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Podcasts for me

For self help haters

Help Me Be Me

English listening

This is a self-help podcast for people who don't like self-help.  It's about unlocking the problems that plague you so that you may be free. All of the things you believe to be insurmountable are false.  It's a story your brain tells you based on your life experiences.  Anything you think you can't overcome, I believe 100% without a doubt that you can. You just need the right tools to help you. Smile. You are already on your way. Music intro/outro by the fantastic Jeremy C. Simon!

Episode 1:  "The Why"

What is your "Achilles" type? Know that the bad choices you make are not your fault — it’s likely that you cannot see the patterns in your choices because it's encoded into your chemistry, based on your upbringing. It’s all part of your “love map” – basically the foundation for what you believe around love, commitment and relationships. This is an episode for anyone who has a track record of choosing bad relationships, whether it’s friends or love interests. I will go through the basics of bad relationship matches: how to spot them and why they are the way they are. I'll also offer you insight into what could be drawing you toward these types in the first place so that you can choose be intentional about looking for different types moving forward. Also, I have a special guest with me— the love of my life and my future hubby, Adam. Yay.


Episode 11: Looking For Love in All The Wrong Places

Often when you grow up with caregivers or relationships with people who are inconsistent, unstable, deceptive and unreliable, as a natural result you end up completing the other half of the Yin-Yang and it becomes inherent to your make-up as a person.  You grow opposite and complimentary strengths – and those strengths actually reward you in lots of ways, not to mention, it feels good to be able to take care of others and make it happen.  However – here’s the kicker – as a result, in the rest of your life, you unconsciously seek out others you can compliment in the exact same way, which means you often end up with partners and friends who are just as incapable or flawed.  It’s not your fault, it’s just the dynamic you’re comfortable with.  It’s also because that’s who is drawn to you: they crave what you can give and once they see you giving it, they cling to you. 

You also have a very specific form of trauma in that you expect and anticipate disappointing behavior from everyone in your life.  Why wouldn't you? Based on your life experience, to trust is to place yourself in harm's way. 

Not to fear! This is not a damning situation in the least.  You have the building blocks for something much greater than if you hadn’t had this upbringing at all.  You can build the muscle to trust others and you can also build the muscle that will allow you to find trustworthy people.  Your solution will take conscious and consistent work, but it’ll be simple and somewhat automatic, so don’t stress.  It will unfold on its own, and it can start right now with 3 very conscious, deliberate steps. I’m going to introduce you to those steps right now.  

For more about me and to read more of my writing, check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com 

If you likee please review me on iTunes! 'Twould help me a lot. xo Sarah May B. 


Episode 18: Learning How To Trust Again - Getting Over Bad Experiences

Does your brain start chattering and seemingly never stop?  Do you feel distracted and unable to focus?  This is for anyone who is trapped in chronic thinking. Like your brain won’t seem to shut up and it’s getting a bit noisy up there. I will cover the what, the why, and most importantly, the solution. There are about 10 different super silly tools to get you started. And apologies in advance - I also drop the F-bomb. (Just once!)

This is for Cindy – and it’s a great topic. Thanks for suggesting this girl!

Check out TeaspoonOfHappy.com for the blog post with all my references and research  -it will be live later this week. Smile peeps! xox Sarah-May B.

Episode 29: How to Stop Thinking So Much - Tools for Chronic Overthinking

This is a very short guided meditation for supporting your overall level of calm and relaxation.  I recco this or your own ritual if you have a high level of stress in your life or you can't seem to shut your brain off at night. Just do it first-thing in the morning or at lunch while you’re taking a walk. Anywhere really, as long as you can close your eyes and be uninterrupted for about ten minutes. If you want to learn more about why it’s important to get your mind to relax, check out the podcast on how to stop thinking so much.  

Hope you enjoy! xox Sarah May B.

For more of my writing including the blog version of the over-thinking podcast, head over to:

http://www.teaspoonofhappy.com



Mini-Mindfulness Meditation

It’s that period of time when you’re not sure what to do – but nothing’s changing and you’re trying your hardest, and something better happen soon or else you just might give up.  Whether you’re on a new health kick and not seeing dramatic results, or attempting to pursue a new career – often the most difficult to surmount is the master of disguise – the plateau. 

Oh, the old plateau will make life look pretty much the same for long enough that you start to get antsy.  That you start to feel you might have already failed – or that change of course is needed – “I haven’t seen progress for quite a while - something must not be working – it must be me, why did I even think to try in the first place? This must not be right-“ or my favorite, “Silly me, I never had a chance of success in the first place…” 

It is this window of time – the plateau – I would argue, that is the most difficult challenge you will ever face. It’s not the last leg of the race that tricks you into stopping.  It’s the time when literally the only piece of advice you need is “Keep going.”  It’s this advice that’s the hardest to follow – especially when it comes to pursuits that are new – that require you go out on a limb and jump. 

If this is you, I am writing this to give you a much-needed push in the same direction.  You must have a large gulp of Gatorade and listen to the sound of my voice – keep running.  I know it’s not fun anymore, you don’t feel successful, but there was a very good reason you started this run – and now’s the time you’ve got to trust that and just keep running.  Trust your own original instincts and power through. You’re on a plateau and the plateau ends – your path will eventually round a turn, and once it does, you will be able to see the finish line in the distance. 

Check out http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com for the blog post version of this podcast in the next few days and if you like this, please follow me on Soundcloud or review me on iTunes. 

Happy new year lovely friends!!! xox Sarah-May B.

Episode 32: Sticktoitivness: When You Want to Give Up is When it's Most Important to Keep Going

When you go through a devastating experience like being left by someone you thought was “yours for life” it can be unearthing of everything in your world. Shaking what you want, how you feel about yourself and the future, what you feel safe with – who you feel safe with. Aside the expected affects, the pain, the mourning, this kind of experience can have some very strange effects – because when you’re taken by surprise by something like a relationship, it’s traumatic.  You have been shocked.  So I will hopefully tackle some of the common ones – so you can see that you’re not crazy, it’s all quite natural, as well as hopefully offer you a timeline for how you might feel.  One you can follow along with – so that you can best care for yourself and allow yourself to heal and grow.

If this was a long-term relationship – or even a short one but one you relied on in immense ways, the loss can make you feel you have nothing to stand on.  In short, it can level you and remove all safety from your life. You might be going through worry over what will come of your life – will you remarry? Will you ever love again, trust again? Are you loveable? Am I too old, am I stupid to have trusted this person? Was I the only one who didn’t know – how didn’t I know? What’s wrong with me that I didn’t see this coming? How do I even move on with love?  Woah. Yeah, that’s a lot. So slow down.  It’s going to be okay. It’s time to put that aside.  Now is not the time you should be thinking about the future. You should simply focus on loving and caring for yourself right now. 

Truly, how could you tackle planning anything other than addressing your immediate needs – you just experienced a traumatic event in your life and you are in a recovery/healing mode – that’s what you need to be aware of most.  All you need to do right now is make yourself feel soothed and healthy and balanced.  

If you’re going through a total limbo of character and it’s freaking you out, I will go through a couple of common reactions that happen when one is put through a trauma such as yours. And yes, it’s a “trauma” which means your person is likely having a hard time integrating this new information back into your brain alongside the rest of your experiences. So in short, a big shift is happening. Don’t worry! It’s all for the good. I hope I can help you stay balanced throughout it – hang in there, friend - because I know an event like this can rock you to your core. 

If you want to read more of my writing on a variety of other topics – and to see the blog version of this podcast, visit:

http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com

Smile y’all! Sending you my love… Sarah-May B.


This is for Linda, I hope you like and hang in there girl!


Episode 33: Blindsided with a Broken-heart: When you lose something you thought you had forever.

Today’s podcast is about what makes an awesome bestie so I’m interviewing my best friend of around 30 years – singer/songwriter/actress and all around wonderful girl – Zooey Deschanel.  We discuss favorite childhood memories, fave dance moves, a few bestie hypotheticals, plus what qualities to look for in your own best friends! It’s basically a love fest about all our childhood memories so I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did! Xox Sarah May B.

For more of my writing and the blog version of this interview, check out http://www.TeaspoonOfHappy.com later this week!


Episode 34: Besties: Zooey Deschanel on Childhood Memories and What Makes a Friendship Last Forever

Hi loves, this is to use anytime this week or this month – it’s a little tool for regaining control of the wheel of your person, in the face of enduring places, people or situations that are not to your liking. It’s called “Happy Place.”

The situation, though it sucks and tests your tolerance and ability to pursue what you want despite this situation – is NOT helped by your succumbing to focusing on the pain and unhappiness. Anger is toxic to your body so you are not only hurting your physical health, you are actively causing yourself MORE agony by focusing on it while it’s happening. Often we have an unconscious habit of savoring the sheer magnitude of annoyances in our life and relishing our increased stress or fatigue or the level of idiocy around ourselves. That unconscious savoring is your worst enemy. Is taking time to acknowledge what it is you don’t like and you might not even notice you’re celebrating it again and again because it’s a habit.  So now’s the podcast power up to make note of it! The stupid-crap-from-my-day-celebrations stop today! This week! Yay for today!

For more of my writing- including my newsletter, head to Teaspoonofhappy.com

Personal Happy Place: For When You're Stuck in a Place in Life You Don't Want to Be

This episode is about noticing negative thought patterns when they’re happening. 

What are negative thoughts? Bad habits. They’re not You – they’re the voice of a bad computer framework operating through you being fed by a chemical addition. You are now used to the chemical results of this thinking, so your brain wants to repeat it. They are the trained in ways of being – basically muscle memory but in your brain. So based on old experiences, just like a river wants to flow down the lowest path, so do your thoughts follow existing trained in currents.

The more often you have these thoughts – the stronger the habit becomes. In other words, you have trained in the path of the river with repetition. As a result of that – you now perceive and look for this thought habit in your everyday life – like if you’re thinking of mean people who hate you, you will see mean people who hate you. Because it’s your mindset now. Plus, now that you are looking for this thing, you find it – so negative thinking becomes self-fulfilling. What is most important about all of this: it’s all totally unconscious. The fact that they’re unconscious is also the key to stopping these thoughts! 

This episode is broken up into three parts. What. Why. How aka Tools. For the blog version, check out TeaspoonofHappy.com later this week. It also has my book references for anyone who wants to read further. 

Smile friends! xox

For more of the Buddhist psychological types – check out “The Chemistry of Joy” – linked here:
https://goo.gl/diu91t



Episode 52: How to Stop Negative Thoughts

For when you can’t stop feeling worried or obsessed with what is threatening your stability in life – a stress response based on past traumas or recent ones, for that matter. 

In this episode, ‘survival mode’ is the term we are giving a pervasive sense of fear and stress and anxiety over issues that are not a real threat, though they are experienced in hypotheticals. Survival mode drives people to obsessively think about painful things: things past, things to come, analyzing and solving endlessly. In other words – like the worst version of brain overdrive you can imagine and all the time.  It’s so powerful that it takes over your life. 

This can come in varying degrees – from intolerable writhing panic to manageable but potent worry. Regardless, it’s always something that keeps you outside of your life – unable to truly engage and enjoy it as you see others do.  Living in survival mode, you want to run and you don’t know where.

This one is for Heather! I heart you girl – hope this helps the teensiest bit.

For more of my writing head to TeaspoonofHappy.com


Episode 54: Stuck in Survival Mode – When Worry Takes Over Your Life

This is for anyone stuck in a place of self-hate and inaction. Someone in a shitty place in life, depressed and hopeless: hating on themselves, where they are, and at a loss for where to go from here. Maybe you have people in your life who love and encourage you and you hate that you’re bringing them down – yet you can’t figure out why your life just sucks so much when others get to be happy. You feel it is unfair for both of you. 

However – if you suffer severe depression, it’s probably not for you.  I know that chronic depression is one of the hardest things to battle. And for some, it’s paralyzing – like worse than death. It’s like being a human zombie. I am terrified of depression – it’s the worst kind of pain. So if you suffer that, you might not like this post – because it assumes that you have some power in the situation. If you are a sufferer who is incapacitated by your depression, this is not for you.  I feel for you, and when I have enough to offer you, I will create an episode just for you.  

There are three parts. The what, the why and the how. Let’s do this! xo


Episode 65: Stuck, Depressed and Full of Self-Hate

Love shouldn’t hurt. It shouldn’t feel like it’s your lifeline – that you will fall into a million pieces if someone else chooses to break up. This kind of chemical bond is similar to that we universally associate with High School romance: hormones are high and we reach sometimes addiction-level chemical intoxication. But that’s not how it should feel when you pass the hormonal bump. Like such an intensely devastating and all-consuming obsession. Past the initial courtship stage, love shouldn’t be tied to NEED and it shouldn’t be able to command your mood and focus. So if you experience it this way, and it causes you to do things that betray yourself and put your needs aside those of another.  If you find yourself all-consumed by the actions or thoughts of another to the degree that it controls your happiness – this is an episode for you. It’s about the particular reasons that this kind of attachment happens to you, that you might not be able to see are operating – or know are optional.  To you it probably just feels like “you” and who you are, not some other powerful unseen force. Because most people who operate like this think of it as a measure of how MUCH they love, or their ability as a person to bend and adapt. Not so. This is an unhealthy form of attachment that can be tweaked once understood. 

This is an episode to educate more than anything because awareness is the first step to change. So listen to this with the goal of simply taking it in. I WANT TO HELP YOU begin the process of the kind of loving that can be done from a safe and balanced distance. From a comfortable place inside yourself, that protects you always. It’s a way of being that allows you to create healthy boundaries, and choose mates who are capable of loving you, and more importantly – makes you capable of receiving it. Because truly we teach others how they should love us, by how we love ourselves. If you are not protecting your needs and giving yourself care and gentle loving attention, then you’re also telling others not to.

With that, here are the three parts! Part 1 is the what, Part 2 is the why, Part 3 are some steps to take now.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com  Thanks!

Ep 72: Toxic Love: I Need Her, Don’t Leave Me, I Can’t Live Without Him

For those who can’t stop trying to convince themselves they’re bad with self-destructive actions. This one is for Nikki. 

Why do we destroy relationships with those who love us? Why do break our own trust, betray our own dreams, and rob ourselves of happiness and safety as soon as we get close to it. It’s a mystifying loop of behavior that has powerful effects on everything about our life: a chain reaction that keeps us hiding or running from the ugly truth of what we’ve done. 

Just like an addict, you live with a subconscious awareness that you will inevitably destroy whatever good you might have – and that anxiety is overwhelming and scary. Like a lurking future of pain awaits you just around the corner. Happiness is immediately blocked by the overwhelming sense of dread that it will soon be lost. And so you self-medicate the fear and cling more tightly to what you want so badly. 

When you do inevitably self-sabotage and act out in ways that betray your values and the values of your partner, the experience is laden with fear and the resulting shame is soul-crushing. Like you just woke up inside a nightmare. You have an almost separate self who is doing these things despite you. 

I want you to know there’s a simple reason behind your cycle of behavior that you must CHOOSE to learn. It’s not who you are, it’s a tactic that you learned to cope with unrelated pain and anxiety. There are three parts: the what, the why, the how.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB  Thanks!


Ep 74: Self-Sabotage: Why We Betray Ourselves and Destroy Our Relationships

How good relationships turn into bad relationships, seemingly out of nowhere. Whether that’s with fights that ensue endlessly, or one partner suddenly betrays the other partner – this kind of behavior can make you feel mystified, angry, and stuck. So I want to shed a bit of light on a potential reason behind these changes – if you once had a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship, this might give you a starting place for the work that has to be done. OR at the very least enlighten you as to what happened. My other name for this episode is Family Ties. You’ll know why if you listen to this. Does any of this sound familiar?
“I thought I married someone who loved me and they seem like they hate me now.” “This behavior came out of nowhere – one day she told me she didn’t love me anymore.” “I can’t believe this happened – I want to ask her, was it worth it?” These are the kinds of things I hear often from my One-On-One clients, especially when it comes to break-ups. It’s a very common experience to suddenly see your partner change into someone you don’t know, you didn’t think they’d be. 

It can make you feel stupid like you should have known better. It can make you feel assaulted – like you just got a hard slap for no reason whatsoever. It can make you feel you can’t tell up from down and the world is not what you thought it was. There’s a reason why this is happening, just like there’s a solution – if you want one. Before I get started I want to tell you that this is much more abbreviated than it should be, because this is such an intricate and amazing topic. If you’re interested in learning more about it I will post a link to my reading material on my website in the blog version. It’s worth a read – called Intimate Partners by Maggie Scarf. A blow your mind amazing book. 

There are three parts: the what why and how – the tools.

Help Me Be Me takes hundreds of hours to create. If you get anything out of this show or it brings value to your life, please consider a monthly donation – even something as small as a cup of coffee helps immensely. To donate visit HelpMeBeMe.com or Patreon.com/SarahMayB  Thanks!

If you like what you hear, check out my other podcast called Love is like a plant with Ellen Huerta of Mend! xo


Ep 75: WTF Happened? When Great Relationships Suddenly Turn Bad

Help Me Be Me is an emotional toolkit for creating positive change in yourself. I like to think of it as self-help for people who hate self-help. I'm Sarah May, coach/mom/all-around happy person, and these are the tools that work for me in my life. For all of my offerings you can check out YayWithMe.com What I share is my personal opinion. It's not a diagnosis for treatment or a substitute for professional help. If you're suffering, please reach out to your local emergency services or call 9-1-1. Music theme created by www.BookerHillMusic.com