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Welcome to episode 2 of Shrinking America.

This episode is a continuation of our first episode — where we really asked ourselves what we’re doing here. Now that we’ve asked some important defining questions we’re trying to figure out how to walk our talk. Literally. 

We talked a lot last time about how we’re using our training to ask important questions to deepen understanding. We cannot underplay the importance of simply questioning and maintaining a mindset of curiosity - a mindset that inherently fosters connections and growth. But we want this podcast to be more than just helping us to understand. We want you to walk away every time with something tangible. 

So, in this podcast, we will make plenty of reading recommendations, what we refer to as bibliotherapy. We’ll also call upon specific frameworks. Frameworks like Erikson’s stages of psychological development, Kaufman’s stages of moral reasoning or Marsha Linnehan’s dialectical behavioral therapy. We aim to introduce orienting psychological concepts, big and small, that help shift your thinking and to give you practical tools for change. Or - to help you to accept. And hopefully help cultivate some wisdom as to when to practice which. Shout out to the serenity prayer — one of our favorite toolkit items.

And for real — in this episode you’ll hear us actually walking our talk as we go through what we want this toolkit to look like. So please excuse any lower quality audio issues — as Sarah’s sister pointed out in an earlier edit — at one point a murder of crows was so loud they killed our message. So we did incorporate some minor editing of the street noise. But mostly - what you’re getting in this episode is Shrinking America, in the raw.

And hey - We want to build this with you. The toolkit is never finished. It's a living, breathing library. It's something we'll develop together with this community over time. 

So take a walk with us. This is episode two, The Toolkit. 

Deeper Learning Points

• Bibliotherapy, “Bibliotherapy, a relatively underutilized lifestyle intervention in psychotherapy, is a unique cost-effective avenue of treatment that empowers patients by integrating therapeutic reading into their treatment plan.”
• 🧰 Einstein and Aimlessness
• 🧰 Ru Paul: “With all the darkness that’s going on in the world, you can look at the darkness, don’t stare, it will make you crazy, it will make you cross eyed, it will make you what it is. The solution is to create magic, dance, sing, love, create environments where you can find joy, because you can create joy.
• 🧰 Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: We have mentioned this form of therapy before; this time, here are a few more resources:
  • Workbook
  • Values Inventory
  • Happiness Trap Worksheets
• Bright Light Therapy: For the many of us who :( in the wintertime
• 🧰 Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Tsundoku
• Jacob Riis: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
• Confucius: "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."
• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
• The Vital Spark by Lisa Marchiano
• This Jungian Life Podcast
• Echo Chamber Effect: “The ‘Echo Chamber Effect’ refers to a phenomenon in which an individual's beliefs and views are reinforced by exposure to information that aligns with their preexisting opinions”
• The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, Walter Isaacson
• Civil Conversation: The American Bar Association indicates, “One of the hallmarks of a democracy is its citizens' willingness to express, defend, and perhaps reexamine their own opinions, while being respectful of the views of others.”