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Living From Happiness

The Happiness Doc, Dr. Melanie Harth, and guests share thought-provoking convos every week on Living From Happiness. From mindfulness and neuroscience to positive psychology and creativity, the show's all about living well in transformational times.
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Now displaying: April, 2021
Apr 27, 2021

In this episode, Melanie explores the connection between shame, anxiety, and depression, as well as the difference between guilt and shame.

Shame can wreak havoc with our mental health. And it's pretty sneaky, in that we often don't understand what shame feels like, and so it gets confused with guilt.

But it's a powerful emotional response that can become a lifelong companion living just underneath the surface of our awareness.

It's an important topic to unpack if you're feeling creatively blocked, unable to achieve reasonable goals, or can't quite put your finger on why you're stuck.

Chronic shame can be one of the major psychological blocks to achieving goals, realizing dreams, and manifesting intentions.

Melanie quotes Dr. Brene Brown, who says shame is an "unspoken epidemic," and mentions her incredibly popular TED Talks.

Research data have proven that guilt and shame are strongly correlated with depression, as well as with anxiety disorders including social anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder.

Negative health consequences of anxiety and depression include digestive disorders, heart disease, obesity, chronic pain diagnoses such as migraines, arthritis, and fibromyalgia; sleep disruption — which is another pathway to all sorts of medical issues.

In fact, researchers now know that chronic physical pain shares some biological mechanisms with anxiety and depression.

The reality is that the world we’re living in isn’t becoming a more peaceful place. We’re not heading into a future, at the moment, that projects a less anxiety-ridden world.

It’s becoming the norm to be anxious and depressed, even for people who aren’t genetically or environmentally prone to those two emotional and physiological states.

This information-packed episode is an important one to listen to and learn from.

Dr. Melanie Harth, the Santa Fe Therapist, website here

Apr 20, 2021

How to be better with money is something almost everyone wants to know more about. And Doug Lynam is the guy to talk to about your money, your budget, finances, your blocks about money ... like that.

Doug is an industry thought leader in ethical and sustainable investing, founder of the non-profit ESG Fiduciary™ Institute, a partner at LongView Asset Management, LLC, in Santa Fe, and he's devoted his life to service.

He's also the author of the popular book From Monk to Money Manager and has been a guest on this show many times.

In this episode, Doug and Melanie talk about why money is such a tender spot for so many people, as well as money trauma, money wounds, and healing our money wounds.

Doug explains the basics of attachment theory from psychology, and how that's pertinent to our relationship with money. And he discusses the meaning of this quote: “the quality of [our] financial life has a bigger impact on [our] perceived wellbeing than the combined benefits of fitness, job satisfaction, and my overall relationship stability.”

Yep, there's a strong relationship between how we feel about money and our happiness.

Doug Lynam's website here

Dr. Melanie Harth's website here

Apr 9, 2021

Mental health during Covid 19 is a thing. And it's going to be an issue for a while.

We're all struggling with ongoing Covid-19 trauma. No matter how well we're doing, we're all feeling it.

In this episode, Melanie shares research data and coping suggestions from Dr. Diane E. Meier, the longtime director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Meier is also a 2008 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” fellowship.

About the Covid pandemic, Dr. Meier says, “The fear and anxiety is completely different. It’s not that getting a diagnosis of dementia or cancer or kidney failure is not frightening. It is, but it’s somewhat normalized. You know people it’s happened to. Whereas the Covid pandemic — there was so much interesting coverage marking the 500,000th death about how invisible all the grieving is and how the whole country is in a state of numbness and denial because it is all too much to take in. It is too much to process." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/22/magazine/diane-e-meier-interview.html

As a result, Dr. Meier says, "people are trying desperately to make room for one's inner life."

We’ve got two feet in the Before Times. And one foot in the not-yet-here world. We’re betwixt and between. It’s a liminal time.

And that can make us feel unmoored, ungrounded.

The good news is that there is an almost infinite number of ways to make room for our inner lives. Natalie Goldberg, the writer, recently did two shows with Melanie in which she talks of haiku as a way, a path, a spiritual discipline.

Techniques for exploring beyond the bounds of performative “work” are as varied as there are people.

The reasons for doing exploring our inner lives are compelling, indeed.

For the truth is that we aren’t gonna take whatever money we’ve earned or jewelry we love or cars or houses with us when we die.

But we’re here now, breathing. Feeling. In community with others, whether we’re in person or not.

We’re still here. Might that be enough meaning and purpose?

Here’s a poem from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, titled Caminante, No Hay Camino, Traveler, There is no Road/There is no Way.

Traveler, your footprints

are the only road, nothing else.

Traveler, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.

As you walk, you make your own road,

and when you look back

you see the path

you will never travel again.

Traveler, there is no road;

only a ship's wake on the sea.

Finally, this, from e.e. cummings, entitled 53

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know …

Dr. Melanie Harth's website here

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