Dr. Rick and Forrest open up the mailbag to answer questions about complex situations where good process really matters. They discuss whether to get back with an ex who has seemingly changed, relationships with someone with addictive tendencies, the difference between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and narcissistic tendencies, and why genuine change requires more than insight alone. Other topics include how much to tell your therapist, fears of being misunderstood, and how to approach meditation if you have an underlying vulnerability.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction 

2:00: Should I get back with my ex?

13:40: Dating someone with long-term substance use

19:30: Narcissistic traits vs. narcissistic personality disorder

32:40: How much research to bring into therapy

39:50: Fear of being misunderstood and hyper-rationality

47:40: Safe meditation practices for people at risk of depersonalization

55:50: Recap

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Forrest and therapist Brandy Wyant discuss limerence, an intense and often one-sided state of romantic obsession. They explore how limerence differs from both love and ordinary crushes, why uncertainty fuels it, and how it can take over a person’s inner world. Brandy shares both clinical insights and her own lived experience, describing the obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, and shame that often accompany limerence. They examine its overlap with OCD and addiction, and discuss practical strategies from CBT and ACT.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

2:00: What is limerence?

5:26: Limerence vs. a crush

11:28: Why research and treatment lag behind

13:38: Treatment approaches and practical strategies

24:47: Attachment, susceptibility, and shame

29:05: How limerence shapes relationships

38:12: Online communities and reinforcing obsession

49:18: Self-worth and validation

53:41: Recap

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Sponsors

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Dr. Rick and Forrest are joined by Mingyur Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher, to explore calming anxiety with awareness, relaxing unhealthy wanting, and finding a deeper sense of our innate goodness. Rinpoche shares how a near-death experience during his four-year “wandering retreat” transformed his relationship to fear and deepened his gratitude for life. They discuss practical ways to see the true nature of the mind, soften the grip of aversion and attachment, reframe fear as care, and embrace impermanence as a path to freedom.

Learn more about Rinpoche's live teaching in South Africa and join for free online at https://tergar.org/southafrica.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

3:33: How a near-death experience dissolved Rinpoche’s fear

7:06: Learning not to fight panic attacks

10:25: Seeing anxiety as clouds in the sky

14:18: Awareness, wisdom, and love as innate qualities

18:39: Recognizing basic goodness even in self-hatred

25:28: Courage to be with doubt and uncertainty

27:51: “Anytime, anywhere” meditation practice

33:57: Awareness and emptiness as inseparable

46:49: Letting old selves die and embracing change

52:41: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the evolution of psychoanalysis after Freud, highlighting key ideas from figures like Adler, Klein, Winnicott, and Hillman. They track how the field expanded from focusing on the individual ego all the way out to exploring the existential forces that shape who we are. They focus on what lessons we can take away from each of these influential thinkers into our everyday lives. Topics include inferiority complexes, defense mechanisms, object relations, authentic vs. false self, developmental psychology, adaptation, and our confrontation with life's ultimate concerns like death and meaninglessness.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

4:20: Alfred Adler: Inferiority, contribution, and healthy striving

14:05: Anna Freud: Ego defenses and real-time coping

20:09: Erik Erikson: Lifespan development and identity crises

33:20: Melanie Klein: Object relations, splitting, and managing complexity

46:46: Donald Winnicott: True self, good-enough parenting, and holding environments

51:09: Heinz Kohut: Self-psychology, mirroring, and healthy narcissism

1:02:32: Wilhelm Reich: Somatic therapy and character armor

1:08:25: Neo-Jungians: Archetypes, imagination, and symbolic mind

1:18:18: Irvin Yalom: Existential psychotherapy and meaning-making

1:26:50: Recap 

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

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Forrest and associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira talk about healthy (and unhealthy) anger. They challenge the common framing of anger as a “secondary emotion,” and explore why anger matters, how it relates to trauma, and what it can tell us about our wants and needs. They discuss how to access healthy protest and work with less healthy forms of anger like explosive rage, repression, defensiveness, passive aggression, and righteousness. Elizabeth shares insights from both her personal experience as someone with CPTSD and her clinical practice.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction: Why anger matters, and why it’s misunderstood

3:32: How trauma shapes our relationship to anger

5:40: Bypassing anger in therapy

9:04: What happens when anger is suppressed

12:29: Reclaiming anger: submit, explode, or something else

15:45: Anger as a signal of wants and needs

16:20: Boundaries, protest, and complex trauma

25:01: When CPTSD makes it hard to know what you want

30:06: Dissociation, structural trauma, and accessing anger

35:04: Why we need others to co-regulate big emotions

43:20: Emotional responsibility, self-awareness, and repair

53:26: Reconnecting with wants and needs through play

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the ideas, context, and legacy of psychoanalysis, the often-controversial origin point for modern therapy. They discuss psychoanalysis’ early history and key concepts like the unconscious mind, repression, inner conflict, and transference. Alongside those major contributions, they wrestle with what hasn’t aged so well: the reductionism, murky ethics, and deep entanglements with colonialism and the Victorian worldview. This episode is both a tribute to and a critique of psychoanalysis as a rich, flawed, and deeply influential starting point for modern therapy.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction: Why do this episode?

3:40: Appreciating historical and cultural context in therapy

7:15: What is psychoanalysis?

10:35: Freud’s key insight, and the five “big ideas” of psychoanalysis

18:00: The structure of the mind

24:00: Repression, catharsis, and “experiencing out”

27:35: Transference, countertransference, and defenses

29:10: Freud’s psychosexual theory and its legacy

32:55: What psychoanalysis looks like in practice today

41:05: Historical origins: Freud, hysteria, and the “talking cure”

46:45: Freud’s philosophical influences and colonial context

52:00: The moral and political implications of psychoanalytic theory

58:10: Freud’s personal contradictions and complicated legacy

1:07:50: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, [follow this link](https://www.patreon.com/beingwellpodcast)

Sponsors

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Forrest and Dr. Rick discuss what's really wrong with the self-help industry, going beyond the obvious pseudoscience and snake oil to examine deeper structural issues. They explore the industry's mixed-bag focus on individual responsibility, the risks of turning healing into a never-ending project, performative personal growth, narcissism, social media and capitalism, and honest striving vs. hustle culture. They also talk about their personal experiences navigating our relationship to the industry. Throughout, Rick and Forrest emphasize finding the middle path: balancing agency with awareness, growth with acceptance, and sincerity with skepticism.

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

4:32: Healthy striving vs. obsessive self-improvement

8:27: The role of motivation: growth, shame, and self-worth

12:13: Problems with placing all responsibility on the individual

20:46: Performative self-help and spiritual status-seeking

26:13: Excessive self-preoccupation and narcissistic drift

34:34: Buddhist insights on “selfing” and the illusion of identity

44:43: Self-help as hustle culture

50:57: The generational shift from grindset to bed rotting

54:09: The self-help industrial complex and its incentives

58:56: Commodifying the self and seeking validation

1:04:18: Creating ethical, transparent content

1:08:12: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

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Dr. Rick and Forrest answer listener questions about perfectionism, performance anxiety, trauma, and relationships. They explore how early praise for being “gifted” can create a fear of failure and contribute to “failure to launch,” and share ways to shift from focusing on an idealized future to appreciating your actual self right now. They discuss learned helplessness, the freeze response, and practical ways to build agency and vitality to counter feelings of powerlessness. Other topics include the differences between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, overcoming performance anxiety, and how to decide which friendships are worth investing in.

Key Topics:

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

Try Daily30+, the 30+ plant prebiotic supplement from ZOE. Go to zoe.com/daily30 today, and you’ll get a free bright yellow ZOE tin and a magnetic scoop.

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Forrest is joined by associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira to discuss parts work, psychological defenses, and how real change happens. They talk about the inner child work Forrest recently did during an episode with renowned therapist Terry Real, and how that led to meaningful changes in their relationship. Elizabeth and Forrest unpack the therapeutic process Terry led Forrest through, and discuss clinical technique, why small shifts can lead to big changes, the challenges of working with developmentally young material, and why insight alone is rarely enough.

The episode with Terry we refer to throughout this conversation is titled “Terry Real: Relationships, Trauma, and Inner Child Work.” Here’s the Spotify link. 

Key Topics:

0:00: Introduction

2:40: Elizabeth’s reaction to Forrest’s work with Terry

5:05: Avoidance vs. anxiety

7:21: Unpacking Terry Real’s therapeutic approach

14:37: Avoiding through “fixing”

20:54: What’s changed since then?

31:00: Elizabeth’s experience with inner child work

42:32: How does real change happen?

51:54: “You can’t make your partner change.”

55:15: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

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Life today is safer and more comfortable than ever before, so why do so many people feel unhappy, lonely, and anxious? Forrest talks with evolutionary psychologist Dr. William von Hippel about this paradox in light of our two core needs: autonomy and connection. He argues that modern life has pushed us too far in the direction of autonomy, and that we need to reclaim connection in order to find happiness. 

They discuss how our evolutionary past shaped our needs for autonomy and connection, the tension between them, and why social connection matters so much for our well-being. They also touch on gender and cultural differences, common misunderstandings about evolutionary psychology, and what people can do to create more balanced and connected lives today.

About our Guest: Dr. William von Hippel is an evolutionary psychologist and former professor at the University of Queensland. He has authored over 150 scientific publications including his books The Social Leap and The Social Paradox.

Key Topics:

0:00: Why hasn’t modern life made us happier?

3:20: The evolution of autonomy and connection

10:15: How modern life favors autonomy over connection

18:10: “Sad success stories,” and the cost of competence

20:00: Competence vs warmth as social signals

26:00: Evolutionary mismatch, and its impact on well-being

29:00: How to understand evolutionary psychology

34:00: Evolved gender differences in autonomy and connection

42:00: Balancing sociocultural and evolutionary differences

49:00: What do those gender differences look like in practice?

55:50: Finding a healthy balance between autonomy and connection

1:08:55: Recap

Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link.

Sponsors

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