Grief, Loss, Mortality & Living Well
Living From Happiness
Yes, it’s possible to live well while holding our grief and sorrow for what’s been lost, and knowing that we are simply mortal beings. And Martha Crawford is the perfect guest to share some big ideas and deeply personal experiences in this episode of Living From Happiness. Martha earned a master’s degree in social work, followed by an advanced certificate in clinical social work from NYU. After working for 25 years in New York City, she relocated to Santa Fe just in time to hunker down when the pandemic took over the world. In 2016, she was diagnosed with a...
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Building Your Relationship to Joy
Living From Happiness
Kelsey Blackwell is a cultural somatics practitioner and author dedicated to supporting women of color to trust and follow the guidance of the body. She’s a facilitator, coach, and speaker who's brought abolitionist embodied practices to such diverse groups as riders on Bay Area Rapid Transit trains to students at Stanford University to the offices of LinkedIn. She has a new book called "Decolonizing the Body: Healing, Body-Centered Practices for Women of Color to Reclaim Confidence, Dignity, and Self-Worth". Finally, Kelsey believes that working towards personal and collective...
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Food, Travel & Happiness
Living From Happiness
Cheryl Alters Jamison is the Queen of New Mexico food (at least, that’s what Melanie calls her)! Cheryl is a 4-time James Beard award winning cookbook author. She’s published 22 cookbooks, and sold over 2 million copies. Not one to rest for very long, she’s also been voted Edible New Mexico’s Local Heroes Best Food Writer award twice, is the founder of the online Excited About Foods community, a Contributing Culinary Editor for New Mexico Magazine, culinary tourism consultant, and a radio host at Hutton Broadcasting, where she...
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Having Fun Learning About Psychoanalysis
Living From Happiness
Really! Melanie and guest Jon Baskin have a lot of fun talking about psychoanalysis in this episode. Things like what it is, why there are so many negative biases against it (at least on Melanie’s part), and what motivated Jon to become a candidate psychoanalyst-in-training at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Jon Baskin is already a seasoned psychotherapist. He’s a licensed clinical social worker, completing his bachelor’s degree in philosophy at UCLA along with a master’s degree in social welfare, also at UCLA. Over the course of his...
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Healing Shame
Living From Happiness
This episode takes a deep dive into healing the shame of childhood sexual abuse. National expert Beverly Engel is Melanie’s guest as the two of them explore some of the many unhealthy consequences of shame. An acclaimed advocate for victims of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, Beverly’s a psychologist and best-selling author who’s published 22 books, including four bestsellers on emotional abuse. Her most recent book is Freedom at Last: Healing the Shame of Childhood Sexual Abuse. Even though the subject matter may feel dark and heavy, the reality is that...
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Joyeux Noel
Living From Happiness
Who's the most fascinating French scientist-turned-baker in Santa Fe? It's Marcel Remillieux, of course! This is a warm, gentle, delightful conversation about all things French and food (especially the sourdough bread) and families and growing up on the island of Corsica. Marcel shares lots of stories about his family's legacy of baking, along with how he ended up as a scientist at Los Alamos National Lab for eight years. He also gets up close and personal as he shares the story of why he chose to leave the Lab and take the huge risk of opening up a cafe and creperie, first in Los Alamos, and...
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12/07/2022 Holiday Happiness Pitfalls
Living From Happiness
Melanie shares several tips for enjoying the holidays in this episode. She also highlights some of the common holiday happiness traps that can cause folks a lot of sorrow, resentment and anger. As she says, “while almost everyone has fantastical dreams of perfect holidays that go all the way back before we were able to talk and encode explicit memories, almost as many of us are stressed, overwhelmed, sad or depressed, and can even become bitterly disappointed … every holiday season.” There’s a lot of good news, though! When you slow down and mindfully manage your...
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How to Survive Toxic Holidays
Living From Happiness
Silvia Stenitzer returns to the studio for this episode. Silvia’s a licensed professional clinical counselor in Santa Fe. She has a private practice as a psychotherapist. And she also trains the trainers, offering continuing education workshops throughout the year for licensed counselors. She has specialized training in some important areas, including somatic therapy and interpersonal neurobiology. Melanie and Silvia share ideas about how to manage the holiday season when it feels overwhelming, or if you’ll be spending time with toxic people, including family. Some of...
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Navigating Grief and Loss
Living From Happiness
Kimberley Brown is the guest on this episode which focuses on how to navigate grief and loss. Kim is a popular meditation teacher and author. She leads classes and workshops that emphasize the power of compassion and kindness to reconnect us to ourselves and others. She studies in both the Tibetan and Insight schools of Buddhism and is a Certified Mindfulness Instructor. Kim and Melanie talk all about her newest book, titled Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others. She’s a lovely teacher who’s written a very...
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Thriving as a Highly Sensitive Person
Living From Happiness
Have you ever been told that you’re “too sensitive,” thinking too much, or that you should be happy going to parties ‘cause the more the merrier? Do you hide you who are because you’ve been shamed or told there’s something wrong with you? You might be an HSP, a highly sensitive person. Melanie (Dr. Melanie Harth) explains what being an HSP means, and offers lots of ideas and strategies for coping with too much stress, overwhelm, and an over-stimulated nervous system. She references the work of the psychologist who developed the theory, Dr. Elaine Aron,...
info_outlineSeptember 7th, 2022
There are a lot of ways to help reduce anxiety. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), mindfulness (especially MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), and emotional regulation can absolutely change your life for the better if you're struggling with anxiety.
There are also plenty of ways to get creative when you're feeling overwhelmed.
- Journaling is one powerful way to help calm your nervous system and manage those anxiety gremlins.
- Bringing your mind back home to the present moment is a simple, effective way to ride the wild horse of your anxious mind, even if it's just for a sec.
- Music is super-powerful for self-soothing an anxious mind. Sometimes when my mind is scurrying around in too much worry, I listen to quiet jazz (or classical and all dance music, from 60s soul to contemporary salsa). Find your happy place with music and listen away (yep, I had to get up offa' my thing and dance listening to this!).
- Finally, if you're curious about divination tools such as Tarot cards, the I-Ching, Runes, or astrology, learning more about whatever's calling you can also provide creative ways to work with anxiety.
Note: if anxiety symptoms are getting in the way of work and relationships or causing health issues, please talk to a professional anxiety counselor and get help.
Can Astrology Help Reduce Anxiety?
Maybe. Sometimes. Sometimes a lot.
I recently spent an hour interviewing the nationally known astrologer Elisabeth Grace. We talked a lot about events and people in the news. We also talked about how understanding the bigger astrological picture of why things happen the way they do can help you feel less anxious.
In my experience, it can be a helpful tool along with psychotherapy when struggling with how to reduce anxiety. And according to The Atlantic, astrology is having a moment.
Astrology offers an understanding of the planetary patterns that reflect your life's potential.
Another way it can be helpful is that, once you understand those planetary patterns reflected in how you make choices, you can learn how to surf the waves of the inevitable life changes and curve balls everyone has to deal with.
Elisabeth and I talked about the chaos that seems to be happening these days. She mentioned the esteemed American historian Heather Cox Richardson (her free Facebook page; her paid substack page). If you're interested in current events and politics and how history repeats itself, check her out.
In the second half of the episode, I get personal with part of my astrology chart so Elisabeth could explain how a chart works.
more from Dr. Melanie Harth, The Santa Fe Therapist: https://