In this episode, I talk about a concept from Buddhism which can work to take the pressure off, release attachments, and decrease anxiety.  It’s a bit mystical, but if you can wrap your head around it, it can be a powerful way to rebalance your body, mind, and spirit. 

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   
 
Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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In this episode, I give a simple breathing exercise which, if used regularly, can do wonders to shift our mental and emotional state.  This exercise has helped me for many years, and I continue to practice it. 

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   
 
Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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In this episode, I talk about how the concept of self-esteem is bound to mislead us.  Good self-esteem and bad self-esteem alike are recipes for turmoil, because they both rest on the same fallacy – self-judging.  It’s impossible to give ourselves a universal report card and overall rating.  While specific actions of ours might be able to be evaluated, our overall worth as a person can not be.  We are imperfect, fallible human beings, and we have value simply for being alive, nothing more. 

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   
 
Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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In this episode, I talk about how lots of emotional tension results by holding onto some form of perfectionism, whether it’s perfectionism of self, others, or the conditions of life.  We want to be approved of by others; we want others to treat us nice; and we want the conditions of life to be smooth and easy.  But sometimes these wants turn into rigid demands, and our expectations of perfection produce anxiety and emotional tension.

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   
 
 Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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The Influence Matrix  is a map of the architecture underlying the way humans process social information, develop social goals, and are guided by emotions in navigating the social environment. The Influence Matrix posits that the core social motivation is social influence, and that there are universal characteristics associated with high relative to low social influence and that humans have built in capacities for perceiving these characteristics and are generally motivated to seek and approach indicators of high influence and avoid and withdraw from indicators of low influence. 

You can see the diagram here. 

Gregg Henriques, Ph.D., author of A New Unified Theory of Psychology, directs the Combined Clinical and School Psychology Doctoral Program at James Madison University. He is a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in depression, suicide and the personality disorders. He has developed a new meta-theoretical system for psychology articulated in many professional journals, and is now applying that system to researching well-being, personality and social motivation, and he and his students are working on the development of a general system of psychotherapy. Henriques received his M.A. in Clinical/Community Psychology from UNC-Charlotte and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Vermont. He also completed several years of post-doctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania under Aaron T. Beck exploring the effectiveness of various cognitive psychotherapy interventions for suicide and psychosis. Henriques teaches courses in personality theory, personality assessment, social psychology and integrative adult psychotherapy.

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   

Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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Psychotherapist Mike Leary discusses Dependent Personality Disorder. 

Dependent personality disorder (DPD) is a type of anxious personality disorder. People with DPD often feel helpless, submissive or incapable of taking care of themselves.   People with DPD tend to display needy, passive, and clinging behavior, and have a fear of separation. Other common characteristics of this personality disorder include: Inability to make decisions, even everyday decisions like what to wear, without the advice and reassurance of others.

The Sanity Sessions: Exploring Mental Illness And Maladaptations is a biweekly podcast featuring interviews with leading experts in mental health and psychology.

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   

Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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Kathy Blumentritt and I talk about attachment disorders and interpersonal neurobiology.   To learn more about Kathy's practice, visit The Front Porch Counselors.

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   

Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

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Aviana shares her story with me about living with schizotypal personality disorder.  We talk about the various symptoms, her experience in group therapy with others suffering from STPD, and the disorder in general.   She has a popular blog at skizotypical.com

Shortly before receiving her BA, Aviana decided to seek psychiatric help . By then,  she was suffering from panic attacks, couldn’t sleep at night, suffering from the disturbing images that frequently became stuck in her mind’s eye.  She barely left home, let alone saw or talked to anyone else.

She didn’t recognize the problems she had as symptoms of mental illness. She only knew that she couldn’t function day to day. It was only after talking to a couple different psychiatrists and psychologists, that her condition began to make any sense. It turned out that she had quite a few autistic traits that I wasn’t aware of. Enough to warrant an Asperger diagnosis, but the doctor surmised she needed more help than the Asperger’s diagnosis could offer and sent her off to OPUS Amager, a psychiatric facility offering two-year treatment programs for young people aged 18-35 with schizophrenia and schizophrenia-like disorders and psychoses. In the end, she was diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder and began treatment.

These days, the worst of her symptoms are gone and she doesn't take any medication. However, she still struggles with balancing stress-relief with day-to-day living.

I'm Creative Director of Contemplative Light and host of this podcast.  I am now offering Executive Coaching Sessions for Personal Development.  These are one-on-one sessions on the phone or Zoom, depending on what works best for you.  I meet you where you are at in your journey and where you want to be.  If you are interested or have questions, we can set up a free session to talk more, just email me at thesanitysessions[at]gmail[dot]com

It was great talking with Aviana.

Thanks for listening!

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Alison and I discuss perspectives from biological anthropology on mental disorders that offer a more hopeful approach to mental illness.

Alison Escalante, M.D. has developed a unique parenting method that helps worried parents reconnect with themselves and their kids. Anxiety rates are skyrocketing in kids and their parents, and Dr. Escalante understands because she is a recovering worried mother herself. She calls this culture of anxiety the ShouldStorm and her TEDx talk teaches parents her method.

Dr. Escalante writes, speaks at conference, practices pediatrics full-time and raises her two rambunctious boys. A former Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Dr. Escalante is now taking on the ShouldStorm and provides multi-media resources for parents on her website. And it's not just parents who find the 3S method helpful: doctors are using it to connect with patients and alleviate burnout, and teachers are using it to help students who are struggling in the classroom.

She has studied diversely, having done her undergraduate work at Princeton University in Medieval and Renaissance History with a focus in Cultural Interpretation. She went on to medical school at Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson and trained for her residency in Pediatrics at Duke University and the University of Chicago. Now she practices pediatrics in Naperville, IL and is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Clint Sabom is Creative Director of Contemplative Light. He lived in Budapest, Hungary in 2003 as a Gilman Scholar. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In 2007, he lived for six months in a silent monastery.. He holds bachelor’s degrees in Religious Studies and one in Spanish literature. He has traveled extensively through Europe and South America. He has spoken and/or performed at Amnesty International, Health Conferences, High Schools, and art galleries across the US. He has studied and done in his own work in Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Shamanism, NLP, and hypnosis.   

Clint offers a powerful audio mini-course on emotional release, with powerful techniques you can use the rest of your life.  Learn more here: https://contemplativelight.teachable.com/p/emotional-release

Support the show

Swamy G and I dive deep into Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder. He talks about his own experience and suffering, what didn’t work, what did work, and the key to healing it.  We address many questions.  Is DP/DR chronic or temporary? Is there always anxiety and trauma underlying it?  How does it relate to other mental illnesses?  

Swamy G has a website and online resources to help those who are suffering from this disorder.  You can find it here.   https://acoachcalledlife.com/author/swamy_g/  He also offers a course on DP/DR recovery at DPNoMore.com

The Sanity Sessions is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with top leaders in mental health and psychology. 

Timestamps for this episode:

- Swamy's DP/DR story - 1:00
- Depersonalization and Psychosis Part 1 - 12:35
- Philosophical thoughts - 15:30
- Is DP/DR a mystical experience? - 19:55
- What to do and what not to do - 22:20
- What happens after acceptance? - 30:50
- Is trauma the sole reason for DP/DR? - 36:25
- Does medication work for DP/DR? - 40:25
- Can depersonalization last forever? - 45:55
- Will you miss DP/DR when you start to recover? 52:15
- Psychosis and DP/DR Part 2 - 54:30

I'm Creative Director of Contemplative Light and host of this podcast.  I am now offering Executive Coaching Sessions for Personal Development.  These are one-on-one sessions on the phone or Zoom, depending on what works best for you.  I meet you where you are at in your journey and where you want to be.  If you are interested or have questions, we can set up a free session to talk more, just email me at thesanitysessions[at]gmail[dot]com

Thanks for listening!

Support the show