Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Protect your peace, set boundaries, don't let people drain your energy…there’s a lot of advice like that, and it’s easy to take it a little too far. Therapist and bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab joins Forrest to discuss the unintended consequences of the boundaries movement.  They talk about how the helpful concept of boundaries led some toward isolation and rigid standards, and focus on healthy dependency: the reality that we all need other people. Nedra explains the spectrum from codependency to hyper-independence, why your attachment style is more flexible than you think, and how the stories we tell about ourselves become self-fulfilling. Throughout, they focus on developing key aspects of healthy dependency: being able to ask for help, receive support, tolerate distance, feel comfortable in closeness, and repair after conflict.  About our Guest: Nedra Glover Tawwab is a licensed therapist, relationship expert, and best-selling author with over 2 million followers on social media. Her new book is The Balancing Act: Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself. Key Topics:  0:00: Intro: Misconceptions around boundaries 7:14: What we get wrong about codependency 11:13: The consequences of individualism 15:00: How this all relates to attachment styles 20:03: Personal narratives and self-concept 24:50: Opposite action vs. trusting your gut 27:46: Developing self-awareness around your tendencies 34:42: Navigating distance and boundaries in relationships 44:30: Showing up for friends in difficult relationships 52:50: How to be in imperfect relationships  55:51: How to move out of the shallow zone in relationships  1:07:20: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code BEINGWELL at huel.com/beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is mindfulness really? According to one fourth-grader, "Not hitting someone in the mouth." Legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg joins Rick and Forrest to discuss how we can work skillfully with anger, fear, and reactivity without becoming doormats or numbing ourselves out through the lens of her new children’s book Kind Karl. They explore the protective function of anger, and how we can create more space by relating differently to our thoughts, emotions, and sense of self. Sharon shares a Buddhist lens that links anger and fear, and how looking closely at “what’s in the anger” can help us get clarity without collateral damage. Along the way, they talk about the difference between healthy moral anger and the habit of anger, how to extract the positive energy from difficult emotions without getting burned, and how lovingkindness and self-compassion can be active, strengthening forces.  About our Guest: Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, a world-renowned teacher of mindfulness, and author or co-author of 14 books including her seminal work Lovingkindness and her first children’s book Kind Karl: A Little Crocodile with Big Feelings. Key Topics: 0:00: Intro and Sharon’s new children’s book 1:30: Rick and Sharon’s personal history 3:40: Making abstract concepts direct and simple 6:00: “Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth.” 12:30: Equanimity, reactivity, and our relationship with pleasure and pain 26:48: Healthy moral anger and outrage 34:17: How mindfulness decenters the self 43:53: Decoupling identity from states of suffering 50:23: Dissolving boundaries, self protection, and loneliness 1:03:09: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forrest and somatic therapist Elizabeth Ferreira explore a common source of relationship conflict: the mismatch between “fixing” (moving quickly into problem-solving) and “feeling” (wanting attunement and empathy before solutions). They talk about where these patterns come from, how each functions as a psychological defense, and the role of gender socialization, identity, and adaptation. The conversation also touches on trauma, nervous-system activation, and why building safety usually comes before real change. Key Topics: 0:00: Intro 3:40: “Fixing” vs. “feeling,” and why both can be protective strategies. 6:03: Socialization and learned coping styles. 9:12: Why conflict happens 14:28: Attunement, then problem-solving. 18:35: How discomfort with emotion shapes communication 30:48: What change looks like in practice. 33:49: Trauma and nervous-system activation 42:32: Helping logical-first people open up emotionally. 46:49: “Do you want empathy or solutions?” 49:03: Teaser about Complex PTSD in relationships. 52:30: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code BEINGWELL at huel.com/beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Over 100,000 people have given their Caraway Kitchen products a 5 star rating, and Caraway’s cookware set is a favorite for a reason. Visit Carawayhome.com/BEINGWELL or use code BEINGWELL at checkout. Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Top performance coach and author Brad Stulberg joins Forrest to reframe and reclaim excellence. Brad explains how real excellence - involved engagement with something you care about - is the healthy middle path between over-the-top hustle-culture and detached nonchalance. They discuss the current culture of pseudo-excellence, the risks and rewards of caring deeply, how modern life can derail us, and how the real prize is the person you become while trying to reach your goals. Brad shares practical tools to build the habit of excellence: clear aims, micro-milestones, consistency over intensity, constraint-based discipline, and connection. About our Guest: Brad is a regular contributor at the New York Times, the co-host of the Excellence, Actually podcast, and on faculty at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Public Health. He’s also the author of a number of books, including The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World. Key Topics:  0:00: Life feels better when we’re “trying well” 1:56: What does Brad mean by excellence? 3:42: What excellence is not 5:06: Staying on the path: how to keep going when results are slow 11:56: Excellence vs. skill 21:10: The Nonchalance Epidemic 27:29: Building your “identity house” 35:29: Specific tools for excellence 44:12: Excellence vs flow 50:10: Finding the enjoyable aspects of hard things 1:01:11: Gumption 1:03:57: “See the ball go through the net” 1:05:56: How to finish a process that never ends 1:13:22: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% OFF online with my code BEINGWELL at huel.com/beingwell. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show! Over 100,000 people have given their Caraway Kitchen products a 5 star rating, and Caraway’s cookware set is a favorite for a reason. Visit Carawayhome.com/BEINGWELL or use code BEINGWELL at checkout. Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forrest and Dr. Rick explore how well-intentioned self-help advice can drift away from science under the incentives of the attention economy, where overclaiming, alarmist framing, and “this one simple trick” outperforms nuance. They talk about how authority gets manufactured, how the algorithm encourages overclaiming, and how “theories of everything” lead to misinformation. Dr. Rick and Forrest discuss whether seemingly harmless pseudoscientific practices can create a slippery slope, lowering the importance of material evidence and acting as an on-ramp to more consequential misinformation. Key Topics:  0:00 Introduction 2:00 The attention economy 9:00 The problems with clickbait 18:30: The risks of sprawling expertise 25:15: Modality capture: when all you have is a hammer 27:15: ADHD and trauma 39:24: If science changes, what can we trust? 42:30: How “fringe” can become mainstream 50:10: How do you decide who to trust? 1:06:00: The slippery slope of “woo” 1:11:35: What’s a better alternative? 1:21:11: Recap Support the Podcast: We're on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Go to Zocdoc.com/BEING to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Grab Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15% off online with my code BEINGWELL at https://www.huel.com/beingwell. New customers only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices