Forrest is joined by associate therapist and his fiancée Elizabeth Ferreira for an honest, personal conversation about what it's actually like to be in a relationship when one partner is living with trauma, complex PTSD, or another ongoing mental health challenge. Drawing on their experience together, they discuss supporting without enabling, avoiding power imbalances, managing resentment, dealing with moments of frustration, and the importance of reciprocity. Elizabeth has some thoughts about the DSM. Forrest shares about how Elizabeth has supported him. It’s a good one.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Intro and Elizabeth’s overview

5:50: How trauma shapes you

9:05: How Elizabeth found safety in her relationship with Forrest

11:12: How the relationship helped Forrest grow

15:44: Self-discovery through relationship

21:19: How to effectively support a partner with mental illness

33:42: Being ‘sturdy’

39:18: Navigating criticism

43:30: Communicating without resentment or shame

54:57: Avoiding stigma, and why Elizabeth wants to throw the DSM out the window

59:52: Not buying in to the smallest version of your partner

1:04:27: Recap

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Have you ever walked back into your parents' house and suddenly felt like you'd downloaded an old version of yourself? In today’s episode, Dr. Rick and Forrest explain why through one of the most influential frameworks in psychology: Family Systems Theory (FST). 

FST argues that hidden rules govern the behavior of the groups we’re a part of, and when you know the rules it’s easier to see them in action. Rick and Forrest explore how systems replicate patterns of behavior, place people into specific roles, and manage anxiety through shifting alliances. They close with how we can become differentiated by building a stronger sense of self. Topics include balancing closeness and distance, triangulation, specific roles like the “golden child,” FST’s non-pathologizing stance, the intergenerational transmission of patterns, and building strong relationships outside the system.

This episode includes references to self-harm.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Intro

2:19: What’s Family Systems Theory?

12:01: Overview of big concepts in FST

18:50: Family roles

25:19: How anxiety moves through a family system

36:42: The “identified patient”

46:51: Balancing compassion, agency, and responsibility

51:11: How healthy differentiation can disrupt a system

57:48: How to become more differentiated

1:11:33: Recap 

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Forrest is joined by journalist and author Michael Easter to discuss how we can make our lives better by making them (the right kind of) harder. They start with one of modern life’s paradoxes: things have gotten much easier, but this hasn’t led to more happiness or fulfillment. Michael talks about how our biological wiring backfires in today’s world of abundance, why humans need a mission, and the vital experiences we’ve lost. Other topics include problem creep, how everything has become a slot machine, rucking, and the “super medium” body.

About our Guest: Michael Easter is a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, journalist, and best-selling author of The Comfort Crisis, Scarcity Brain, and Walk with Weight. Michael is also the author of the #1 Substack in the Health & Wellness category, Two Percent.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Intro

2:10: How our world became engineered for comfort

7:39: Problem creep

10:49: Michael’s experience with sobriety

15:00: Abundance in today’s world: the industrial revolution, social media, and slot machines

21:17: Why we need a mission

25:31: Building resilience in a world of comfort and abundance

29:30: Personal agency vs systemic forces

38:09: The lost experience of boredom

48:19: Walking with weight

1:00:46: Getting back into nature

1:10:41: Recap

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Dr. Rick and Forrest answer listener questions about the freeze state, ADHD, and power imbalances in relationships. First, they talk about how to deal with feelings of shame associated with the freeze state, emphasizing how we can “be with” in order to “work with.” Then they tackle a tricky question about how psychoeducation can complicate relationships. Next up, they discuss whether rates of ADHD have actually increased, and the differences between “real” ADHD vs. symptoms of screen addiction. Finally, they talk about how to think about the right fit with a therapist. 

Key Topics: 

0:00: Introduction

1:17: Question 1: Shame and the freeze state

19:12: Question 2: “My partner’s lack of psychoeducation is frustrating me!”

33:56: Question 3: “Why does everyone have ADHD?”

46:21: Question 4: “What’s the right amount of directness in therapy?”

56:01: Recap

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Protect your peace, set boundaries, don't let people drain your energy…there’s a lot of advice like that, and it’s easy to take it a little too far. Therapist and bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab joins Forrest to discuss the unintended consequences of the boundaries movement. 

They talk about how the helpful concept of boundaries led some toward isolation and rigid standards, and focus on healthy dependency: the reality that we all need other people. Nedra explains the spectrum from codependency to hyper-independence, why your attachment style is more flexible than you think, and how the stories we tell about ourselves become self-fulfilling. Throughout, they focus on developing key aspects of healthy dependency: being able to ask for help, receive support, tolerate distance, feel comfortable in closeness, and repair after conflict. 

About our Guest: Nedra Glover Tawwab is a licensed therapist, relationship expert, and best-selling author with over 2 million followers on social media. Her new book is The Balancing Act: Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Intro: Misconceptions around boundaries

7:14: What we get wrong about codependency

11:13: The consequences of individualism

15:00: How this all relates to attachment styles

20:03: Personal narratives and self-concept

24:50: Opposite action vs. trusting your gut

27:46: Developing self-awareness around your tendencies

34:42: Navigating distance and boundaries in relationships

44:30: Showing up for friends in difficult relationships

52:50: How to be in imperfect relationships 

55:51: How to move out of the shallow zone in relationships 

1:07:20: Recap

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What is mindfulness really? According to one fourth-grader, "Not hitting someone in the mouth." Legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg joins Rick and Forrest to discuss how we can work skillfully with anger, fear, and reactivity without becoming doormats or numbing ourselves out through the lens of her new children’s book Kind Karl.

They explore the protective function of anger, and how we can create more space by relating differently to our thoughts, emotions, and sense of self. Sharon shares a Buddhist lens that links anger and fear, and how looking closely at “what’s in the anger” can help us get clarity without collateral damage. Along the way, they talk about the difference between healthy moral anger and the habit of anger, how to extract the positive energy from difficult emotions without getting burned, and how lovingkindness and self-compassion can be active, strengthening forces. 

About our Guest: Sharon Salzberg is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, a world-renowned teacher of mindfulness, and author or co-author of 14 books including her seminal work Lovingkindness and her first children’s book Kind Karl: A Little Crocodile with Big Feelings.

Key Topics:

0:00: Intro and Sharon’s new children’s book

1:30: Rick and Sharon’s personal history

3:40: Making abstract concepts direct and simple

6:00: “Mindfulness means not hitting someone in the mouth.”

12:30: Equanimity, reactivity, and our relationship with pleasure and pain

26:48: Healthy moral anger and outrage

34:17: How mindfulness decenters the self

43:53: Decoupling identity from states of suffering

50:23: Dissolving boundaries, self protection, and loneliness

1:03:09: Recap

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Forrest and somatic therapist Elizabeth Ferreira explore a common source of relationship conflict: the mismatch between “fixing” (moving quickly into problem-solving) and “feeling” (wanting attunement and empathy before solutions). They talk about where these patterns come from, how each functions as a psychological defense, and the role of gender socialization, identity, and adaptation. The conversation also touches on trauma, nervous-system activation, and why building safety usually comes before real change.

Key Topics:

0:00: Intro

3:40: “Fixing” vs. “feeling,” and why both can be protective strategies.

6:03: Socialization and learned coping styles.

9:12: Why conflict happens

14:28: Attunement, then problem-solving.

18:35: How discomfort with emotion shapes communication

30:48: What change looks like in practice.

33:49: Trauma and nervous-system activation

42:32: Helping logical-first people open up emotionally.

46:49: “Do you want empathy or solutions?”

49:03: Teaser about Complex PTSD in relationships.

