The SelfWork Podcast

Have you ever thought that intuition could be used for healing crisis? Laura Day, the New York Times bestselling author is back with a long-awaited, life-altering book to help you learn how to do just that. In her past breakthrough book Practical Intuition, she explained how anyone can train themselves to gain full access to the powers of the intuitive brain. However, only Laura’s closest friends knew that behind the book’s phenomenal success was a dark family history. In this, her first book in fifteen years, Day, shares her haunting and unforgettable family story. Multiple suicides including her mother. A home life where the kids actually lived by themselves in a separate apartment from their parents. Only her intuition helped her figure out what no one had taught her – how to care for herself and her siblings. Now, Day has combined her experiences and teaching in her new book, The Prism: Seven Steps to Heal Your Past and Transform Your Future (Spiegel & Grau; April 29, 2025. It reveals seven points in our growth as children and adults that can hinder or help us thrive. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today, I'm excited to introduce SelfWork listeners to The Jordan Harbinger Show, which has become a regular listen on my walks. If you've been looking for another top rated podcast, we hope you'll give Jordan Harbinger a listen.

Today we have a grab bag of questions and comments, with the topics being blame, perfectly hidden depression, and bipolar disorder. The first is from a mom who lived through her daughter and yet also didn’t offer safety or a sense of security – even with the basic things. This listener is now sober for a year (much to her credit) and is asking about how to navigate her relationship with her mom – who's still chaotic. The second is from a therapist who attended one of my workshops on perfectly hidden depression and had a great comment to make. The third is a voicemail from an older mom who sees her daughter as blaming her without reasonable cause. And last, someone whose fairly new boyfriend revealed he’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Since her father also had bipolar disorder, she’s not quite sure how to respond or react… I’m very honored when listeners of SelfWork or readers of my articles on my website respond to me in some way. Realizing there’s much I don’t know after reading or listening to their email or voicemail, I hope what I can do is offer some kind of helpful perspective, knowing only the things they tell me. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Anger has a place. It’s an important emotion to feel and know how to handle. It lets you know a boundary and maybe a very important boundary, value, or expectation has been ignored or crossed or threatened in a very real way. But it’s a skill then to think through what you’re going to do with that anger. It seems that there are a lot more people these days who are angry. Maybe it’s because the immediacy that social media and texting have provided that have made it SO much easier to attack someone else online – or it was online at first. Maybe it’s political rhetoric that’s become more aggressive and insulting, as if that’s okay. There's anger... and then there's losing your shit. But what do you do after you've lost your shit? Losing your shit is about losing control. It’s about very poor management – yes. But that term – albeit fairly colorful – usually means that you got way too mad about something and even you recognize that you were way out of line. Maybe it’s a pattern for you. Maybe you do it all the time. Or maybe it’s after something that suddenly happened – or seemed to suddenly happen - and here comes a shit fit. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Lisa’s very young daughter had told her that her mother’s husband, Lisa’s stepfather, had sexually molested her. And she’s struggling to handle the consequent tsunami of family distrust and estrangement between the members of her family – which is very common but still very painful. At the very time she feels she most needs her mother, her mom has taken her stepfather’s side and believes her granddaughter is making up something that didn’t happen. I'll talk today about the complicated and very painful effects of intrafamilial sexual abuse and how it can tear apart a family. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

One of the most difficult things we all face is how to find meaning in the moments or experiences of our lives that are cruel or devastating, frightening or despairing. The very idea that that might be possible can seem to completely ignore the very real pain or injury of that moment. A book all about finding meaning... One of the most eye-opening books I ever read, I was introduced to in a freshman class I took in college. The course was geared toward the study of how different writers and philosophers, both ancient and present-day, had thought about how to do just that - find meaning. That book was Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” My guest on SelfWork today, Pam Roy, has co-authored a book that serves as a companion book, offering creative reflections on many of Victor Frankl’s essential ideas. She’s full of stories about Frankl – is an expert on both him and his work – and has dedicated much of her life on trying to help people (especially parents) understand that their job is to find their own meaning and model that journey for their children. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today, we'll be covering two distinct and contradictory fears of those having borderline traits. We'll also focus on four different categories within the borderline framework that Dr. Christine Lawson uses in her fantastic book, Understanding the Borderline Mother. Her whole approach is so that you, as her adult child, can learn how to have a relationship with her – with certain guardrails put in place. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Most women feel like failures—always feeling like they’re not doing enough, but so exhausted from their over-functioning that they have no more to give. Their go-to solution? To double down on doing more for everyone but themselves. The result? A vicious cycle of work harder, grow resentful, explode at the kids or partner (or even just internally), feel ashamed, and then work even harder to do more, driving themselves even further down the high-functioning nervous breakdown rabbit hole. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today on SelfWork I’m answering questions about narcissism as well as frustration and even hopelessness about ever healing from the wounds that narcissists can cause. We’ll hear from one man whose dad he describes as extremely self-centered and emotionally abusive to both him and his mother. But asks if this is narcissism or not. Then there’s a very poignant voicemail from a woman who talked eloquently about her past relationships with two different types of narcissists, the first what she calls covert, the second malignant. I’ll describe those terms, so you’ll know what we’re talking about. But she described herself as feeling hopeless about her ability to trust anyone again. What brought these stories together in my own mind was not only that the two stories were about narcissism. But how both listeners conveyed a sense of not knowing how to heal or which direction to go where their lives wouldn’t be so painfully affected by their narcissistic parent or ex-partner. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

The funny thing that shame does? It lies to you. It tells you that you're so terrible. And that you must be the worst of the worst. So, when you meet someone that you like, trust, or respect, and they tell you they understand and have lived what you're living? Gone through what you're going through? You figure out shame has been lying to you all along. Today we’re going to talk about just that. First how shame talks to you through an inner dialogue that’s always commenting and often criticizing you. Second, how shame lies to you. I’ll tell you the details of my own battle with shame. And how I learned to acknowledge the power of its lies. And third – how you can stop that from happening. Or at least become much more aware of when shame is yapping away at you. You can challenge it and even turn down its volume so you can make decisions free from shame’s voice. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

My guest for this episode of SelfWork is Leslie Gray Streeter, a woman I’ve “known” (or as she explains to me is a parasocial friend of mine) – since 2019 or 2020. Leslie’s first book, Black Widow, was about the death of her husband, Scott – and was told with such biting truth and gritty humor that I knew I wanted to keep up with her. She's now written her second book, Families and Other Calamities. She weaves together her own life with her story line, and I once again found her writing - and the characters in this family - to be fascinating, funny, and very human. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today we'll cover the four different types of attachment styles, and how they're created in childhood. As an adult, they influence what you seek in relationship, what you’re comfortable or secure with and what you’re not. But your style can also change – and that’s what we’ll focus on… what you can do about it. You can also click on a link to a questionnaire in your show notes that’s free and you can determine what your own attachment style is currently! Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today on SelfWork, in this "second time around" episode, let's focus on a quartet of players in the self-sabotage realm: procrastination, perfectionism, a negative self-fulfilling prophecy, and of course, imposter syndrome. And as always, we'll talk about... what you can do about it. What's self-sabotage? When you're doing things or not doing things that seem to get in the way of achieving something or creating the life you say you want. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today we’re going to focus on the pressure involved in personal branding. I’m readily admitting, that with my head in the research about the dangers of what’s termed destructive perfectionism, with another recent bestseller being a book called ‘high-functioning depression, and the rise in suicides in our youth ’ – I have some real concerns about the pressure this whole idea brings with it. The Harvard article may say, “like it or not” – but I don’t particularly like to be told that I have to accept something that I think could be harmful to many. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today we’re going to focus on AI (Artificial Intelligence) and how it might be used as in psychology and specifically in therapy. It’s interesting to see how people are responding; some states are banning its use, either to protect the jobs of people who’ve studied and received degrees (as is happening in many professions) or to warn of mistakes that AI can make or harm it can do. There was dramatic and heart-breaking example of this happening just this week. I'd already recorded this episode but then heard about 16 year-old Adam Raine who was allegedly admitting to ChatGBT that he wanted someone to stop him from killing himself. You can hear ChatGBT's alleged answers in this episode. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

If you've ever wondered if you had it in you to stop drinking or change any destructive habit you have, Marci Hopkins wants to tell you that you can. She's the author of Chaos to Clarity, Seeing the Signs and Breaking the Cycles, and an award-winning TV Personality, host, show creator and executive producer of "Wake Up with Marci." Wake Up is a talk show all about inspiration and empowerment, where Marci shares stories of triumph and transformation to spread hope. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Meeting Kyle Kittleson was an incredibly refreshing experience. Why? Because he lives and breathes his passion for bettering the world. Whether it's through his work with animals (he's an animal trainer), his dedication to children's learning about animals on his very popular YouTube channel, BaBa Blast. Or his hosting of the incredibly informative MedCircle.com, where he interviews therapists and doctors and all kinds of people about mental health. About that, he says, "To help other struggle less through proper education has been a privilege." As a child, he formed a club that he called the "Save the World" club. He says now, "Saving the world might be a stretch. However, changing the world – changing the world for better – is absolutely doable." Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Today we're focusing on the anxiety of being rejected, scorned, or judged. And how it’s a prison that keeps you from feeling safe to talk about yourself in real terms. It’s not a diagnosable anxiety disorder – unless you have panic attacks along with that fear. But to me, it’s as real as any of the classic diagnoses that are out there, like OCD or generalized anxiety disorder. But when you can allow yourself to step out of that prison – when you feel safe enough with a therapist or a friend or a partner to say who you really are… the freedom you feel can be incredible. Today's listener/reader comment was a response to the blogpost When Mom Is Emotionally Unstable: Seven Ways to Heal. So, I’ll read her comment and question – and maybe it’ll answer some of your own about your mom or dad whose emotions and behaviors were or are all over the place. There's also my thoughts on the life and death of Anne Burrell. Only compassion and wondering what this wonderful woman could've been dealing with.. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

How To Be Enough, a new book by Ellen Hendriksen is a must-read for anyone struggling with perfectionism and shame. She's a clinical psychologist at Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, and the author of a new book, How to Be Enough: Self-Acceptance for Self-Critics and Perfectionists. She's already a very successful author having published the book How To Be Yourself in 2018 on conquering social anxiety. And I was incredibly interested in talking with her because we are obviously both very concerned about rising perfectionism. She states: "Perfectionism isn't about striving to be perfect. It's about never feeling good enough." Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

What is body dysmorphia? If you've irrationally felt, "I hate the way ....... looks or is," and you're talking about your own body, then you may be struggling with body dysmorphia. You can have a huge preoccupation with whatever defect your mind is telling you that you have – and can spend lots of time and money and energy to try and “fix” the problem. But tragically, the medicine or the surgery or the exercise doesn’t “fix” the irrationality – and so these kinds of problems can exist for years. Our Sponsors: * Check out Calm: https://calm.com/SELFWORK Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands