What happens when the version of success you built your life around suddenly stops working? In this episode of the Anxious Achiever podcast, host Morra Aarons-Mele and I talk about ego death, anxiety, nervous system healing, and what it means to let go of the need to prove yourself. We cover all the hits: career humiliation, social media comparison, identity, chronic pain, and the process of realizing that the things that once made you feel successful or special no longer fit who you are becoming. 

The Anxious Achiever is a popular podcast that sits at the intersection of mental health, anxiety, and professional success. Ego death lives squarely at this intersection: it is all about surrendering control and accepting that your worth cannot come from achievement, productivity, attention, or external validation. Here's a breakdown of some of the other things we cover here:

00:00 Why success, validation, and recognition can become your identity.
06:15 What does ego death mean to you?
10:00 Solutions for letting go of control and external validation.
16:30 Why ego death happens in layers over time.
18:30 How anxiety fuels the need to feel special or secure.
25:30 What is nervous system regulation?
29:15 How chronic pain led Meredith into mind-body healing work.
36:00 How to process emotional pain without shutting down.
41:45 Using symbols, imagery, and intuition to understand emotional healing.
45:00 Spirituality, energy, and finding support beyond achievement.
51:45 Why surrender is central to ego death.
55:45 How to think differently about work in midlife.

To learn more about Morra's work, or her books, go to https://morraam.com/books
or follow her on Linkedin. 

In this episode, I sit down with the somatic psychotherapist, writer, and teacher Ailey Jolie to explore the evolving intersection of trauma, embodiment, and technology.

Ailey shares her journey from eating disorder recovery to psychedelic-assisted research to writing, and her commitment to bringing body-based wisdom into mainstream psychology. She reflects on leaving modeling and medicine after listening to an unmistakable inner “no,” watching her mother make a life-defining decision guided by intuition, and how those early experiences shaped her trust in the body’s voice.

Ailey’s credentials are impeccable. She holds a Master of Counseling Psychology, a Master of Arts in Depth Psychology with an Emphasis in Somatic Studies, and is a graduate of Harvard Medical School’s Global Mental Health: Trauma Recovery Masters certificate program. She’s a certified Focusing Oriented Therapist (FOT), Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner (CI), Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist (C-IFS), and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). Furthermore, she has trained to deliver MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD (MAPS USA) and Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in a research setting. She brings this wide range of experience to her Substack newsletter Words From This Body.

In exploring AI as a kind of “spiritual technologist,” Ailey speaks candidly about her shifting relationship with screens, nervous system regulation, and the need to titrate between in-person depth and digital reach. Together, we discuss dorsal vagal “rest,” the somatic cost of not being believed, why trauma lives differently in female bodies, and the generational work of translating mind-body science — especially through a feminist lens — into something more accessible, embodied, and alive.

Links

In this Body, Ailey's podcast that explores the hidden impact of the unconscious 

In Body Method, Ailey's 14-week guided journey 

Words From This Body, Ailey's Substack newsletter

Sean Hershey is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York who specializes in using mind-body work to help his clients end their chronic pain and, in his words, "truly learn to be themselves." He's the host of a new podcast called The Mind-Body Medicine for Chronic Pain, and in that podcast he works to, piece by piece, share the principles and practices of mindbody healing.

I love Sean's honest and humble approach (he's a Midwesterner, just like me, who grew up in an Irish Catholic community in St. Paul, Minnesota) and think you will too. In this conversation Sean and I talk about the paradox of mindbody healing -- as we embrace our true selves and our body pain goes down, our feelings of separation from others can increase. This of course does not mean we shouldn't do it -- it's just that this angle is not covered as frequently as the success stories are.

Sean and I also share parts of our journey and talk hip pain and what we've learned about it. We talk about what being a therapist pre-mindbody vs post-mindbody looks like for him. And of course we discuss our shared understanding of the TMS (tension myoneural syndrome) personality.

Website: https://www.mindbodymedicineforchronicpain.com/
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/2w673beYfZXmfpznyvaYQg
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/my_gay_therapist/

In this episode of the Anxious Achiever podcast Morra and I dig into some of the new techniques for managing stress and anxiety I first wrote about in the Beautiful Voyager Stress Relief Cheat Sheets on Substack. 

I love Morra’s description of the episode: “In the high stakes world of technology companies, a lot of lip service is paid to well-being and mental health. But Meredith Arthur has been researching practical ways to manage anxiety and overthinking since before it was cool. In this episode, Morra speaks with the author and Beautiful Voyager creator about everything from polyvagal theory, clinical somatics, self-regulation and internal safety. They share their favorite routines for managing anxiety and stress.”

If you haven’t listened to the Anxious Achiever podcast before, this is your chance to learn more about Morra’s work (and check out her book too). You can also listen to my previous Anxious Achiever episode which first came out in Feb 2023.

