16 episodes

Dr Judy is a psychiatrist who will teach you simple skills to make your life happier and healthier.

The Dr. Judy Show Shrink Rapt

    • Health & Fitness

Dr Judy is a psychiatrist who will teach you simple skills to make your life happier and healthier.

    What is this thing called “Global Happiness Movement?”

    What is this thing called “Global Happiness Movement?”

        Happiness may be an inalienable right, but there are 565 MILLION web pages, and 175,000 products on Amazon helping people find it, giving a not-so-subtle impression that something is missing.  Our increasing problems with depression and substance abuse reinforce that impression. 

    Gretchen Martens is a woman of many talents – anthropologist, coach, educator and even improve comedy performer, as well as entrepreneur and business developer -  who is taking a new approach to this whole problem – at least for America.   She has recently returned from a trip to Bhutan, Epicenter of the Global Happiness Movement, where she went to find some new skills and approaches that can help turn this tidal wave of unhappiness around.  Bhutan is a tiny country with huge ideas, but as the Dahli Lama has said, 'If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night with a mosquito”. She spent 2 weeks traveling the country, observing and learning.  She looked to see if they truly did seem happier - and they did - and then started looking into how they did this.  Although she has spent a lot of time in her career teaching people to be happier, she did indeed come back with new skills and is eager to share them and hopefully spread more happiness in this country - something that seems sorely needed given all the recent episodes of blatant hostility we have seenin our own citizens.   It doesn't have to be that way!!! 

     In addition to her speaking and her forthcoming books, she has applied her diverse talents to some things she offers freely to the public – like her daily happiness messages and items on her facebook page, and you will learn how to access them while listening to this program, so keep a pen and paper handy for that and any other notes you may want to take about new approaches to a happier life.    

    • 50 min
    What useful lessons can one possibly learn from 'the evil men do'?

    What useful lessons can one possibly learn from 'the evil men do'?

         Have your ever done something you feel guilty about – maybe something that eats at you long term or even causes serious problems in your life?  You are NOT alone, although you may often feel that you are. Today’s guest, Ronald Chapman, and I have both been down those paths, survived them and turned to careers that give us the privilege of helping others find their way past those slippery and sometimes even treacherous slopes.  Chapman is an author, speaker, former commentator on WUNM radio, and facilitator of approaches that increase well-being-ness and produce breakthroughs when practiced deeply and in a sustained fashion.  He does a masterful and very engaging job of showing the complex streams of fate that affect so many of us, even in very unexpected places – like among those people that seem to ‘have it all together’ as well as drunks and convicted killers. He is an engaging, humorous, totally delightful-to-interview teacher of wisdom.

                 In his novel ‘A Killer’s Grace’ which was inspired by actual events, Chapman  tells the story of Kevin Pitcairn, a journalist who receives a letter from a serial killer awaiting execution that comes with implications he can’t ignore.    As he tries to determine and tell the killer’s true story, Pitcairn plunges deeper into the pit his own demons have created and trapped him in. His journalist’s curiosity becomes a compulsion as events bind him tighter and tighter, propelling him  to explore events in an even wider world. Murder, mystery, and redemption shape Pitcairn’s struggle to answer the moral questions left festering by the killer’s horrible crimes: What is the nature of evil? What choices do any of us truly have? How can we reconcile with our most painful wounds and the people who have inflicted them?

    • 57 min
    Learning to survive a broken heart with Shirley Melis

    Learning to survive a broken heart with Shirley Melis

    Shirley is a longtime business writer, travel writer, and newspaper columnist who traveled the world interviewing everyone from busboys to heads of international organizations before launching a career in public relations in Washington, D.C. With Banged-Up Heart, she now takes her writing in a new direction, delving deeply into her own personal story of finding love late, losing it early, and discovering the strength to choose to love again. It is a fascinating odyssey, a journey both creative and erotic as Shirley and John work lovingly together to blend their dreams—until a mysterious bump on his forehead starts them on a tragic struggle against the dark hand of fate.Banged-Up Heart is an intimate and clear-eyed account of finding love late and losing it early—and of the strength it takes to fall deeply in love a second time, be forced to relinquish that love too soon, and yet choose to love again.

    When her husband of thirty years dies suddenly, Shirley is convinced she will never find another man like Joe. