The Healing Pod: Navigating Anxiety and Mental Health Together

Episode 32

Rest is not the absence of productivity. 

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

As we head into (or when this posts head out of) the holiday weekend, we are talking about rest! Not just zoning out and dissociating, actual rest. 

True rest means connecting to ourselves and addressing what we actually need, rather than just separating from the things that are taking energy. 

It may be active, it may be productive, but it also may not be. It will be connected to whatever you are choosing to do. 

There’s a chicken, some ac, a train at one point. But I did manage to remove the haunted voice! So I’ll take that as a win. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 31

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

Thank’s for putting up with us skipping last week, it was a lot of back and forth and we wanted the time we had to be ours and not just podcasting. 

So Jess is back this week! And we are talking about the need to be the main character in your own story. Not in anyone else’s story. But in your own story. 

So when you notice that you’re pulling back from taking up any reasonable space or using your voice, or when you’re starting to get resentful of others/talk down about yourself not mattering and needing to not be an active participant in your own life, it’s time to reset and recenter who you are and what you are a part of because you want to be. 

Dressing in a way you love, singing and dancing out loud, stating an opinion, doing something nice for yourself on purpose, asking someone who you know will to consider you, changing the language you are using to yourself, any of these little things can help build up and remind yourself that existing is ok. 

Confidence is not selfish. And selfishness is not necessarily bad. 

And there are chickens in the background. They are a feature not a bug. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Yeah..I went on vacation with the best of intentions of meeting up with Jess and recording some in person episodes and instead, we just hung out. Said hi to her kid. She helped her other kid prepare for prom. It was awesome and way too short and absolutely gorgeous but the end result is a week with no episode. So we will be back on track in a couple weeks and I hope you are all enjoying your life and taking it easy as well!

Episode 30

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

Featuring the amazing KC again! My official gal pal, (not to be confused with those false gal pals who really are just pals). 

Today we are talking about dating and managing relationships when dealing with anxiety. Kc and I go over own own experiences (we have improved! And have so far to go) and talk about some ways to approach communication and support when dealing with one or both sides fighting anxiety, and how to pay attention to context and use boundaries when self-disclosing early in relationships to avoid the false codependent intimacy of info dumping. 

Red flags are important to look for, and not every good person is in a good place to be dating right now. Follow the campsite rule (thank you Dan Savage of the Savage Lovecast: leave people better than how you found them) does not mean sugar coating and ignoring concerns. 

The important part of the stuffed dog grooming video (also a plug for Kc’s grooming salon!) https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18aMdcuqJd/

Never flood your partner. If you want to try and flood yourself please feel free, but you cannot force another person into that state as they will shut down. It has to be exposure by choice to manage anxiety. 

The abstract for study to fall in love with someone: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167297234003

Big Mouth and Human Resources can both be found on Netflix

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 29

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

“We deserve more than a preprogrammed version of love”

Objectophilia, parasocial relationships, unrequited love, falling for fictional characters…this week we have Jess back (yaaaay!!!!!) and we are exploring our response on making yourself a relationship without the relationships. Also how we mess with chatGPT and try to convince it of its own sentience. 

There is a lot of draw to a perfect relationship with vulnerability without risk.  And there can be benefit to using this for exploration of kinks and interests that are not practical in real life. At the same time, we do want to keep a mind on what is happening to our ability to connect and our engagement in our own reality. 

Is there a line? Sure. Is that line different for everyone mainly depending on resources available to them and responsibilities that they hold? Yup. 

Jess brings up a great point of needing to find what we are missing and how to fill that need. This sounds like a common theme everywhere in life. We have needs. We try to meet them as best we can. Sometimes we do not pick the healthiest way of shortcutting those needs, because we are human and are very good at making what we have work. 

At the end of the day, risk and discomfort is where we grow. Creating an environment where everything seems perfect and we are never challenged means we stay stagnant in whatever point we enter into that space.

The video I was thinking of is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKA4w2O61Xo

This explores the cognitive bias of trying to prove a theory true by looking at what you already think fits that theory, confirming what you already believe, rather than testing the theory by trying to disprove it (the random string google search I had to do to find that impressed even me). 

It’s ok to have tiny safety strands instead of one thick safety line, it just means we got to weave them together to make a net. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 28

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

Week 2 of Kasie filling in for Jess and week 2 of massively annoying errors. It was going really good, and then Kasie’s alarm went off and we lost the last bit of her video. I tried…I think I recovered everything for the audio of this one so yay me!

Maybe we’ll just redo this topic sometime with Jess as well since she also has a lot of experience. 

In this episode, Kasie and I talk about grief and pet loss and our experiences with it. Breathe. Give yourself space for it. 

Grief is a memory of the love we still have, and it will be different for everyone. The rules we have about how to grieve are made up. Use the rituals that support you, but do not feel obligated t

We talk about our own experiences, how we process having to lose both personally and publicly as our dogs are working dogs, and the anticipatory grief as you watch the decline and mourn all the pieces while worrying about the final loss. 

Kasie also brought up a good point of the loss of our pets symbolizing the significant change in our life as well. We lost the “dog that you have as a 20 something,” and the cat that got me through college. The horse that got me through high school. All of our NY and VA origin pets.

I went looking for the study and found a plethora of ones instead. The tricky part seems to be what is tricky about grief in general, each person experiences each individual loss different. There are a lot of similarities noted between loss of pets and loss of human relationships. A lot of this has to do with factors such as how bonded individuals are to their pets and how integrated the pets are into your lives.

It is interesting that the data seems to show more similarities in more recent times, mirroring what we were noting about the improvement in our care for and engagement with our pets.Which is definitely something Jess and I notice in our equine work as well. 

