The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor discusses what our children need in order to thrive and how to combat the mental health pandemic in children in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

It’s not difficult to give children what they need, as long as the adults who care for the children have the capacity to meet these needs in the right way. This episode looks at whether we are empowering parents to do the best for their children and how parents can do things differently to set their child up for success. 

Children have the fundamental need and desire to be safe, and free from fear, worry and anxiety. They need to feel secure in the protection that their parents or caregivers provide, and a lot can go wrong with a child that doesn’t feel adequate levels of safety. Feeling safe also extends to what they are being exposed to in terms of online content, gadgets and smartphones. Dr Rachel suggests that there is no such thing as online safety for children. 

In order to thrive children need to know they belong and have significance, they are special, individual and unique and they are chosen and cherished by you as their parents. We all want the best for our children, so how can you support them to be the best that they can be by leaning into their uniqueness and difference? In this busy world it’s easy to let something give - but don’t let it be time and interaction with your children. They need you to nurture them. 

For any parents listening, ask yourself ‘what kind of adult do I want to be raising’ and ‘what kind of child do I want to be parenting?’ Do you want to be friends with your child, or a parent to your child? The aim of parenting is not to be their friend, but to be a good role model and help them become the best adult they can be. 

Topics:

• What do children really need?
• The impact of screen time on children’s development and wellbeing. 
• How to communicate with children.
• The impact of the pandemic on children’s anxiety.
• How children’s brains develop at different ages and stages. 

Key takeaways:

• Children need 4 hugs a day for biochemical feedback, 8 hugs a day for maintaining themselves as human beings, and 12 hugs a day in order to grow.
• Children need to see our facial expressions, receive eye contact, have our full attention and communicate with us in non verbal ways as well as verbally. 
• The pandemic has had a huge impact on children, especially babies and toddlers who have had limited exposure to lots of different people. These children need to have small changes that happen over time to avoid feeling overwhelming anxiety.

Resources

(Un) Broken Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor discusses neuroarchitecture, and how manipulating our environment helps us build better brains. That’s coming up in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Neuroarchitecture combines neuroscience and architecture, and deals with how the built environment either supports or detracts from a person’s experience. The environment can either stimulate the brain and make it more useful and flexible, or it can shrink it, making it not as adaptable. 

The environment has such a huge effect on the brain because the brain interprets, analyzes, and reconstructs the space surrounding it. It’s essential to surround ourselves with things that generate healthy stimulation, and this includes the aesthetics - we have to look at the symbolic aspects within that.

Topics:

• Defining and understanding neuroarchitecture.
• The neurological impact of the built environment.
• How color theory influences better brain function.
• Debunking the myth of dopamine fasting.
• Taking ownership over your environment.

Key Takeaways:

• The environment can either stimulate the brain and make it more useful and flexible, or it can shrink it, making it not as adaptable.
• It’s essential that we surround ourselves with things that generate healthy brain stimulation.
• Stop allowing yourself to be held hostage by what other people have said - take ownership over your environment and make things better for yourself.

Resources

(Un) Broken Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor explores the power of storytelling and the importance of controlling your narrative in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

We use stories to construct realities and illusions, convey meanings, and help ourselves make sense of what’s going on in our lives. We also use them to gain a sense of belonging, Dr Rachel shares. From a neuroscientific lens, when we identify with a story, our brain produces oxytocin which is traditionally viewed as the bonding or love hormone. 

Humans are instinctively driven towards searching for meaning, according to Viktor Frankl -  when we do not have meaning, we suffer. When we add a narrative structure to our real life experiences with a story, we gain a sense of what our purpose is, and how we can grow best from our suffering.

Topics:

• Defining and understanding storytelling.
• Man’s search for purpose, and how it intersects with stories.
• Deconstructing the stories you’re drawn to.
• Becoming your own screenwriter. 
• Challenging stories that lead to harmful outcomes.

Key Takeaways:

• We use stories to construct realities and illusions, convey meanings, and help ourselves make sense of what’s going on in our lives.
• When we do not have meaning, we suffer.
• We need to take notice of the narrative we have of ourselves.