52:30: Recap

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Top performance coach and author Brad Stulberg joins Forrest to reframe and reclaim excellence. Brad explains how real excellence - involved engagement with something you care about - is the healthy middle path between over-the-top hustle-culture and detached nonchalance. They discuss the current culture of pseudo-excellence, the risks and rewards of caring deeply, how modern life can derail us, and how the real prize is the person you become while trying to reach your goals. Brad shares practical tools to build the habit of excellence: clear aims, micro-milestones, consistency over intensity, constraint-based discipline, and connection.

About our Guest: Brad is a regular contributor at the New York Times, the co-host of the Excellence, Actually podcast, and on faculty at the University of Michigan’s Graduate School of Public Health. He’s also the author of a number of books, including The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Life feels better when we’re “trying well”

1:56: What does Brad mean by excellence?

3:42: What excellence is not

5:06: Staying on the path: how to keep going when results are slow

11:56: Excellence vs. skill

21:10: The Nonchalance Epidemic

27:29: Building your “identity house”

35:29: Specific tools for excellence

44:12: Excellence vs flow

50:10: Finding the enjoyable aspects of hard things

1:01:11: Gumption

1:03:57: “See the ball go through the net”

1:05:56: How to finish a process that never ends

1:13:22: Recap

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Forrest and Dr. Rick explore how well-intentioned self-help advice can drift away from science under the incentives of the attention economy, where overclaiming, alarmist framing, and “this one simple trick” outperforms nuance. They talk about how authority gets manufactured, how the algorithm encourages overclaiming, and how “theories of everything” lead to misinformation. Dr. Rick and Forrest discuss whether seemingly harmless pseudoscientific practices can create a slippery slope, lowering the importance of material evidence and acting as an on-ramp to more consequential misinformation.

Key Topics: 

0:00 Introduction

2:00 The attention economy

9:00 The problems with clickbait

18:30: The risks of sprawling expertise

25:15: Modality capture: when all you have is a hammer

27:15: ADHD and trauma

39:24: If science changes, what can we trust?

42:30: How “fringe” can become mainstream

50:10: How do you decide who to trust?

1:06:00: The slippery slope of “woo”

1:11:35: What’s a better alternative?

1:21:11: Recap

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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how we can put our key values into action in 2026. They discuss how we can identify authentic values, and then translate them into goals and daily behaviors while reducing our focus on outcomes we don’t control. Forrest focuses on insights from Self-Determination Theory, and Dr. Rick shares how to create a warmer inner climate, and they talk about the overall importance of self-belief. The episode includes a number of practical tools related to environment design, scheduling, social accountability, and how to overcome obstacles.

Key Topics: 

0:00: Introduction

2:00: What values are you focusing on this year?

8:50: Turning your values into plans

16:00: Motivation is “context dependent”

22:10: Claiming autonomy in an imperfect world

34:20: Turning ideas into specific behaviors

41:15: Updating self-concept

51:00: How to deal with normal obstacles

1:00:34: Recap

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In this New Year’s episode, Dr. Rick and Forrest make the case that most resolutions fail because they focus on the wrong things: outcomes and behaviors rather than key values. They explore how we can identify our important values, embrace caring about them, and start to let them change our behavior. Forrest talks about how we can differentiate authentic values from “conditions of worth,” and Dr. Rick shares a number of ways to get more in touch with what matters to you. Topics include translating “shoulds” into values, experiencing more autonomy and agency, creating personal narratives, and finding your “stance toward the year.”

Key Topics: 

0:00: Intro: values, self-concept, and levels of action

7:22: Living from states of having, doing, and being

13:09: Stances toward life based in threat versus opportunity; what are you paying attention to?

20:18: Examining “shoulds” to find and define your authentic values 

33:30: Emulating the people you admire and respect most

41:55: Strategies to identify your root values 

54:05: Recap

Rick's Goals Course: If you want to get more out of the year ahead check out Rick’s online course on resolutions that last. Learn more at RickHanson.com/goals, and use coupon code BeingWell25 to receive a 25% discount.

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