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Your Mental Breakdown

Health & Wellness Podcasts

A psychotherapy-entertainment podcast featuring licensed therapist, Doug Friedman and a co-host. Episodes include real therapy sessions in sequence with a real client that has agreed to be recorded throughout the process of therapy. After the session, Doug and his co-host break down the session and they give you their clinical insights with personality, humor, and the opportunity to use therapeutic tools in your own life.

Location:

United States

Description:

A psychotherapy-entertainment podcast featuring licensed therapist, Doug Friedman and a co-host. Episodes include real therapy sessions in sequence with a real client that has agreed to be recorded throughout the process of therapy. After the session, Doug and his co-host break down the session and they give you their clinical insights with personality, humor, and the opportunity to use therapeutic tools in your own life.

Language:

English

Contact:

3232139900


Episodes

128. Drew #97: The Fire in Your Own Belly

3/14/2024
Doug helps Drew focus on himself, not just the baby on the way. Drew admits that he isn’t feeling joy in things the way he’s used to feeling it and that it’s taking him out of the present. Drew realizes that he’s looking for the joy instead of being in the moment and letting the joy find him. This leads Drew to acknowledge the existential anxiety that he’s also been feeling. Doug and Kenzie discuss anhedonia and sitting with clients when they are experiencing this feeling. They also talk about what happens when we may have missed something in a session as a therapist or feeling like our therapist missed something as a client. Have we missed something else, let us know… or if you’ve missed something, check out the podcast archives and listen to Drew and Sarah from day one of their journey in therapy! Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:14:15

127. Sarah #38: Giving Yourself Permission to Feel

3/7/2024
Doug helps Sarah move forward along a path toward her emotions. They discuss her learned pattern of being dismissive of herself and her feelings. The pursuit of data and facts that turns Sarah into the “justice warrior” is a defense mechanism to not feel the feelings. Doug uses an analogy with Spock and Kirk to highlight a spectrum of being logically driven versus being emotionally driven. Sarah connects this to how she can sound like a robot sometimes while suppressing and invalidating her own feelings. Doug invites Sarah to give herself permission to bring out her inner Captain Kirk so she can practice allowing her emotions to come up and out. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:04:43

126. Drew #96: Much Love Because Here Comes the Challenge

2/29/2024
Drew is feeling like an adult and living in the world. He acknowledges feeling strength where he used to feel weakness in asking for help. He’s getting support in his life by virtue of actually asking for help from others rather than doing everything on his own. Doug and Drew talk about the subtle differences between being an individual and being independent. Doug and Kenzie discuss the therapeutic relationship as a secure attachment. With this secure base to jump off from, Doug is able to challenge Drew, and Drew is able to explore his independence. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:09:05

125. Sarah #37: I Feel Like I'm Going to Think About It a Lot

2/22/2024
Sarah is experiencing the difference between being of value at work and being the singular essential piece that also carries with it all the responsibility and pressure. She notices how she’s starting to relax a bit and soften her edges when she isn’t in complete control. Doug helps Sarah acknowledge how the control issue arose to protect herself as a child growing up in a cult, but it isn’t serving her well now in her adult life. Doug invites her to come out of the protective shell to feel her own emotional experience rather than stay “safe” inside and keep her feelings internalized. Kenzie presses Doug to break down the abundant use of analogy and personal stories in session rather than stay in Sarah’s own personal experiences and emotions. They find that the analogies, especially the airplane one, really do land for Sarah… do they land for you too? Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:58:37

124. Drew #95: Digging Up That Old Polaroid

2/15/2024
Doug and Kenzie talk about connecting to your inner child. Then in the session, Drew is adulting and creating distance from his parents while preparing to be a father himself. Doug digs deeper with Drew in the session to get to the emotions underneath all the progress we see and hear on the outside. Doug explains an analogy of photographs to show how we often perceive (and misperceive) people. There are polaroid snapshots from one instance in time and there are “Harry Potter” pictures that constantly move and change - but neither is a true moving picture of our actual life now. The images someone has in mind of us don’t necessarily line up with how we really are now. We want people to see us and know us for who we are, but we are constantly changing. This gets murky when we put up walls and present false pictures to people, especially family members. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:05:05