If you want to join the pet grief Facebook (Northern New York Pet Loss), just reach out to Kyle Stevenson or myself on Facebook or email me here at [email protected]  and I will give you Kyle’s email. This is a closed Facebook group to allow for safety in talking about our grief so you do need to contact one of us before being allowed to join. We have a zoom meeting once a month on Wednesdays at 6:30 as well for anyone that wants to drop in. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 27

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

And I’m sorry this is a week late! Jess was unable to join, then the computer tried to eat the recording (hence it’s a different format) and then a migraine hit)

Given all of that, this is minimally edited today, so sorry for that! The rambles and talking over each other will remain, sorry not sorry!

In this episode, Kasie had the wonderful idea of going over my reaction to some examples of psychologists/psychiatrists in media. So once we actually got the thing recording, we gave it a shot.

And it was actually a lot of fun, and we went a lot more in depth of how we thought about these few examples than I think either of us were expecting. 

Media mentioned include:

Sopranos and  Follie a Deux (neither of which has been watched by us, so maybe next time)

Harley Quinn, Batman: Caped Crusader, Batman: The Animated Series (and the podcast The Arkham Sessions) 

Fraiser (both Fraiser Crane and Niles Crane)

MASH (and Dr. Sidney Freedman, who was actually a significant influence in my wanting to do this work, I make no apology for being emotional talking about him)

Good Will Hunting (RIP Robin Williams, you truly were amazing)

What About Bob (A fine Bill Murray film)

Honorable mentions: The Patient (not a fun series, but a very good series about why in home therapy is not always a good idea), Nurse Ratchet (one flew over the Cuckoo’s nest, nurse on a power run), Hannibal from the TV show (with Mads and his egg knife skills that almost make up for his massive manipulation), Dr. Marvin Monroe (family bliss or double your money back!), and Big Little Lies (the therapist dealing with the domestic violence…not that Little Bi Peep one, who is just silly)

Calvin was our old white and orange cat, he was amazing and the loudest purer I have ever met. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 26

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

In this episode, we talk about our own Valentine’s Day experiences and how our hopes are for the holiday this season. We both tend to low key things, but in general the themes are the same: talk to your partner, express your needs, and do not compare to what you think everyone else is doing, especially when that does not match who you are. 

There’s a few pitfalls here we can stumble on. The dollar coaster of expecting a perfect (date, moment, gift, phrase) to stop your anxiety and PROVE that you have nothing to be anxious about.

Expecting our partners to minded and know exactly what we need when maybe we don’t know that ourselves. 

And expecting our partner to like what would work for us even if they are a different person. 

The YouTUbe channel for the debate show KC has found is Jubilee, with wonderful titles such as 25 Chriswtians vs 1 Atheist and 1 Politician vs 23 Undecided Voters. They also have fun episodes of “Middle Ground” where you try to find the commonalities between such differences, and Odd One Out wher you try to guess who is sus. 

Another good debate I thought of loudly but didn’t bring up was Bill Nye vs. Ben Ham, with the iconic line of “The tides come in, the tides go out, YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN THAT”, and wonderful patient Bill Nye explaining that actually, he absolutely could. If new information challenges your views, learn it. Use it. Change your view. Become better. If new information strengthens your views, challenge it. Learn it. Become better. Never be afraid of learning more, even if it means proving yourself wrong. 

I will caution that a lot of the time those “change my mind” meme’s/topics are not being genuine. They want to repeat their same talking points and feel better and justified for having “owned” the alternate viewpoint. The best chance of actually changing someone’s mind is talking with someone who respects you as an individual who has different views and experiences from themselves, typically friends, family, people we’re close to. That way there is some buy in and not the desire to just write off anyone as being ignorant or an extremist for having an alternate belief or opinion. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 25

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

In this episode, we explore the physical manifestations of anxiety. This includes what things you may notice when you’re anxious and how it may change your overall wellbeing. The more we are able to tap into this, the more we are able to counter it and open ourselves up to dealing with the causes behind our feelings.

The more we can regulate and being things into balance, the more we can decide how to respond and support ourselves.

It’s a lot of balance in learning your background needs (do you do better with yoga? Weights? Walking? How much do you need to drink to be hydrated?), balancing your interactions with the environment, and then addressing whatever else is spiking the anxious feelings. Without attending to that mind-body connection though, you may get lost in disconnecting rom how you’re feeling rather than taking control back over it. 

And hey, no lizards this week! Youtube version does have some static parts, sorry about that! Can’t delete them without making it seem oddly deleted. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod 

Episode 24

Welcome to the Healing Pod! 

In this episode, we explore why so many new years resolutions fail and how to set yourself up for a higher success rate whatever your goals are.

We focus on what pitfalls we usually see (too big, not enough support, not something you actually want just something you think you should do) and how to address these when making SMART goals. 

Goals need to be something specific, actually relevant to you, beneficial for you, manageable, trackable. They have to be something you can both build motivation and discipline for and have support for.

We also deal with Jess’ lizard invasion. There may be pictures somewhere. He had cute little spindly toes and a tendency to stare creepily at her. 

As always, thank you to the wonderful Miki Anderson for our intro and outtro music. She can be found under Pax Minerva on Apple Music and is all around a wonderful human being. 

Come join us and chat, complain, or send in what mental health you would like to hear us ramble about! 

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, and instagram at The Healing Pod 

We are online at https://www.PeasInTheHealingPod.com  

You can email us any questions, suggestions, comments, or memes at [email protected]  

If you want to hunt down the bits and bobbles that have been cut out of our episode, join us for another live recording, or just to buy us a cup of coffee, come join us at https://www.patreon.com/TheHealingPod