Thank you, Morra Aarons-Mele, for everything you do to help people understand what anxiety means and how it works. The energy and expertise you bring to this field is inspiring. And thank you to Mary Dooe for the production work on the episode. 

Special guest episode from NYC-based nonprofit Girls Write Now! 

In this episode of the Writing Our Way to Wellness podcast series, Meredith finds herself in the role of interviewee instead of interviewer. This wide-spanning conversation between Meredith and Girls Write Now Staff Member Vahni Kurra covers everything from the pitfalls of ambitions to mental health memes; the connection between physical and emotional pain to the importance of learning to journal as if no one's watching. 

Girls Write Now is an award-winning nonprofit make up of "a diverse, multi-generational, passionate community of writers, creatives, leaders, artists and activists who all share a love of stories." 

Sign up for Writing Your Way to Wellness: https://girlswritenow.org/writing-our-way-to-wellness-podcast/
Donate to Girls Write Now: https://girlswritenow.org/give-to-girls-write-now-2024/

Obi is offering our podcast listeners a special discount! Find a trained peer supporter on peers.net who understands exactly what you're going through, then use code "BEVOYA" to book up to 4 FREE SESSIONS and share it with any teen or young adult in your life who could benefit from some extra support.

A bit about this episode: I've been wanting to speak with Obi Felten on this podcast for years because of her unique blend of product incubation experience (she was the first non-engineering member of the team behind Google's Moonshot factory) and her passion for mental health innovation. Since I also am a non-engineer working at an innovation lab with a passion for mental health, Obi seemed like someone I needed to know.

Obi is the founder and CEO of Peers.net, a telehealth platform where anyone between the ages of 13 and 30 can book 1:1 sessions with a peer supporter of their choice within 24 hours. To experience how powerful it is to talk to someone who has actually been in your shoes, just visit peers.net and pick a supporter that feels right to you.

This conversation traces Obi's career arc along with the personal experiences that led her to found Flourish Labs, a startup focused on elevating professional peer support (a new concept to many) using the tool of technology. We talk about the power of this kind of peer support, especially for people who are just learning to accept their mental health challenges or people who are transitioning out from in-patient care, etc. We discuss what is currently known in the world of mental health treatment, and what the future might look like. Good stuff.

Train to become a peer supporter or sign up for peer support using the code "bevoya" for a discount!

Megan Cornish is a former social worker and writer who's been tackling big questions about how mental health is discussed on Linkedin. That's where she caught my eye: I loved her authentic, honest voice and risk-taking in what tends to be a pretty stuffy and status-quo environment. I felt like Megan was wrestling with the same kinds of things I was about the "industry" of mental health. So when she wrote a list of the companies and people who intrigued her and included me on that list, I wrote back and said I would love to get to know her more in my favorite way — on a podcast conversation.

Here we dig into the world of wellness products, the role of faith and spirituality in Megan's own mental health journey, going "dry" on social media for January, and much more.

To learn more about Megan, check out: The Therapy Trust Collective and Megan's site.

Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, illustrator, and the author of the new book, Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest. In this conversation, we dig into what rest really means and why it's not just napping, for example. We talk about her path to writing and her first book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection. 

Ximena has worked at Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter. She's also a contributor at Fast Company and writes a newsletter, Letters from Ximena. I really loved hearing some of Ximena's insights about a perfectionist's journey to rest. There's something in here for all overthinkers.

Kevin Kelly is best known for co-founding the award-winning Wired magazine  in 1993, but his work spans widely beyond that. He's the founder of the Cool Tools website and podcast (which I've appeared on in the past!), which has been reviewing tools daily for 20 years. He also puts out the Recomendo newsletter with Claudia Dawson, who has also appeared on this podcast. He's the co-chair of The Long Now Foundation, a membership organization that champions long-term thinking. And he's written multiple best-selling books about the future of technology. 

I wanted to sit down and talk to Kevin about his newest book, Excellent Advice for Living, but our conversation spanned many topics, and at the end Kevin gave me some great advice for myself, too, which I will cherish. Thank you Kevin!

B Dukes is so many things. A queer, non-binary filmmaker, a photographer, an activist, a student, and a healer. They tell the incredible story of their journey from a child in the backwoods of South Carolina to the world of Silicon tech...with many stops in between.

We talk about what ancestral healing means, the fascinating world of psychedelics being used to address trauma, and B's travel around the globe to understand new ways of connecting with our "shadow selves." This is the first part of a multi-part episode, with the next episode coming after B's research trip to Ecuador next month. Learn with me, then become as big of a fan of B as I am.

Check out
B's vision: https://www.wtfwth.com/
B's book: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Behind-Empty-Pen/dp/1621472566
B's work with Freedom Community Clinic lead by Bernadette Lim: https://www.freedomcommunityclinic.org/
Follow B on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bdukesthetruth