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Have you ever been asked to tell your life story and not known where to start? Perhaps your work history does not show one clear career, or a therapist has asked you to connect your past to your present and you find that awkward. You may have concluded that something is wrong with you. Many of us are told that a psychologically healthy person can tell a coherent story about their life: where they came from, what shaped them, and where they are heading. In this video I discuss the philosopher Galen Strawson's argument that this is not true of everyone.  Strawson distinguishes people who experience their lives as a continuous story from people who do not, and he argues that living without a life story is legitimate and can be fulfilling. I also explain how this differs from identity disturbance, a persistent and distressing instability in a person's sense of self that occurs in some clinical conditions and deserves proper support. At the end, I share what people who live by a life story, like me, can learn from those who do not. This is one section of a longer essay on the self, which also covers Buddhist dependent origination, David Hume, Derek Parfit and Zhuangzi: https://eggshelltherapy.com/on-emptiness/ Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

We spend much of our lives constructing a sense of who we are, and then defending it. In this episode, I read from my essay on emptiness and the self, covering Jung's account of identity at midlife, the Buddhist teaching of dependent origination, and the difference between the Buddhist meaning of emptiness and the clinical experience of feeling empty. PS- The Buddhist sense of emptiness discussed here is distinct from the clinical experience of chronic emptiness, which deserves proper support. The full essay, which further covers David Hume, Derek Parfit, Zhuangzi, and Galen Strawson's philosophy (albeit only briefly), is here: eggshelltherapy.com/on-emptiness Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Most of us who live with intensity have spent years being told we are too much. Too emotional, too fast, too deep. And because we heard it so often, we learned to shrink, to soften everything we say in advance, and to treat our own nature as a problem that needed managing. In this episode I am the guest. Diann Wingert, a former psychotherapist turned business strategist for entrepreneurs with ADHD, interviewed me on her show, the ADHD-ish™ Podcast, where this conversation was first released as Episode 332. Diann was identified as gifted in the fourth grade and diagnosed with ADHD late, so she knows this territory from the inside. We talk about what intensity is and why it sits at the centre of ADHD, autism, giftedness, and high sensitivity without being any of them. We get into why intense people burn out and bore out at the same time, what it costs to carry responsibility without authority, why "if that makes sense" is a survival reflex that has expired, the compulsion to correct the people we love, and the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow, which is the suffering we add on top of the pain we cannot avoid. This conversation was first released on the ADHD-ish™ Podcast, Episode 332:https://www.diannwingertcoaching.com/blog/emotional-intellectual-intensity Find Diann at www.diannwingertcoaching.com Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/08/27/travis/ Many intense people have a high level of moral sensitivity. I wrote about this elsewhere before, but basically, they see something cruel or careless and cannot just move on from it the way other people seem to. They often lie awake thinking about whether they are doing enough, whether what they are doing even counts, and whether there is any point in trying when the world does not seem to care whether they try or not. They hold themselves to standards that others think are too high, and when they fall short, they feel extremely guilty. They try to honour their values, but then they watch the news and have to hold themselves back from despair. After long enough, they start to wonder whether the whole thing is a trap they built for themselves. In this conversation, I want us to see what we can learn from a moral philosopher who has spent his career working out how ordinary humans like us can try to do good even when it seems pointless at times.  Travis Rieder teaches bioethics at Johns Hopkins and wrote a book called Catastrophe Ethics.  He holds that some people are purists;  once they find out they are part of something harmful, they get themselves out of it. Others are nihilists, and they think that when the problem is this big, nothing they do counts, so there is nothing they owe anybody. Travis has watched many students come in as purists, wear themselves out, and leave as nihilists.  We also talk about the role of religion in all of this.  Travis says that if God could have commanded torture and that would have made torture right, the commands are not worth much, and if God commands things because they are already right, then you can work out what is right without him.  Travis's thesis is that you have no duty to cut your carbon footprint, but you have good reasons to. What he leaves us with is this: sit down every so often and work out where our time and our money and our energy should go, because that is what gives our lives meaning. Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/07/30/frank/ If you have searched for help with anxiety or overthinking, YouTube has probably offered you ten Stoic principles that will change your life, or Taoism explained as going with the flow, sometimes in an approximation of Alan Watts's voice. My guest is Frank P. Saunders Jr., a philosopher who works on Chinese thought and who has spent the past couple of years making videos about philosophy and public philosophy.  We began with McStoicism, the version of Stoicism made to go down easily and keep you coming back. Of the distortions he identifies, the one he thinks does the most damage is the promise that this is not difficult. When the ten tips do not work, people conclude that Stoicism does not work for them, or that they are the kind of person for whom nothing works. His formulation is that the results were overstated and the effort was understated. The second thing that gets removed is God. Surrendering to a world that is indifferent to you is a different act from aligning yourself with a world that is going somewhere. On emotions, the Stoics did say you should let go of certain feelings, but only because they thought doing so would make you a genuinely better person, someone who could not be shaken by loss or circumstance. The popular version keeps the letting go and loses the point of it.  Stoicism was about becoming brave, honest, fair, and useful to the people around you. Marcus Aurelius keeps saying you do this for your community, not for your own calm. However, these are rarely mentioned online in the fast food versions of Stoicism, which ask nothing of you, though they may also give little back.  The second half of our chat turns to the problems with AI-generated Alan Watts video and perennialism. Watts would tell a Taoist story, then a Zen story, then something about a Christian choir, and make them all point the same way. Frank's objection is that the traditions are not saying the same thing. On wu wei: Frank argues that nothing done at an expert level is effortless. What changes with mastery is where the effort goes, because the expert knows what to attend to.   Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Full text: https://eggshelltherapy.com/waiting-mode/ Waiting mode describes the inner experience of being unable to do anything because something uncertain, or a future event, is pending. It could be an appointment, an exam result, a medical scan, a conversation that has not happened yet, a text message that may or may not receive a reply. Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Eric Mathison is a philosopher and bioethicist and a former clinical ethicist. In this conversation, we discuss why the idea that medicine is about healing may be wrong, what the evidence actually shows about the effectiveness of mental health treatment, and what happens when the system has to label you as disordered before it can help you. We talk about diagnostic labelling and neurodiversity, the disturbing variation between doctors’ subjective judgement, and whose voice actually counts in psychiatric settings. We close with a conversation about the philosophy of death. https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/07/11/eric-mathison/ Find Eric's writing at valuejudgments.substack.com Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Gordon Smith is a therapist, coach, and creative instructor who has spent over 26 years working with gifted and neurodivergent adolescents and adults. Gordon came to centre giftedness in his practice after pulling out seven years of client notes and realising the people he had done his best work with all had one thing in common: they were intensely, unusually bright. That discovery sent him into his own gifted reckoning. We talk about what giftedness actually looks like when you pull it out of the narrow frame of IQ scores and school performance, and what happens to people who grow up intense, complex, and sensitive in environments that have no idea what to do with them. What we covered: What giftedness means beyond IQ, and why Gordon uses "intense, complex, and sensitive" instead of a fixed definitionGifted trauma as attachment wounding: chronic misattunement, rejection, and a self-concept built from other people's discomfort with youThe body keeping score: chronic illness, autoimmune conditions, IBS, nervous system hypervigilance, and why COVID was the last straw for manyWhy "underachievement" is better understood as other achievement, and Gordon's own story of deliberately cultivating mediocrity to protect his freedomFamily roles gifted people get stuck in: the over-functioner, the helper, the parentified child, the high achiever, the outcastThe loneliness where everyone thinks you are thriving and nobody actually knows youPerfectionism, guilt, shame, and the internalised belief that your productivity is your worthWhy conventional therapy keeps falling short for gifted clients, and what neurodivergent-affirming practice actually looks likeGordon's Gifted Adults Group Experience: co-created, non-scripted, iterative, and built around what participants bringThe nervous system shift when gifted people feel genuinely mirrored for the first timeWhat it costs gifted men to be tender, sensual, and creative in a culture that only permits anger and achievementImprov, play, and flow state writing as paths to growth through the creative rather than the purely intellectualGiftedness as heritable and traceable through family systems, often along the maternal line, and why you should look beyond your parents to aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/05/26/grief/ This is one of my favourite conversations I have recorded for The Intense Mind. As I was researching mortality and grief myself, I came across Professor Cholbi's Grief: A Philosophical Guide as a reader. I loved the book so much that I annotated it heavily. To go from reading the book to sitting with the author feels surreal, in a really wondrous way.  Most of what we are offered when we grieve either asks whether something has gone wrong with us or hands us techniques to manage the pain. A philosophical approach does not try to diagnose grief. Instead, it gives us conceptual tools to understand and think about grief in a new way.  It gives us tools to make the experience feel less disorienting without pretending to solve it. Dr. Cholbi is Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Grief: A Philosophical Guide. In this conversation we discuss: — Why grief is better understood as a sustained form of attention than as a single emotion  — Whose deaths we actually grieve, and why intimacy and love don't fully explain it  — Ambivalent grief, and the relief that can sit beside sorrow  — Why the pain of grief is not a cost we pay but part of how we understand what we have lost  — His argument that we may have a duty to grieve, and that everyone is entitled to be grieved by someone  — Why he resists treating grief as an illness to be diagnosed and shortened Professor Cholbi’s website: https://michael.cholbi.com  Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

In this episode I sit down with Joey Remenyi, a vestibular audiologist, neuroplasticity therapist, and author of Sensing Ground and Rock Steady. Joey trained clinically at one of Australia's top vestibular clinics before building her own practice helping people with chronic and persistent sensory symptoms using neuroplasticity and somatic approaches. We talk about what is actually happening in the nervous system when highly sensitive people experience sensory overwhelm. Joey explains the pathway between the amygdala, insula, and prefrontal cortex, and how strengthening that connection can help people move from fear-driven reactivity to accurate pattern recognition. She breaks down how sound enters and travels through the body, and why the danger response can get stuck in a loop that cognitive approaches alone struggle to resolve. I share some of my own experience with hyperacusis and misophonia, and Joey offers her clinical perspective on what is happening in the auditory system and why fear of sound can become self-reinforcing. We discuss what the body might be trying to communicate through persistent sensory symptoms, and how learning to listen to those signals rather than fighting them can be part of the healing process. The conversation also explores psychological erasure, the experience of growing up with your inner reality dismissed or invalidated, and the distinction Joey draws between erasure that comes from the outside world and self-erasure, where we internalise that dismissal and stop listening to ourselves. Joey shares parts of her own story and how she developed self-trust through difficult early experiences. We get into the question of neurodivergent labels and diagnosis, and whether they help or hinder the process of coming home to yourself. Joey has a perspective on this that not everyone will share, and I think hearing it is valuable precisely because it invites us to examine our own relationship to the labels we carry. If you live with chronic sensory symptoms, identify as highly sensitive or neurodivergent, or are simply curious about the relationship between your body and your sense of self, I hope this conversation will bring you new information or insights!  Joey’s Website: https://www.seekingbalance.com.au/ Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

For the full essay, please go to: https://eggshelltherapy.com/guilt/ Persistent guilt is what many intellectually and emotionally intense adults carry without knowing what to call it. It is the feeling of being haunted by a moral failure you cannot quite identify, of replaying conversations and decisions long after they should have settled, of being judged by a voice inside you. This essay traces where that voice comes from and offers some ways of loosening its hold. Table of Contents: Feeling Extreme Guilt Without Knowing Why Moral Sensitivity, Existential Excitability, Silent Perfectionism Early Wounds That Foreshadow Extreme Guilt - How a Child’s Mind Works - The Extreme Guilt of Outgrowing Your Roots - Simply Being Different - Parentification and the Gold Child Syndrome - Abuse and Neglect - When Rage Becomes Extreme Guilt Reality Check and Consolations - The Bigger Picture - The Arrow and the Work Carrying It Differently Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views and they reserve the right to change their opinions. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers/ Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Full text: https://eggshelltherapy.com/high-functioning-depression/ (Recorded with human voice) We can think of the mechanism of high functioning depression this way: At some point in your life, perhaps because the mental burden on you had become overwhelming, your psyche created an internal split to cope. In high functioning depression, what develops is a division between your "high functioning part" and your "depressed part." The high functioning part is what you use to cope with demands from the world. It is what you carry to work and use to run day-to-day tasks. It appears strong and capable; It maintains the facade of being the person others rely upon, the responsible one who never falters, the good friend who always has time, the loyal worker who exceeds expectations, the loving partner who always meets their loved one’s needs. Meanwhile, running parallel to this competent exterior is your vulnerable and depressed part. It feels like a younger, more raw, unedited version of you. It is the aspect of self that houses all the suffering, all the despair, all the unprocessed grief, and overwhelming pain. It holds memories of the painful experiences you have endured, and because of that, most of the time, you would rather not get in touch with it, so it has been split off and hidden, even from yourself, in the dark corner of your psyche.   Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/04/22/bodyshadow/ I recently had the immense pleasure of sitting down with Jungian analyst Erica Lorentz to discuss her profound new work, Body is Shadow: Jung’s Method of Embodied Healing. Many intellectually gifted and highly sensitive individuals often live very much “in our heads.” This conversation was a vital reminder of what happens when we bridge that gap between our soaring intellects and our physical, felt experiences.  We concluded with the idea that wholeness requires us to bring the shadow into the light of our physical awareness. It was a reminder that for the highly sensitive person, your greatest vulnerability—your deep receptivity—is also your greatest path to healing. I hope this conversation encourages you to treat your body not as a secondary thought to your mind, but as a wise partner in your journey toward integration.     About Erica Erica Lorentz, M.Ed., L.P.C. is a Jungian Analyst (IAAP) with forty years of clinical experience. Since 1988, she has lectured and taught classes and workshops throughout the US and in Canada. She has been a training analyst since 1998 (presently at the C. G. Jung Institute of New England). She does individual, couples, and group work. While she has a deep and varied clinical background, she is deeply interested in what dreams, emotions, physical symptoms, and the inner imaginal realms are trying to teach her clients. She believes that anxiety, depression, anger, compulsion, illness, PTSD, etc. are all the body/psyche’s way of drawing our awareness to how we need to grow. Erica’s training and personal experience with verbal and non-verbal/embodied processes enable her to facilitate access to and understanding of the conversation between our conscious and unconscious, and between our body/mind/soul. Erica’s Website: https://ericalorentz.com/ The book: https://www.amazon.com/Body-Shadow-Method-Embodied-Healing/dp/1800134061 Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

Time Stamps and more: https://eggshelltherapy.com/podcast-blog/2026/03/29/nadja/ Many of the people I work with are highly intelligent, analytically sharp, and deeply uncomfortable with the idea of play. The word itself can feel faintly embarrassing, associated with self-indulgence. Doing something with no measurable output, no goal, no justification, tends to produce anxiety more than relief. Nadja Rolli is a child psychotherapist and author who has spent her career working with play as a clinical and developmental tool. She walks through a five-stage model of play development, sensory, attachment, constructive, fantasy, and competitive, and what becomes clear is that many adults, particularly high-functioning ones, were pushed into achievement-oriented, competitive modes long before the earlier stages were properly lived through. The things that follow from that, needing to justify rest, struggling to lose without it feeling like something larger, being uncomfortable with open-ended unproductive time, are not personality quirks. They have a developmental logic. We also get into how play connects to trauma repair, what attachment play looks like across a lifetime, why some people genuinely do not know what they enjoy anymore and what that points to, the historical reasons play came to be seen as dangerous or morally suspect, and what gets lost developmentally when children are moved too quickly into screens and competitive gaming before the earlier stages are inhabited. The question underneath all of this is not really about whether you should play more. It is about whether you have ever genuinely felt entitled to exist outside of what you produce, and what it would mean to recover that. Nadja Rolli is a child and adolescent psychotherapist based in London and the author of Can We Play Now? Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...

In this episode, I speak with integrative psychotherapist Joseph Pawson to explore the territory of his forthcoming book, Dependency and Denial, which examines what happens when our need for others gets exiled from awareness, and what it costs us to keep it there. We talk about why dependency is not the pathological clinginess most people associate with the word, but something far more universal, the very basis of how we relate to each other and to the world. Joe describes how, when early experiences of not being met are too painful, we can build an identity around self-sufficiency that works so well it becomes its own kind of trap, particularly for people with strong intellects or high emotional capacity, the very people who are most able to survive without letting anyone in. We get into what denial actually looks like in someone who is functioning well on the surface, the kind of person who can talk about vulnerability with real fluency but cannot let anyone carry anything for them. Joe speaks honestly about writing the book partly as a letter to himself, and about his own difficulty with needing others. We also get into a fear I hear often: the conviction that if you allow yourself to need someone, you will need too much and overwhelm them entirely.  Joe's book Dependency and Denial is published by Karnac Books. He can be found at jpsychotherapy.co.uk. About Joe Joe Pawson is an integrative psychotherapist registered with the UKCP, with over ten years of experience. His approach draws on developmental, humanistic, relational, and transpersonal traditions. https://www.jppsychotherapy.co.uk The book: https://www.karnacbooks.com/Author.asp?AID=26116 Eggshell Therapy and Coaching: eggshelltherapy.com/ Imi Lo:  imiloimilo.com Sister Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Zcl8ZUsu4AePugDoWtXcg Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eggshelltransformations Newsletters: https://eepurl.com/bykHRz Disclaimers: https://www.eggshelltherapy.com/disclaimers    Trigger Warning: This episode may cover sensitive topics including but not limited to suicide, abuse, violence, severe mental illnesses, relationship challenges, sex, drugs, alcohol addiction, psychedelics, and the use of plant medicines. You are advised to refrain from watching or listening to the YouTube Channel or Podcast if you are likely to be offended or adversely impacted by any of these topics. Disclaimer: The content provided is for informational purposes only. Please do not consider any of the content to be clinical or professional advice. None of the content can substitute professional consultation, psychotherapy, diagnosis, or any mental health intervention.  Opinions and views expressed by the host and the guests are personal views, and they reserve the right to change their opinions. The opinions of the guest do not reflect the position of this channel or Imi. We also cannot guarantee that everything mentioned is factual and completely accurate. Any action you take based on the information in this episode is taken strictly at your own risk.  For a full disclaimer, please refer to: https://www.eggshelltherapy.c...