Category: Psychology

Making Sense of Menopause

Susan Willson, CNM, is a Yale-educated certified nurse midwife and certified clinical thermographer with more than 40 years of experience in the women’s health field. She has taught at Omega Institute and is a frequent lecturer for the American College of Nurse-Midwives, where she lectures on women’s health and the emotional work of menopause. With Sounds True, she has authored the book, Making Sense of Menopause: Harnessing the Power and Potency of Your Wisdom Years

In this podcast, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with Susan Willson about her new book and her efforts to bring menopause out of the shadows and into the light, so we can learn how to embrace this passage to reclaiming our power and creativity as wise women and truth tellers. Susan and Tami also discuss: how our birth traditions reveal the heart of our culture, Susan’s journey as a cross-cultural midwife, normalizing the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, overcoming the shame associated with menopause, why we need to tell our stories in order to heal, the hormone estriol and its connection to the brain’s creative centers, finding support for challenging symptoms so you can return to balance, key lifestyle changes to restore energy, reestablishing healthy sleep, good stress versus bad stress, how women and men’s sex drive changes as we age, the croning ritual and other ways to mark our passages in life, the qualities and characteristics of a wise woman, and more

Not Being a Prisoner to Your Nervous System

Jeffrey Rutstein, PsyD, is a clinical psychotherapist, trauma expert, and a longtime student and teacher of meditation. In collaboration with Sounds True, Dr. Rutstein is hosting the upcoming Healing Trauma Program: A Nine-Month Training to Regulate Your Nervous System, Embody Safety, and Become a Healing Presence. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Rutstein about the physical aspects of trauma and how to understand their influences on daily life. He explains his model of “the owner’s manual of your nervous system” and how actively reading your body state is the first step to unraveling traumatic aftereffects. Tami and Dr. Rutstein also discuss self-regulation during stressful situations, practices for anchoring in the body, and how our understanding of trauma has evolved over time. Finally, they talk about consciously interrupting trauma-born behaviors, as well as the ongoing work of teaching emotional literacy and resilience.

Becoming an Active Operator of Your Nervous System

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. Her clinical publications include The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation and The Polyvagal Flip Chart: Understanding the Science of Safety, and her Sounds True publications include the audio program, Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory, and her new book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.

In this podcast, Tami Simon converses with Deb Dana to offer listeners a practical understanding of Polyvagal Theory and how we can begin to decode the language of our body for better health and better relationships. Tami and Deb also discuss the dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral states of our nervous system; the gifts of becoming “anchored in ventral”; neuroception, your nervous system’s way of taking in information to assess your safety; curiosity and the capacity for self-reflection; the importance of self-care; co-regulation as a biological imperative; why self-regulation is especially critical for therapists and other helping professionals; music and nature as healing resources; the practice of self-compassion as a means of “getting our anchor back”; and more.

Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic

Dr. Paul Conti is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his psychiatry training at Stanford and at Harvard. Dr. Conti has served patients and clients throughout the United States and internationally. With Sounds True, he has released a new book called Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic: How Trauma Works and How We Can Heal From It (featuring a foreword by Lady Gaga). In this podcast, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Conti about healing the unresolved trauma we hold inside both individually and collectively. They also discuss how trauma operates differently in different people, overcoming “reflexive shame,” self-inquiry and the embrace of a “true life narrative,” perseverance and self-compassion, strategies for dealing with traumatic triggers, resolving our grief, how trauma affects the map of our inner landscape, inherited trauma, become a healing resource for others, and much more.

The Power of Emotions at Work

Karla McLaren is an award-winning author, social science researcher, and renowned expert in emotions and empathy. Her work focuses on her grand unified theory of emotions, which reconsiders how we think of “negative” emotions and opens new pathways into self-awareness, communication, and empathy. With Sounds True, Karla is the author of the landmark book The Language of Emotions, a book on The Art of Empathy, and a new book called The Power of Emotions at Work: Accessing the Vital Intelligence in Your Workplace. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Karla about why the full range of emotions is necessary for us to bring forth our best thinking. They discuss the “toxic positivity bias” that has become the norm in the contemporary workplace, how this leads to widespread suffering and dysfunction, and how we can achieve an “emotionally well-regulated” workplace that works for all of us.

Trauma Recovery and Post-Traumatic Growth

Dr. Arielle Schwartz is a clinical psychologist, author, teacher, and widely sought-out voice in the healing of trauma and complex trauma. She offers workshops for therapists on EMDR and somatic therapy, and maintains a private practice in Boulder, Colorado. She has written a book called The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook, and with Sounds True, has created a new audio teaching series called Trauma Recovery, A Mind-Body Approach to Becoming Whole. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Arielle about reframing the narrative of trauma recovery to one of growth and meaning-making, rather than an effort to regain something we’ve lost. Arielle offers a look into different types of trauma, and explores how the body shapes itself around these wounds. She shares strategies for adapting to adversity and attending to trauma in ways that help victims return to a felt sense of safety within themselves. Finally, Tami and Arielle discuss how we can embrace the hero or heroine’s journey in our own lives as we grow from trauma.

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