123. Sarah #36: The Scooby-Doo Effect: Catching Up With Yourself

2/8/2024
Sarah keeps learning and exploring in therapy – and her family is noticing the change in her and the progress she’s made as a result. Doug explains how and why he uses stories and analogies so often in sessions. It’s an effective way to make a concept less clinical and more relatable and memorable for clients. He names a sensation for Sarah, “The Scooby-Doo Effect,” when the cartoon bodies get scared out of their skins then later join back together. This helps highlight the concept of how Sarah is now catching up with herself after being in a heightened cortisol state of fight or flight to get through an event or experience. From this place, Sarah can take stock of what she just went through and process it. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:56:51

122. Drew #94: Big Ol’ Heaping Helping of Avoidance

2/2/2024
Drew’s adulting! He is practicing parenting himself, in preparation for his baby on the way. Drew acknowledges feeling anxious about how his parents will react to the pregnancy news he has yet to share with them. Doug challenges Drew to stay focused on himself and bring his emotions out to alleviate the anticipatory anxiety. Doug and Kenzie look at what it means to “Double down, don't shut down." We can hear Drew name and feel the feelings in the session and release some of the judgement he’s been holding inside. As he says, “Being able to say it out loud helps me not avoid it.” Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:01:00

122. Drew #94: Big Ol’ Heaping Helping of Avoidance

2/1/2024
Drew’s adulting! He is practicing parenting himself, in preparation for his baby on the way. Drew acknowledges feeling anxious about how his parents will react to the pregnancy news he has yet to share with them. Doug challenges Drew to stay focused on himself and bring his emotions out to alleviate the anticipatory anxiety. Doug and Kenzie look at what it means to “Double down, don't shut down." We can hear Drew name and feel the feelings in the session and release some of the judgement he’s been holding inside. As he says, “Being able to say it out loud helps me not avoid it.” Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:00:06

121. Sarah #35: Therapy is the Rehearsal for Life

1/25/2024
Sarah follows up on last session’s “wow moment” about using the concept of natural consequences rather than being judge and jury when giving a punishment. Sarah is re-parenting herself while effectively parenting her kids. People around Sarah are starting to notice a difference in her as a result of her processing in therapy and making previously unconscious habits and patterns more conscious. Doug helps Sarah uncover a moment in her past when her emotional expression was literally shut down by being told that “No one cares.” We’ll see if Sarah can give herself permission to go back to a time in her life when it was safe to express herself before she learned to shut it down. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:10:58

120. Drew #93: Quarter-life Crisis: I Wanna Laugh, Cry, and Punch a Wall

1/18/2024
It’s the return of Drew to the podcast! We check in with his health, and the stress he’s feeling as a 26 year old adult with a baby on the way. Doug challenges Drew with tough love to see his pattern of trying to avoid present issues. Drew says he keeps everything up in the air where he doesn’t have to catch it and face it. He is able to take his head out of the sand and look between the immediate financial pressures and the larger picture of existential anxiety. Drew sees, and feels, what he’s really avoiding - his emotional experience in the here and now. He is able to go there in session with Doug, and express feeling like he wants to cry, laugh, and punch a wall. Doug’s Group Therapy Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:10:14

119. Sarah #34: The Sarah Whisperer: (Re)Parenting With Natural Consequences

1/11/2024
Doug introduces the concept of natural consequences to Sarah as opposed to being judge and jury as a parent, even if the punishment fits the crime. Sarah acknowledges that she is not failing as a parent; rather, she is growing as a parent. She points out that her growth is carrying over to other aspects of her life. Sarah calls Doug “the Sarah whisperer,” and Doug turns this around and reminds her that she is the one whispering to herself and growing. She is, in effect, actively re-parenting herself – and we hear it happening in this session. In the breakdown, Doug and Kenzie talk about how to know which direction to take a client during a session, especially when there are moments with multiple possibilities to process. Therapy is like a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book – if only real life let us peek ahead at the options before choosing! Doug’s Group Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok Mentioned in this Episode: Choose Your Own Adventure books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/19/the-enduring-allure-of-choose-your-own-adventure-books

Duration:01:13:17

118. Sarah #33: Courage is Fear Walking

1/4/2024
We’re back! Doug is joined by Kenzie on the breakdown and they pick up right where Sarah left off in her therapy sessions. Sarah has been listening to podcasts featuring other people’s experiences in cults, which gets her intellectualizing how growing up in a cult still affects issues of power and control in her life now. Doug helps Sarah get into the emotion by putting the focus on “her” own personal story and subjective relationship with “her” parents in the cult, rather than looking objectively at “one's” experience and “one’s” parents. Doug tells Sarah a story about working with a teenager to highlight how someone can access their deeper feelings by allowing anger to come out first rather than suppressing it with restraint or punishment. Sarah is motivated to let anger come up and come out to get to the real feelings that she’s compartmentalized. Doug’s Group Practice YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:01:09:13

