5 Best Mental Health Podcasts for your therapy journey

Written By Blake Blankenbecler
 
 

At Fig Therapy, we really love books and we also know that it’s sometimes hard to find 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to sit down and crack open your latest read. If this is you, good news, because we also really love podcasts around here. Sometimes I find the conversational tone to be really helpful as I pop my air buds in while I’m doing the dishes or going on a walk and discover new ways to make sense of my life, my story, and my emotions. 

There are a lot of excellent podcasts out there…so much so that it can be an overwhelming space to navigate and even know where to start. One of the reasons I love recommending books and podcasts alike is that they can offer you more language to put words to things that did or did not happen to you in your life. (Side note: trauma can be about what happened to you as much as it can be about what didn’t happen to you.) 

Another reason I love listening to therapy podcasts is that they offer you a peak into what other folks struggle with and talk about in their own therapy. A common worry in therapy is this sense that I must be the only one or everybody else has this figured out or I’m crazy for thinking this way. By listening to other folks engage in their own therapy through some of these podcasts, it can feel really humanizing to know a little bit more about what other people talk about, cry over, get frustrated around, experience confusion, and so much more. All serving this deeply important sense to remind you that you are not alone and the complexities of being human are felt by most people, that is if we are brave enough to be honest and truthful about it. 

The podcasts that I listen to most frequently that help my mental health the most are not ones that offer three easy steps or simple solutions to complex issues…the hosts instead offer a generous framing of how to hold complex issues in new ways. Similar to a holistic approach in therapy, we don’t look at symptoms or behaviors as things to simply get rid of, we instead look at these as parts that are wise, that have wisdom to share with us, and often need us to be compassionate enough and patient enough to sit with them to get to know them. This is also known as the good and frustrating work of integration! And knowing that people have gone before us and are also experiencing similar feelings around their own story, emotions, and body can serve as helpful reinforcements that all of the feelings and experiences we are having make sense. 

To that end, here are the five podcasts that I find myself returning to most frequently and offering as resources to friends, clients and colleagues in the therapeutic field the most. I also consider the sharing of a particular podcast with a friend to be a small gesture of care. Recently I was talking to a friend who is going through a really hard season of singleness and I listened to a particular podcast that I felt did a really lovely job naming the nuances, the loneliness, and the complexities of being single and dating in the modern era and sent it her way.

01. The Place We Find Ourselves | Adam Young 

I first heard about this podcast through a mutual therapist friend who shared his episodes with me over 5 years ago and have been listening ever since. Adam Young, LCSW is a therapist in Colorado and a fellow with the Allender Center. His work centers around engaging your story and understanding the complexities of your own family or origin and how those particularities continue to play out in your important relationships today. I often find myself recommending this podcast to folks who might be ambivalent about exploring their own story or might be struggling to hold the reality that you can have grown up in a loving home with loving parents and there were likely relational dynamics that hurt or harmed you whether intentional or unconscious that affect you today. The first few episodes on story are ones that I return to again and again. The first is titled “Why engaging your story is the best thing you can do for your brain” and the second episode “Why your family of origin impacts your life more than anything else” are absolutely worth listening to especially if you are just starting out and beginning your own therapy journey. I will offer as a side note that Adam does use his Christian faith as a framework throughout these episodes. For some that might be too triggering (don’t worry, there are other great mental health podcasts I’ll share that don’t have a religious bent) or you might be okay listening to parts knowing that you agree with some of what he’s saying and don’t agree with other parts. All a-okay! 

02. Where Should We Begin | Esther Perel 

I consider Esther Perel to be our modern day Freud…She’s brilliant and thought provoking but I should also add that she is not like Freud at all in that she does not have highly problematic practices of hiding important truths (that’s a story for another day). Her episodes often focus on one time couples therapy but as of late she’s done therapy for two friends, coworkers, and individuals. Esther is incredibly thoughtful, deeply curious, and also offers practical and tangible ways of moving through highly complex relational dynamics. I recently listened to the episode “Grief is like a fingerprint” and shared it with so many friends. A line that I keep circling around is when she named, “Grief is not well-behaved.” And my gosh if that doesn’t normalize all of the funky thoughts, feelings, and even actions that come out of our grief! 

03. Raising Boys and Girls | Sissy Goff & David Thomas 

This one is for the parents in the room. Gosh oh gosh if there’s one part of life that I sense most people are hyper sensitive about doing it differently it’s the work of parenting. This is a space that is hard, beautiful, and also brings up our own stories in deep and surprising ways. This is a podcast I love recommending to parents because the episodes are fairly short, really practical, and also really normalizing as they speak to the complexities of parenting and loving kids of all different ages. Sissy Goff and David Thomas are directors of a phenomenal counseling practice, Daystar Counseling, that serves adolescents in Nashville, TN. Some of my favorite episodes that I’ll share links to below are around the different stages of kiddos, what they need, and how to parent with that in mind. 

04. Holy/Hurt Podcast | Dr. Hillary McBride 

Religious trauma and spiritual abuse are unfortunately themes in a lot of people’s stories. My hunch is that they’ve been prevalent in so many people’s lives but we are just now getting the language and the validation that these experiences are not just real but traumatic as well. Dr Hillary McBride is a therapist whose work on embodiment and religious harm has been foundational to my own practice. She’s a voice I trust implicitly and always find her wells of wisdom to be deep, thoughtful, and so, so humanizing. Whenever I’m working with someone who has themes of spiritual harm and/or abuse in their story, this is a resource I love to share. It’s eight episodes and I often recommend moving slowly through these because having harm named so clearly and having that harm validated often illuminates our own grief in really surprising and tender ways. I have no doubt if themes of spiritual harm are a part of your story that you will also find this resource to be incredibly helpful. 

05. Couples Therapy | Orna Guralnik 

Okay, okay this technically isn’t a podcast, it’s a TV show, but I needed to include it here. It’s one of my favorite resources that I love turning both friends and clients onto because it’s just that good. Background: the producers of the show took the therapist's office and recreated it on a sound stage with all hidden cameras, so what you see is a really beautiful therapy office but more importantly, you get an intimate look at what couples therapy is like from one of the most phenomenal therapists out there. Guralnik is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in New York City. As a therapist getting to watch her work is one of my favorite parts of the show…how she languages things, stays regulated in some very dysregulated experiences, and gets straight to the heart of the matter is so delightful to watch and study. And if you’re not a therapist nerd like me, I have no doubt you will appreciate getting to watch couples who struggle with things that you likely struggle with in your partnership learn how to collaborate, be with themselves, and be with their partner in kinder, generous, more differentiated ways. I’ll even disclose that my husband and I love watching episodes together because it often opens up dialogue around places in our own marriage where we can begin to name and explore our own tricky dynamics. Here’s the link to the first episode that’s available on YouTube! 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again here: resources such as mental health podcasts and therapy books are incredible and so, so good to have but resources will never be a substitute for relationships. You need to do the work of healing in the presence of another regulated nervous system that can hear you, be curious with you, challenge you, and invite you to be with yourself in kind and compassionate ways. If you are realizing that you need someone to do this kind of deep work with, please reach out to Fig Holistic Psychotherapy in Charlotte, NC to schedule a complimentary phone consult to see if working together feels like it could be a good fit. Therapy is available to folks who reside in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas on a virtual basis and is available in person for folks in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Blake Blankenbecler
Next

Infertility and Mental Health: Navigating the Emotional Journey