listen for what kind of conversation is happening” and are able to “match back.” The science behind this, as Duhigg explains it, is called  "neural entrainment"— the synchronization of neural activity that is both fundamental to and the goal of communication. The reason super communicators can make a conversation feel effortless, leaving you feeling positive is because “you've achieved that neural synchronization. Your brain has evolved to give you a reward sensation associated with that. Connection is felt deep within the body and “our brains have evolved to encourage this kind of communication, to encourage this kind of bonding…since it's been so helpful to survival.”  Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week, Kemi Nekvapil, leadership coach and author of “Power: A Woman’s Guide to Living and Leaving without Apology” shares a couple of power practices that can help women and especially women of color feel more empowered and reconnect with who they are. When it comes to standing in one's own power, Nekvapil says, practice, role play and experimentation are essential tools in helping to help change existing behavior patterns. This episode of Life Examined with Kemi Nekvapil was originally broadcast October 15th, 2023

There may be no greater pain in life than that of losing a child; the gaping hole felt when a young life is abruptly cut short, leaving parents to deal with a void that can be difficult to comprehend, and a journey to make sense of the heartache that follows. For poet Rosemerry Wahtula Trommer, the pain is palpable and the grief — the kind of grief only a mother can know — remains unwavering . Tragically, her son Finn took his own life just before reaching his 17th birthday. In the wake of this unimaginable tragedy, Trommer found herself irrevocably changed; it was through the power of words and poetry that she began to find solace amid her sorrow. Despite the lasting  grief in her heart, Trommer is also profoundly grateful to her son. “He my teacher.  How much that boy taught me all the things I didn't want to know. I never wanted to learn that things couldn't be fixed. I never wanted to learn that I couldn't be perfect, that I couldn't make the world the way I wanted it. And he taught me again and again and again, how to say yes to the world as it is.”  Reflecting on how she now sees the world, Trommer is struck by  “the sweetness and the bitterness, the joy and the grief, the love and the loss and how, as humans, this is what we're asked to meet over and over and over.”   Grief, Trommer says, demonstrates a powerful paradox. It’s central to who we are as humans. It’s “ever mysterious and ever changing and so deeply sorrowful and so profoundly loving,” at the same time.   “Maybe this is the thing that's most exciting for me right now – is this sense of not believing anymore that we're supposed to be happy. That in fact, some of the most profound, wonderful life-affirming, moments have been so difficult.”    “Meeting Your Death”  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  Because there are no clear instructions, I follow what rises up in me to do. I fall deeper into love with you. I look at old pictures. I don’t look at old pictures. I talk about you. I say nothing. I walk. I sit. I lie in the grass and let the earth hold me. I lie on the sidewalk, dissolve into sky. I cry. I don’t cry. I ask the world to help me stay open. I ask again, please, let me feel it all. I fall deeper in love with the people still living. I fall deeper in love with the world that is left— this world with its spring and its war and its mornings, this world with its fruits that ripen and rot and reseed, this world that insists we keep our eyes wide, this world that opens when our eyes are closed. Because there are no clear instructions, I learn to turn toward the love that is here, though sometimes what is here is what’s not. There are infinite ways to do this right. That is the only way. Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week, Alain de Botton, philosopher, author and founder of The School of Life talks about why today’s social and cultural environment is contaminating our peace of mind. De Botton suggests that in order to switch off and achieve some kind of balance in our lives, we need to become better editors and curators of what we are exposed to and shut out as much external negativity and noise as we can.

Sarah Hill, professor of social psychology at Texas Christian University and author of This is your brain on birth control: The surprising science of sex, women, hormones and the law of unintended consequences, shares her journey into exploring the effects of oral contraception on mental health.  “I actually spent my early career studying the way our sex hormones can affect psychological states and motivation…and the desire to attract romantic partners.” It wasn’t until Hill went off oral contraception herself that she began to connect the dots. “I started to feel so differently, that I started to really wonder what we did not know and about the way the pill affects the brain and the way that women experience the world.” Hill recounts  her personal experience and the research she conducted on the Pill’s effects, highlighting a range of impact on physical and mental wellbeing. Everything from “having less energy” to “being at a greater risk for depression and anxiety,” and how “it can reduce sexual desire and sexual functioning.” Emily Dossett, a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences at USC’s  Keck School of Medicine, addresses another often-overlooked aspect of  women’s health: the prevalence of mental health disorders before, during, and after pregnancy. Dossett underscores  that “pregnancy is a time of tremendous and rapid physiological change,” and that “if a woman is susceptible, really to anything; diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disorders,” that pregnancies with those disorders “are more likely to come to the forefront or even emerge for the first time. The same is true for mental illness.” Dossetts points out  that society tends to attach  immense  joy to pregnancy and the celebration of pregnancy that women feel ashamed, even stigmatized, if they mention or complain about how they feel. “We're just realizing how common some of these challenges are in terms of mental health because we're just now at a point where we're allowing women to actually speak up about it.” Roughly “one out of every four to five women” suffer from some kind of mental disorder, Dossett says, with depression and  anxiety being most common.    Because there has been little research on women’s mental health and pregnancy, Dossestt explains that there’s a general “lack of understanding and comprehension and naming of these disorders in the mental health world.” And when it comes to medication; “ the FDA, which approves all drugs, does not permit pregnant or lactating people to be included in drug trials.” So, what options are available for  women who require medication and aspire to conceive? “The question is not really whether or not these medications are safe but it's more of a risk, risk analysis for each individual person,” Dossett says.   “I firmly believe everyone has the right to have a child. Everyone has the right to not have a child and everyone has the right to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment. Those are the tenets of what we call reproductive justice. And I believe they apply to people with mental illness just like anyone else.”  Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week, Terry Real, renowned couples therapist and author “Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship” reflects on the keys to building a successful long term relationship. In order to change inherited behaviors and dysfunction, Real cites his own struggle with family trauma and offers hope that with courage, discipline and hardwork change is indeed possible.   This episode of Life Examined with Terry Real was originally broadcast June 23rd, 2024

