Sarah Hill, professor of social psychology at Texas Christian University and author of This is your brain on birth control: The surprising science of sex, women, hormones and the law of unintended consequences, shares her journey into exploring the effects of oral contraception on mental health. “I actually spent my early career studying the way our sex hormones can affect psychological states and motivation…and the desire to attract romantic partners.” It wasn’t until Hill went off oral contraception herself that she began to connect the dots. “I started to feel so differently, that I started to really wonder what we did not know and about the way the pill affects the brain and the way that women experience the world.”

Hill recounts her personal experience and the research she conducted on the Pill’s effects, highlighting a range of impact on physical and mental wellbeing. Everything from “having less energy” to “being at a greater risk for depression and anxiety,” and how “it can reduce sexual desire and sexual functioning.”

Emily Dossett, a clinical associate professor of Psychiatry & the Behavioral Sciences at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, addresses another often-overlooked aspect of women’s health: the prevalence of mental health disorders before, during, and after pregnancy. Dossett underscores that “pregnancy is a time of tremendous and rapid physiological change,” and that “if a woman is susceptible, really to anything; diabetes, hypertension, cardiac disorders,” that pregnancies with those disorders “are more likely to come to the forefront or even emerge for the first time. The same is true for mental illness.”

Dossetts points out that society tends to attach immense joy to pregnancy and the celebration of pregnancy that women feel ashamed, even stigmatized, if they mention or complain about how they feel. “We're just realizing how common some of these challenges are in terms of mental health because we're just now at a point where we're allowing women to actually speak up about it.” Roughly “one out of every four to five women” suffer from some kind of mental disorder, Dossett says, with depression and anxiety being most common.

Because there has been little research on women’s mental health and pregnancy, Dossestt explains that there’s a general “lack of understanding and comprehension and naming of these disorders in the mental health world.” And when it comes to medication; “ the FDA, which approves all drugs, does not permit pregnant or lactating people to be included in drug trials.”

So, what options are available for women who require medication and aspire to conceive? “The question is not really whether or not these medications are safe but it's more of a risk, risk analysis for each individual person,” Dossett says.

“I firmly believe everyone has the right to have a child. Everyone has the right to not have a child and everyone has the right to raise a child in a safe and healthy environment. Those are the tenets of what we call reproductive justice. And I believe they apply to people with mental illness just like anyone else.”

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

This week, Terry Real, renowned couples therapist and author “Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship” reflects on the keys to building a successful long term relationship. In order to change inherited behaviors and dysfunction, Real cites his own struggle with family trauma and offers hope that with courage, discipline and hardwork change is indeed possible.

This episode of Life Examined with Terry Real was originally broadcast June 23rd, 2024

If you’ve ever been accused of ‘gaslighting' someone, you might find yourself unsure about what exactly you're being accused of. The term is the latest amongst a growing collection of popular psychological buzzwords used to describe manipulative or calculating behavior, but it's often misused and misunderstood.

The term originated from the 1940s black-and-white film Gaslight where a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she’s crazy by subtly adjusting the intensity of their home's gas lights when she’s alone in the house. The husband denies there’s anything wrong with the lights, leaving his wife distraught, confused, and questioning her own memory and sanity.

In her book The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life “The Gaslight Effect,” psychoanalyst Robin Stern explains why this word has gained so much prominence in both personal and professional relationships, particularly among women. “Seeing many women come into my office who were otherwise in their lives the presidents of their company, professional practice, or very successful –good decision makers who felt comfortable in groups, socialized quite a bit, suddenly, in their romantic relationship were uncertain; felt a kind of dislocated or unmoored, felt unstable and second-guessed themselves all the time, [saying to themselves], am I too sensitive, am I too paranoid?”

Stern says that “gaslighting” is an “insidious and sometimes covert form of emotional abuse.” Being gaslit is “a power dynamic repeated over time where the gaslighters intention is to undermine and destabilize the ‘gaslightee’ and lead that person to second-guess themselves, to question their own identity and ultimately their sanity and their character at different times.”

Stern argues that being able to spot this type of behavior is important. When “gaslighting” happens professionally, it can be tough to tackle. For example, Stern cites doctor/patient relationships and warns that “if your doctor minimizes your symptoms, if he or she continually interrupts you or accuses you of being too preoccupied with your symptoms, or refuses to order follow-up tests or if you constantly feel like your doctor is rude, condescending, belittling, or passing it off, as ‘that's your age, or you're a woman, or you're a new mom’ or whatever it is, you're being gaslighted.”

After recognizing the behavior, Stern suggests taking action. “Opt out of those power struggles and sort out the truth from the distortion…Nobody needs to put up or should put up with abuse. It is not acceptable for anyone to be intentionally hurting someone else.”

