Aging Playfully: How to Make Peace With Uncomfortable Experiences w/ Dr. Susan Campbell
Release Date: 03/25/2025
Be. Play. Love.
Most people wait for burnout, conflict, or disaster before ending something that’s no longer in alignment. We’ve both done that in the past, pushing forward because things were “still going well,” even when a quiet inner voice was saying it was time to move on. But sometimes, the most life-giving move is to complete a chapter while there’s still joy, ease, and connection in it. In this special final episode, we pull back the curtain on our decision to end the podcast, while it’s still thriving. We explore why completion can be the most creative act of all. For us, it’s been about...
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
Most people are either rehashing the past or obsessing over the future - never living in the present moment. The result? Walking around with major incompletions that keep us from connection, creativity, and wholeness. Carrying unfinished conversations, unspoken words, unresolved feelings, and unfelt experiences. And that robs us of something precious…all the incredible things we could be creating right now! Completion isn’t about perfection or checking every box. It’s the deep, often uncomfortable practice of letting go of past regrets, imagined futures, buried emotions, and the need to...
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
We think our voices are just how we speak, how we communicate, how we’re understood, but they are so much more than that. They are our own unique vocal fingerprint, our own frequency, and a way people identify us, but it goes even deeper. Our voices are instruments that communicate our inner landscape, and they can be vehicles for aliveness, creativity, healing, and wellbeing. What’s funny is that we talk all the time, but many of us have never really heard our own voices. That’s because our true voices often get lost in society’s rules about what sounds wrong or right, or the polite...
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We live in a world that trains us to focus on negativity. A world that wants us to contract, to judge, and expect the worst from ourselves (and others). That’s why being self-critical is our default. We absorb the script early: that we’re not good enough, not lovable enough, not deserving of ease or joy. Over time, that internal voice becomes automatic, so automatic that we don’t even hear it anymore. Then your inner landscape shifts into wholeness, and you start to notice it more. How do we shift ourselves out of that default state of negativity? Sometimes, it’s as simple as anchoring...
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For so many people, excess weight isn’t about laziness or lack of willpower — it’s about carrying unspoken stories. It’s about living in a body that holds the weight of feelings your voice never got to share. Because when you can’t tell the truth — or even acknowledge what’s real — your body will speak for you. But what if the path to healing and releasing the excess weight is actually about allowing yourself to feel what you’ve buried? When you finally let yourself feel the big feelings, you stop accumulating them. You don’t have to numb out. You don’t need to overeat,...
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Fear isn’t just a fleeting feeling that visits quietly. It hijacks your nervous system, clouds your judgment, and makes even the smallest decisions feel paralyzing. It’s a fog that clouds your decisions, disconnects you from your body, and shuts down your creativity and sense of possibility. Triggered by something unexpected, challenging, or painful, fear can make us feel stuck, but there is a way out. There’s a surprisingly simple but profoundly transformational framework we can use to regain clarity, agency, and aliveness, even in moments of deep uncertainty. FACT is a way to access...
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What if the aches in your body aren’t entirely yours? The shoulder pain, the gut tension, or the sense of incompletion might not just be physical. It could be the echo of a secret held for decades, maybe even generations? Because here’s the thing: families hold secrets, but those secrets have a way of leaking out or leaving breadcrumbs. And if you’re connected to your intuition, you can sense that there’s something that’s not being said. Most of us were taught to look forward, to toughen up, to leave the past behind. But what if that very suppression is why we can’t move forward?...
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
We all have secrets, painful experiences, and even childhood challenges that affect us to this day. What if keeping them is what’s keeping us unwell? Our culture teaches us to bottle in our truth, mask our emotions, and manage our image. But the body keeps score, and over time, that suppression turns into stress, disconnection, and even illness. What if healing is about processing these things through our bodies? That’s the lens Katie brings, not just as a psychologist or embodiment teacher, but as someone who’s lived it. Katie grew up in an environment where expression wasn’t welcome....
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
Most people don’t think of themselves as creative. We say, “I’m not artistic,” or “I can’t perform,” and leave it at that. But the truth is, creativity isn’t reserved for the select few. It lives in everyone. It’s baked into how we think, feel, dream, and respond to the world. The problem is that most of us were taught to shut it down. We were told to color inside the lines, follow the rules, and keep things appropriate. Over time, we stopped expressing the weird, wonderful parts of ourselves and started believing that creativity belonged only to the professionals. But...
info_outlineBe. Play. Love.
In a world that worships productivity, we’ve traded our inner spark for efficiency and completely lost the creativity that’s vital to flow. For many of us, this disconnection with our creativity goes back to childhood. This is where we were taught not to be weird. Where we were trained to do things in one specific way, and forced to correct ourselves when we didn’t. For years, we’ve heard negative things that have shaped how we feel about our creativity, so no wonder we’ve suppressed it. But without play, coloring outside the lines, and trusting the parts of ourselves that don’t...
info_outlineIf there’s anything our culture likes to collectively ignore, resist and hide, it's aging. And yet, aging happens to every single one of us - whether it’s aging parents, aging partners or aging selves, we all have an experience with it.
With age comes the opportunity for nourishment and deeper learning, but aging also comes with some unpleasant emotions and experiences.
Cognitive and physical decline and even loss are all parts of the process of getting older. How do we learn to treat these things as a learning adventure? How do we deal with loved ones becoming shadows of their former selves?
Instead of resisting the things that come with aging, embracing them makes life richer. The skill of learning to be with unpleasant experiences and emotions is one we can learn at any point in our lives, and it certainly comes in handy when we’re getting older.
How do we build this skill? What are the gifts of aging? In this episode, we’re joined by couples therapist, relationship coach, author, speaker, college professor, trainer, and founding teacher of the Getting Real work, Dr. Susan Campbell. She shares how we can be more prepared for unwanted changes and why that can be an enriching experience.
Things You’ll Learn In This Episode
-Use everything that happens for learning
When it comes to aging, most people want to resist or ignore what happens. Why do we need to allow what is to be there?
-The loop of awareness
Unpleasant interactions don’t just throw you out of connection with your loved one, they also affect your connection with yourself. How do you find yourself again?
-Embrace, don’t erase
How do we approach the aging population? How do we avoid making assumptions about their reality?
Guest Bio
Dr. Susan Campbell is a couples therapist, relationship coach, author, speaker, workshop leader, trainer, college professor, certified Radical Honesty trainer, and founding teacher of the Getting Real work. The Getting Real work is a body of communication and awareness practices that foster personal healing and social evolution. She has written eleven books on relationships, including several best-sellers. A faculty member at the San Francisco Gestalt Institute and an Adjunct Faculty at Saybrook Graduate School, Susan trains coaches and therapists throughout the U.S and Europe to integrate the tools in this book into their professional practices. In her own practice, she works with singles, couples, co-workers, and work teams helping them communicate respectfully and responsibly when conflicts arise. Dr. Susan’s latest book, “From Triggered to Tranquil” provides tools for navigating emotional reactivity in all types of interpersonal relationships, organized around five steps to “trigger mastery.”
Visit https://susancampbell.com/ to learn more and get the new book here.
About Your Hosts
Katie Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT, is a pioneer in body intelligence and conscious loving with over 40 years of experience. Known internationally as a presenter and seminar leader, she focuses on authenticity, responsibility, and appreciation in conscious living. She co-authored 12 books, including best-sellers Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After and she has appeared on over 500 radio and TV programs.
Sophie Chiche is a seasoned coach and consultant who has worked with thousands of individuals and teams globally. With a focus on helping people live fully expressed lives, she guides clients and facilitates group sessions to remove obstacles and design meaningful lives. Sophie has developed unique methods, mindset shifts, and healing modalities to create lasting change.
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