117. Sarah #32: Camping In Your Mind

6/1/2023
We discuss the issue of “control” after it came up in our small talk about parties, drugs, and past behavior. Sarah sees clearly how the abuse she suffered in the cult as a child triggers her so profoundly in her current life. She is starting to make a connection of how setting personal boundaries can keep her safe, especially when anxiety comes. Sarah is now personalizing her experiences, as evidenced by her saying “I” at several points in the session rather than referring to the general “one” or “you.” Doug tells a story about camping with his dog that helps Sarah express her own feelings about freedom and safety. It’s a great benchmark moment in their therapy for Sarah to have identified a frame of reference for those feelings. Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:46:16

116. Sarah #31: I’m Gonna Breathe, You Talk

5/25/2023
Sarah was super busy at work, had drama with her ex, and then got Covid! In session, she expresses that it’s hard for her to say no to anyone, especially her children. Doug helps her stay with the emotion and process “disappointment." Sarah recognizes that she had been running on adrenaline and that she needs to take care of herself. Doug highlights this as her having a personal boundary even in the face of disappointing her son. Is this the beginning of a new neural pathway in her brain that allows her to take care of herself and not constantly put others’ needs ahead of her own? Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:45:51

115. Drew #92: Living For Myself

5/11/2023
Drew is feeling “confident alone” rather than “scared alone.” He describes it like being the driver of the car of his own life and holding the steering wheel himself. He is less co-dependent and not feeling so impacted by triggers and the old wound of abandonment by mom. From this place, Drew is living for himself - although he drops big news at the end of the session indicating that he definitely won’t be living just for himself anymore in about nine months! Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:34:30

114. Sarah #30: Re-Personalizing Your Experiences

5/4/2023
Sarah has sense memories in the present that trigger some traumatic experiences from her upbringing in a cult. She depersonalized her trauma in the cult as a defense mechanism, but she is now able to go through it in therapy. From this more secure and stable place, Sarah is starting to connect emotionally to her own life with understanding and compassion. Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:40:03

113. Drew #91: The Challenge, Not the Fluff

3/30/2023
Drew went back home to his parent’s house to re-ground himself. He’s been able to practice how to be present with his parents and not take on the full responsibility for their well-being. Although Drew feels more adult, Doug takes a tack of challenging him in session rather than the “fluff” of praising him and just using unconditional positive regard. Drew loves the challenge approach and is able to explore how he is starting to feel like an adult, but still acting like a child. In Drew’s own words, he said, “I think I’m still learning how to be an adult in the process of learning how to be a parent, in the process of figuring out my childhood.” Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:42:05

113. Drew #91: The Challenge, Not the Fluff

3/30/2023
Drew went back home to his parent’s house to re-ground himself. He’s been able to practice how to be present with his parents and not take on the full responsibility for their well-being. Although Drew feels more adult, Doug takes a tack of challenging him in session rather than the “fluff” of praising him and just using unconditional positive regard. Drew loves the challenge approach and is able to explore how he is starting to feel like an adult, but still acting like a child. In Drew’s...

Duration:00:42:05

112. Sarah #29: It’s Actually Not Crazy

3/16/2023
Sarah is learning not to take ownership of someone else’s feelings. She is still owning her part in triggering someone, but she is starting to allow others to be not ok without having to fix it. Sarah is no longer accepting her old default that there’s something’s wrong with her, or that she needs to fix every uncomfortable situation. Doug points out that she is embodying the Carl Rogers quote, “When I accept myself as I am, then I can change.” Sarah has accepted herself as a trauma survivor and is “lit tur uh lee” reshaping her brain. Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:43:51

111. Drew #90: Being the Green Beret

3/9/2023
Doug provides the space to let Drew complain about his job and his boss – something many of us can relate to feeling! Outside of work, Drew is feeling like a grown-up as he individuates from his parents. He is relating to his dad as a fellow adult rather than as a child that needs his father’s approval. He’s redefining the emotional ties he has to his family while he lives his own life for himself. Doug’s Group Practice Meredith Levy YMB Webpage Join Us on Social Media: YMB The Facebook Group YMB on Instagram YMB on TikTok

Duration:00:30:39