If you’ve ever been accused of ‘gaslighting' someone, you might find yourself unsure about what exactly you're being accused of.  The term is the latest amongst a growing collection of popular psychological buzzwords used to describe manipulative or calculating behavior, but it's often misused and misunderstood.   The term originated from the 1940s black-and-white film Gaslight where a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she’s crazy by subtly adjusting the intensity of their home's gas lights when she’s alone in the house. The husband denies there’s anything wrong with the lights, leaving his wife distraught, confused, and questioning her own memory and sanity.   In her book The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life “The Gaslight Effect,”  psychoanalyst Robin Stern explains why this word has gained so much prominence in both personal and professional relationships, particularly among women. “Seeing many women come into my office who were otherwise in their lives the presidents of their company, professional practice, or very successful –good decision makers who felt comfortable in groups, socialized quite a bit, suddenly, in their romantic relationship were uncertain; felt a kind of dislocated or unmoored, felt unstable and second-guessed themselves all the time, [saying to themselves], am I too sensitive, am I too paranoid?”   Stern says that “gaslighting” is an “insidious and sometimes covert form of emotional abuse.” Being gaslit is “a power dynamic repeated over time where the gaslighters intention is to undermine and destabilize the ‘gaslightee’ and lead that person to second-guess themselves, to question their own identity and ultimately their sanity and their character at different times.”  Stern argues that being able to spot this type of behavior is important. When “gaslighting”  happens professionally, it can be tough to tackle. For example, Stern cites doctor/patient relationships and warns that  “if your doctor minimizes your symptoms, if he or she continually interrupts you or accuses you of being too preoccupied with your symptoms, or refuses to order follow-up tests or if you constantly feel like your doctor is rude, condescending, belittling, or passing it off, as ‘that's your age, or you're a woman, or you're a new mom’ or whatever it is, you're being gaslighted.” After recognizing the behavior, Stern suggests taking action.  “Opt out of those power struggles and sort out the truth from the distortion…Nobody needs to put up or should put up with abuse. It is not acceptable for anyone to be intentionally hurting someone else.” 

*This episode originally aired on July 2, 2022. British writer Robert Macfarlane grew up loving mountains. A keen hiker, he says mountains are in his DNA – Macfarlane's father was a mountaineer and his grandfather oversaw some of the early expeditions and the first summit of Mount Everest in the 1950s.   Macfarlane’s own passion for the extremes of the mountains and the wilds of the outdoors fostered yet another interest: writing. In his first book “Mountains of the Mind,” Macfarlane explored why he fell in love with mountains and sought answers as to why so many climbers are willing to die for love of rock and ice. Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook. Macfarlane is a fellow at Emmanuel College at Cambridge University in the UK. He has written numerous books focused on nature and landscape, including “Landmarks” and “The Old Ways,” which led to an exploration of the subterranean world, the topic of his latest book “Underland: A Deep Time Journey.”  “The trodden paths are the beginning of the underworld if you like because they are land hollowed by feet, by time and by wheels, so there were lots of things pointing me down,” Macfarlane says. While the upper world is the place of the gods and awe, he says, the subterranean world is an unseen place — one for burial and hiding. Macfarlane also shares his passion for language and metaphor, explaining that the “underworld” is where “matter meets metaphor” — and that negative words like “down,” “dark,” or “depressed” are deeply ingrained into our language.  Jonathan Bastian talks with Robert Macfarlane about his connection to the landscape and about his exploration and interest in what lies beneath our feet. As a writer, Macfarlane shares his love for language and metaphor and is particularly interested in “gathering words which seemed much more vibrant, reciprocal, and dynamic.” For Macfarlane, the rediscovery of language furthers a connection to the natural world, and Macfarlane says there’s even a map highlighting the regional terms for “creek” across North America.  So how has language and the Tale of Gilgamesh impacted his latest project?  Can music and song breathe life into ancient stories - in a way that writing can’t?   Macfarlane speaks about his interest in music and how it connects to his love of nature and storytelling. He explains how he connected during the pandemic with actor and singer/songwriter Johnny Flynn, and how Epic of Gilgamesh, became the “nourishment that drove the writing of 11 songs” that now appear on the album “Lost in The Cedar Wood.” Music, Macfarlane muses, is “the purest form of magic to me. Writing is labor and trial work and concentration, perspiration and locked rooms. No one would ever want to watch a writer write, right? It's paint drying, it's grass growing, but musicians. ...are magicians weaving a golden thread that they pluck from the air.”

This week, Rabbi Steve Leder, author of “For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story” reflects on the legacy we leave after we’re gone and suggests that rather than a long list of accomplishments, it’s the quality of our relationships, throughout our lives that have the biggest impact on our own happiness and how we are cherished and remembered by others.  This episode of Life Examined with Rabbi Steve Leder was originally broadcast May 28th, 2022