Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Forrest Hanson is joined by clinical psychologist (and his dad) Dr. Rick Hanson and a world-class group of experts to explore the practical science of lasting well-being. Conversations focus on the key insights from psychology, science, and contemplative practice that you need to build reliable inner strengths, overcome your challenges, and get the most out of life. New episodes every Monday.

Episodes

How to Believe in Yourself: Carl Rogers and Humanistic Psychology

September 29, 2025 • 81 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore humanistic psychology, the mid-20th century movement that redefined how therapists relate to clients. It challenged the pessimism of Freud and the mechanism of behaviorism, offering a more hopeful alternative: that our nature is fundamentally good, and our job is to let it shine through. They discuss Carl Rogers’ work, including self-actualization, conditions of worth, unconditional positive regard, tru...
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AI Therapy Deep Dive: Can a Chatbot Be Your Therapist? w/ Dr. Nick Jacobson

September 22, 2025 • 85 mins
AI chatbots may already be the largest providers of mental health services in the United States, raising big questions about safety, effectiveness, and oversight. Dr. Rick and Forrest are joined by Dr. Nick Jacobson to explore the risks and opportunities of AI therapy: Can a chatbot be good at therapy? Will it replace human therapists? What about AI psychosis? How should we think about privacy, bias, and regulation? Is this a silve...
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How to Have a (Good) Life Crisis: Authenticity, Healthy Discontent, and the Anxiety of Choice

September 18, 2025 • 72 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how to use a life crisis productively, drawing on developmental stage theories, existential philosophy, literature, personal experience, and Rick’s clinical work. They examine the anxieties of death, freedom, responsibility, and choice that often underlie these crises, and discuss how we can not only cope with these anxieties but also harness them to build a more authentic life. Throughout, they simplif...
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People Pleasing and the Fawn Response with Meg Josephson

September 8, 2025 • 74 mins
Forrest and therapist Meg Josephson explore the fawn response, a survival strategy where safety is sought by pleasing other people. They discuss how fawning can start as self-protection in childhood, but later morph into overthinking, hypervigilance, and self-abandonment. Meg shares her own experience, including how fawning creates resentment and makes it difficult to find a healthy relationship or figure out your authentic needs. ...
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Anxious-Avoidant Relationships, Narcissism, and Insight to Action: Mailbag

September 1, 2025 • 71 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest open up the mailbag to answer questions about complex situations where good process really matters. They discuss whether to get back with an ex who has seemingly changed, relationships with someone with addictive tendencies, the difference between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and narcissistic tendencies, and why genuine change requires more than insight alone. Other topics include how much to tell your the...
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Limerence: The Psychology of Romantic Obsession with Brandy Wyant

August 25, 2025 • 64 mins
Forrest and therapist Brandy Wyant discuss limerence, an intense and often one-sided state of romantic obsession. They explore how limerence differs from both love and ordinary crushes, why uncertainty fuels it, and how it can take over a person’s inner world. Brandy shares both clinical insights and her own lived experience, describing the obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, and shame that often accompany limerence. They exa...
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Mingyur Rinpoche: A Meditation Master on Anxiety, Awareness, and Awakening

August 18, 2025 • 68 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest are joined by Mingyur Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher, to explore calming anxiety with awareness, relaxing unhealthy wanting, and finding a deeper sense of our innate goodness. Rinpoche shares how a near-death experience during his four-year “wandering retreat” transformed his relationship to fear and deepened his gratitude for life. They discuss practical ways to see the true nature of the mind, ...
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9 Lessons from the Great Minds of Psychoanalysis

August 11, 2025 • 107 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the evolution of psychoanalysis after Freud, highlighting key ideas from figures like Adler, Klein, Winnicott, and Hillman. They track how the field expanded from focusing on the individual ego all the way out to exploring the existential forces that shape who we are. They focus on what lessons we can take away from each of these influential thinkers into our everyday lives. Topics include inferiority c...
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Reclaiming Anger: Trauma, Repression, and Healthy Protest with Elizabeth Ferreira

August 4, 2025 • 67 mins
Forrest and associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira talk about healthy (and unhealthy) anger. They challenge the common framing of anger as a “secondary emotion,” and explore why anger matters, how it relates to trauma, and what it can tell us about our wants and needs. They discuss how to access healthy protest and work with less healthy forms of anger like explosive rage, repression, defensiveness, passive aggression, and righteou...
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Psychoanalysis: Therapy’s Controversial Origins

July 28, 2025 • 92 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the ideas, context, and legacy of psychoanalysis, the often-controversial origin point for modern therapy. They discuss psychoanalysis’ early history and key concepts like the unconscious mind, repression, inner conflict, and transference. Alongside those major contributions, they wrestle with what hasn’t aged so well: the reductionism, murky ethics, and deep entanglements with colonialism and the Victo...
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Is Self-Help Making You Miserable?

July 21, 2025 • 86 mins
Forrest and Dr. Rick discuss what's really wrong with the self-help industry, going beyond the obvious pseudoscience and snake oil to examine deeper structural issues. They explore the industry's mixed-bag focus on individual responsibility, the risks of turning healing into a never-ending project, performative personal growth, narcissism, social media and capitalism, and honest striving vs. hustle culture. They also talk about the...
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The Freeze Response, Gifted Kid Syndrome, and BPD: July Mailbag

July 14, 2025 • 77 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest answer listener questions about perfectionism, performance anxiety, trauma, and relationships. They explore how early praise for being “gifted” can create a fear of failure and contribute to “failure to launch,” and share ways to shift from focusing on an idealized future to appreciating your actual self right now. They discuss learned helplessness, the freeze response, and practical ways to build agency and vi...
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How Real Change Happens with Elizabeth Ferreira

July 7, 2025 • 69 mins
Forrest is joined by associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira to discuss parts work, psychological defenses, and how real change happens. They talk about the inner child work Forrest recently did during an episode with renowned therapist Terry Real, and how that led to meaningful changes in their relationship. Elizabeth and Forrest unpack the therapeutic process Terry led Forrest through, and discuss clinical technique, why small shi...
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Why Modern Life Doesn't Make Us Happy, and How to Fix It with Dr. William von Hippel

June 30, 2025 • 89 mins
Life today is safer and more comfortable than ever before, so why do so many people feel unhappy, lonely, and anxious? Forrest talks with evolutionary psychologist Dr. William von Hippel about this paradox in light of our two core needs: autonomy and connection. He argues that modern life has pushed us too far in the direction of autonomy, and that we need to reclaim connection in order to find happiness.  They discuss how our evo...
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Rethinking Masculinity: Strength and Connection w/ Terry and Justin Real

June 23, 2025 • 65 mins
Forrest is joined by renowned therapist Terry Real and his son Justin for a frank exploration of modern masculinity. They talk about why so many men feel like they’re struggling these days, and how the traditional model of masculinity perpetuates this problem. They discuss the appeal of red pill cultures, the cultural pushback against gender equality, and how to convince men that the answer is not more dominance but more connecti...
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Self-Sabotage: Why You Do What You Shouldn’t, and How to Stop

June 16, 2025 • 73 mins
We’ve all had moments where we watch ourselves make the exact wrong choice: procrastinating on an important task, picking a fight in a good relationship, or pulling back just when things are starting to go well. This is self-sabotage, and in this episode Dr. Rick and Forrest explore why we do it and how to stop. They talk about how self-sabotage often serves as a form of psychological self-protection, and why doing well can feel ...
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Terry Real: Relationships, Trauma, and Inner Child Work

June 9, 2025 • 77 mins
What gets in the way of truly intimate, healthy relationships…and what can we do about it? In this moving episode, Forrest is joined by renowned couples therapist Terry Real to explore how we can build deeper, more meaningful connections. They unpack key concepts from Relational Life Therapy, including the shift from “me” to “us,” the difference between the adaptive child and wise adult, and how to stay grounded during conflict t...
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OCD and Anxiety Disorders with Kimberley Quinlan

June 2, 2025 • 63 mins
Forrest is joined by therapist Kimberley Quinlan to explore one of the most misunderstood anxiety disorders: obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Drawing from her clinical and personal experience, Kimberley breaks down what OCD is, how it differs from general anxiety, and the ways it’s often mischaracterized. They discuss the core features of obsessions and compulsions, and how these can manifest across a wide range of themes, in...
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People Pleasing, AI Therapy, and Sexual Transference: May Mailbag

May 26, 2025 • 77 mins
In this very fun episode, Dr. Rick and Forrest open the mailbag and answer questions from listeners about people pleasing, the potential (and pitfalls) of using AI as a therapist, and what to do when you develop strong feelings for your therapist. They discuss existential themes like aloneness and agency, whether Gandalf would have made a good therapist, and close with some heartfelt thoughts about what supports a long and loving r...
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Disorganized Attachment: Heal By Embracing Your Needs

May 19, 2025 • 72 mins
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore disorganized, or “fearful,” attachment. This complex style occurs when emotional intimacy and distance both feel uncomfortable, and typically arises based on difficult life experiences. They unpack why this attachment pattern forms, what it feels like on the inside, and how it can change over time. Dr. Rick explains how to break the Catch-22 of disorganized attachment, and how fully embracing and expres...
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