Resources

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Launch Your Own Podcast
A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor discusses childhood adversity and how the ways children adapt to adversity follow them to adulthood. That’s coming up in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Childhood adversity is defined as any negative experience that requires the average child to adapt significantly. Although adversity can be good for us in many ways, a child should not have to learn how to cope in a tough environment from such a young age. 

Children are constantly absorbing whatever is in their environment, and form beliefs based on what they’re taught, what they see, what they hear, and how they’re treated. This translates into a framework of the world that will persist through adulthood, unless challenged or dealt with during childhood or adolescence.

Topics:

• Defining and understanding childhood adversity.
• The physiological and psychological effects of childhood adversity.
• How toxic stress manifests in adulthood.
• Why no child with adverse childhood experiences arrives to adulthood unscathed.
• Avoiding the use of labels, and separating experience from identity.

Key Takeaways:

• Adversity can make us stronger, but only when we experience it as adults - no child should not have to learn how to cope in tough environments from such a young age.
• The way a child is treated influences how they see the world.
• Repeated exposure to negative stimulation throughout childhood creates chemical imbalances that affect us psychologically and physiologically.

Resources

(Un) Broken Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

The UnBroken Podcast is a call to action to create a different direction, dialogue, and narrative for your life. Dr Rachel Taylor explains willpower, why we have it, and how to get more in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Psychologically speaking, willpower is the ability to delay gratification, which is a challenge in this present-day society that encourages us to do the opposite. Willpower allows you to override unwanted thoughts, feelings, and impulses - it is the constant effort for self-regulation. What many people don’t realise, however, is that willpower is not an infinite tool, but a limited resource extremely capable of being depleted.

How, then, do we increase it? And what do we need to avoid to not deplete it? The golden thread pulling willpower together is self-regulation, Dr Rachel explains, or the ability to prevent self-sabotage. Look at your behaviour, and those of the people around you. How much self-regulation and self-indulgence are you seeing? How much discipline are you seeing?

Topics:

• What willpower really is.
• Understanding neuroplasticity to train your brain.
• Why delayed gratification is good for the brain.
• The importance of controlling your social influences.
• Ways to develop more willpower.

Key Takeaways:

• Willpower is the ability to delay gratification and override unwanted thoughts, feelings, and impulses.
• What you expose yourself to and allow yourself to be influenced by directly affects your willpower.
• We cannot simply change just because we wish to - we must train ourselves, and most importantly our brains, to work in different and better ways.

Resources

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Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

Dr Rachel Taylor explores the topics of self-responsibility, self-accountability, and self-ownership, in this episode sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Our behaviors can be broken down into five pillars, according to Dr Rachel: fairness, honesty, courage, respect, and responsibility. How do you fare in each area? How do you feel about the need for equitable collaborations? Do you like seeing the truth? Do you have heart? What do you do when you feel disrespected? What are you responsible for? 

Building self-responsibility is more than just taking on the emotional world of everyone around you. That only leads to becoming full of anxiety, because you are standing for danger and potential loss or harm on behalf of other people, and in doing so you forget to take care of yourself.

We really need to understand how we make decisions, and how that factors into ownership, Dr Rachel advises. If we are not thinking logically and consciously about the decisions we are making, it’s going to be difficult to want to take responsibility or be accountable for anything.

Key Takeaways:

• Our behaviors can be broken down into five pillars: fairness, honesty, courage, respect, and responsibility.
• Don’t just take on everyone else’s responsibilities! Everyone has their own, and while it is good to help people, you shouldn’t constantly do so at your expense.
• Before making a decision, think about it deeply, slowly, and consciously. 

Resources

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Launch Your Own Podcast
A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

Dr Rachel Taylor discusses how to manage anxiety, in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Pre-pandemic, anxiety was the second most commonly reported mental health condition in the world, with over 20% of people globally reporting that it had a significant effect in their lives. Now, that number has risen to 29%. Contrary to popular belief, anxiety is not a mental disorder or illness, Dr Rachel claims - it is an evolutionary benefit that serves as an alarm system to potential threats in our environment. One of the first steps towards managing anxiety involves shifting your thinking to understand anxiety for what it is. She credits the rise of globally reported anxiety levels to environmental changes and fear messaging.

Joy is hypothesized to be the only emotion we are born with, underpinned by hormones and neurotransmitters such as oxytocin. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Dr Rachel believes, is fear. “We need to reset and recalibrate our anxiety mechanism,” she says.

We can do this by engaging in neutral activities that make us feel okay - jumping straight ahead into things that spark a lot of joy may not be best, as we cannot simply jump from one extreme to the other. We have to slowly dip our toes in neutral territory before wading into joyful abandonment.

Key Takeaways:

• To manage anxiety, you must first see it for what it is - an ally, not an illness.
• Fear is the antithesis to joy, according to Dr Rachel.
• When your anxiety is high, engage in neutral activities before doing things that make you really happy.

Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

Dr Rachel Taylor shares sleep tips for living your best life, in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

Though we all have different needs and preferences when it comes to how much sleep we need and the best times to go to bed, there are general golden rules we should consider to get good sleep. One such rule is that the body gets its most optimal rest when we go to sleep between the hours of 10 PM and 2 AM. This happens because the sleep time is aligned with the body’s natural hormone secretion schedule.

Good sleep protects against insulin resistance, lowering the risk of high blood glucose levels and even type 2 diabetes. It keeps cells healthy, so they can easily take up glucose. In addition, the brain uses less glucose during sleep, which helps regulate the body’s overall blood glucose level.

We need to listen to our bodies and go to sleep when we feel tired. Going to sleep at the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning is the easiest way to maintain your circadian rhythm. If you continuously need an alarm clock to wake up, that is your body’s way of telling you to establish a bedtime. 

Key Takeaways:

• The body gets its most optimal rest when you go to sleep between 10 PM and 2 PM.
• Good sleep lowers the risk of high blood glucose levels.
• If the only thing that wakes you up is your alarm clock, you need a bedtime. 

Resources

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Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

Dr Rachel Taylor explores the functions of the prefrontal cortex, in this episode, sponsored by A Podcast Company.

The neocortex is the most recent addition to the human brain, being the last part of it to evolve. It is what differentiates us from other animals, and gives us the ability to use logic and not just react. Understanding the functions of the prefrontal cortex, which is a part of the neocortex, can help us unlearn conditioned emotional responses. 

Emotional regulation is a necessary tool. We want to have enough intensity of emotions that life has meaning, but we shouldn’t have so much arousal that life becomes chaotic and overwhelming. On the other hand, having too little arousal leaves life very rigid, depleted, and uninteresting. It’s about striking the perfect balance that works for you.

The instantaneous responses of the limbic system are useful, but they are not very conducive to the growth, development, and expansion of humanity. We need to move away from being dependent on emotional reactions and start becoming unbroken. 

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding the functions of your prefrontal cortex may help you unlearn conditioned emotional responses.
• It’s important that you self-regulate your emotions with constant practice.
• While the limbic system is useful, we cannot rely on it primarily - we must strike a balance between it and the prefrontal cortex. 

Resources

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Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]

Dr. Rachel debunks misconceptions about anxiety, and discusses why you should view it as a friend, in this episode sponsored by A Podcast Company.

The anxiety that everyone has is an evolutionary benefit, warning us of potential threats within our environment. It is a future-focused feeling that we need to keep ourselves safe. When we are in an environment that constantly reminds us it can harm us, our anxiety levels naturally rise. Rather than a mental health condition, anxiety is a nervous system response to information received through our senses.

The first step towards living well with your anxiety is to stop vilifying it - it is an alarm system for your own benefit, and the more you treat it as something bad, the more it will affect you. You need to also recognize that you might need peace as an antidote to anxiety. What is your peaceful practice? Do you ever ask your body what it needs, or what information it has for you?

You must also take time to rest and recuperate - remember situations and events, but allow the emotion from them to leave your subconscious and then overwrite it with new meaning. 

Key Takeaways:

• Anxiety is a caring friend that looks out for your safety - it is not your enemy!
• Having a peaceful or mindful practice can help you calm your anxiety when it’s too much to decipher. 
• Overwrite stressful events with new meaning. 

Resources

(Un) Broken Launch Your Own Podcast A Podcast Company is the leading podcast production and strategic content company for brands, organisations, institutions, individuals, and entrepreneurs. Our team sets you up with the right strategy, equipment, training, guidance and content to ensure you sound amazing while speaking to your niche audience and networking with your perfect clients. Get in touch [email protected]