*This episode originally aired on July 2, 2022.

British writer Robert Macfarlane grew up loving mountains. A keen hiker, he says mountains are in his DNA – Macfarlane's father was a mountaineer and his grandfather oversaw some of the early expeditions and the first summit of Mount Everest in the 1950s.

Macfarlane’s own passion for the extremes of the mountains and the wilds of the outdoors fostered yet another interest: writing. In his first book “Mountains of the Mind,” Macfarlane explored why he fell in love with mountains and sought answers as to why so many climbers are willing to die for love of rock and ice.

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

Macfarlane is a fellow at Emmanuel College at Cambridge University in the UK. He has written numerous books focused on nature and landscape, including “Landmarks” and “The Old Ways,” which led to an exploration of the subterranean world, the topic of his latest book “Underland: A Deep Time Journey.”

“The trodden paths are the beginning of the underworld if you like because they are land hollowed by feet, by time and by wheels, so there were lots of things pointing me down,” Macfarlane says.

While the upper world is the place of the gods and awe, he says, the subterranean world is an unseen place — one for burial and hiding. Macfarlane also shares his passion for language and metaphor, explaining that the “underworld” is where “matter meets metaphor” — and that negative words like “down,” “dark,” or “depressed” are deeply ingrained into our language.

Jonathan Bastian talks with Robert Macfarlane about his connection to the landscape and about his exploration and interest in what lies beneath our feet. As a writer, Macfarlane shares his love for language and metaphor and is particularly interested in “gathering words which seemed much more vibrant, reciprocal, and dynamic.” For Macfarlane, the rediscovery of language furthers a connection to the natural world, and Macfarlane says there’s even a map highlighting the regional terms for “creek” across North America.

So how has language and the Tale of Gilgamesh impacted his latest project? Can music and song breathe life into ancient stories - in a way that writing can’t?

Macfarlane speaks about his interest in music and how it connects to his love of nature and storytelling. He explains how he connected during the pandemic with actor and singer/songwriter Johnny Flynn, and how Epic of Gilgamesh, became the “nourishment that drove the writing of 11 songs” that now appear on the album “Lost in The Cedar Wood.”

Music, Macfarlane muses, is “the purest form of magic to me. Writing is labor and trial work and concentration, perspiration and locked rooms. No one would ever want to watch a writer write, right? It's paint drying, it's grass growing, but musicians. ...are magicians weaving a golden thread that they pluck from the air.”

This week, Rabbi Steve Leder, author of “For You When I Am Gone: Twelve Essential Questions to Tell a Life Story” reflects on the legacy we leave after we’re gone and suggests that rather than a long list of accomplishments, it’s the quality of our relationships, throughout our lives that have the biggest impact on our own happiness and how we are cherished and remembered by others.

This episode of Life Examined with Rabbi Steve Leder was originally broadcast May 28th, 2022

*This episode originally aired on January 14, 2023.

From our earliest ancestors, we’ve been travelers — first as nomadic tribes, and later as raiders, traders, explorers, and colonizers. Whether by ship or by foot, it’s human nature to move and explore.

Jonathan Bastian talks with travel writer, podcaster, and vagabond Rolf Potts about the merits of travel. Potts is the author of several travel books, including Vagabonding and Marco Polo Didn't Go There. In his latest book, The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel, Potts explains why travel is good for us and how the unexpected part in a journey can change us for the better.

“The best gift to travel is just allowing yourself to be surprised,” says Potts. “Stumbling into serendipity, having a bad time, and realizing that it's not as bad as you thought it would be. We forget how easy it is to adapt, how helpful people are, and how we can figure it out and have a great time doing it.”

“One of the gifts of travel is to sort of blow those habits open and be vulnerable and almost childlike in your relationship to the world again,” says world traveler Rolf Potts. Photo by Fritz Liedtke. In “The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel,” author Rolf Potts encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren't able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.

Today, technology, cheap flights, and bucket-list trips have made travel easier, more affordable, and somewhat predictable. Potts says that’s also limited our options and possibilities as travelers.

“We're all in lockstep, following our phone, looking at a screen as a window into a place that we've traveled so far to come to, instead of just sort of following our nose or following our eyes or following our ears,” he says.

When it comes to modes of transportation, Potts shares his tips on exotic ways to travel without becoming overly dependent on flights.

“Train culture around the world is really fun to experience and it doesn't have as many emissions,” he suggests. “Stay on the sea over land and go those hardships, don't fast-forward your way through the world with a bunch of flights — slow down a little bit.”

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

After 30 years of experience counseling couples, therapist Terry Real reflects on what makes building a long-term relationship difficult and the skills needed to keep a partnership intact. Reals says that even with changing dynamics and non-traditional partnerships, the age-old problems still exist.

“Despite all of the gender fluidity and all of the experimentation, a two-person paired-for-life, monogamous core, is still alive and well and extremely difficult.”

The pressure is on to find that “perfect” someone, yet, despite the romantic “idealization” of coupledom, promoted by a booming dating and marriage industry, the reality is that most couples won’t last a decade together, much less a lifetime. The US Census Bureau reports that most marriages last on average 8 years. Real says the odds in the U.S. are that roughly 50% of all marriages will end in divorce - “the failure rate on marriage has hovered at about 40-50% for half a century.”

The reason, Real explains, is that “we want to be lifelong lovers; we want long walks on the beach, we want heart-to-heart talks, great sex in our 60s and 70s but we don't have the skills to match this new ambition. We are trying to be lifelong lovers in a culture that does not cherish relationships.” We live in a society, Real argues, that asserts individualism. “We don't teach our sons and daughters and non-binary kids how to fight fair, how to stand up for yourself in a loving way. We don't teach the basic skills of relationships in this culture because we don't value it.”

So what are the chances a couple has to beat the odds? What’s the key to staying together? According to Real, it’s “hard work” and “it’s very rare that people have the discipline.” Relationship skills need to be learned and practiced. Real suggests that “basic relationship skills [be] taught in elementary and junior high.”

Real, who’s also the founder of the Relationship Life Institute and author of numerous books including most recently Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, talks specifically about the impact of inherited family pathologies. He advises the reopening of childhood trauma to heal old wounds;

“Family pathology rolls from generation to generation, like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames. That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children.”

In his book, Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, author Terrance Real says “we don't teach the basic skills of relationship in this culture because we don't value it. We're supposed to just know how to do it and most long-term relationships crash and burn. The failure rate on marriage has hovered at about 40-50% for half a century.”

Terry Real, pictured here, says “ you can have a superlative relationship if you're with a partner you love who is also in on the game and willing to do the work themselves. If both of you are willing to do that and you have the basic chemistry that drew you to each other to begin with,you can do it. But it's very rare that people have the discipline and the know-how to build it all.” Photo courtesy of Terrance Real at The Relational Life Institute

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.

Judith Orloff, UCLA clinical psychiatrist and author of The Genius of Empathy: Practical Skills to Heal Your Sensitive Self, Your Relationships, and the World, explains that empathy is what connects us. It’s the ability to care, to listen, and to open our hearts. The practice of empathy, Orloff says, is a simple yet “precious gift” and that displaying empathy is the “best of who we are.” Orloff also says being empathetic is “a way we can save our world because empathy is the key element in reaching out to people, even if you disagree with them, even if you don't like them, it allows you to establish accord with them.”

In addition, Orloff says, “when you're open to empathy, all kinds of good things can happen to your body. There's something called the Mother Teresa effect, where it's been shown that if you witness an act of empathy, and I were to draw your blood, it would show that your immunity would go up immediately. And what that says to me is that just alone, watching empathy can increase our immunity and make us healthier.”

Zachary Wallmark, an associate professor of musicology and with the Center for Translational Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, talks about his research on the intersection of music and empathy. Wallmark has observed, through magnetic imagining, how listening to music relates to social cognition and empathy. “Empathy,” Wallmark says, “produces a very distinctive neural signature in the brain when folks are listening to music. Empathy modulates music processing in areas of the brain that are associated with cognitive control, with social processing, with reward, and with emotion.”

Through music, Wallmark says, we can “explore our own identity, learn about others, bond with others. So music can be useful in social cohesion, bonding, [and] it can help coordinate group activity. It can also demarcate social boundaries, who is like us and who is different from us.”

In her book The Genius of Empathy: Practical Skills to Heal Your Sensitive Self, Your Relationships, and the World, author Judith Orloff says “If you're having difficulties with your relationships, just try this gift-- just to listen, with your eyes, with your voice, with your heart - it's such a gift and it helps people feel seen and heard and valued, which is the point of empathy.”

Judith Orloff, pictured here, says “in my life, the most important thing to me is connection, and love and understanding. That is what gives me the most meaning Whether it's with nature, with human beings, with animals - empathy allows us that opportunity to connect with our human kind and everything about this life that we've been given.” Photo courtesy of Bob Riha

Zachery Wallmark, pictured here, says “music can create a kind of playground to try on, in a fantasy sense, different types of emotional reactions. You can be a different person, you can experience things that you're not experiencing in your … normal life." Photo by Kim Leeson.

Delve deeper into life, philosophy, and what makes us human by joining the Life Examined discussion group on Facebook.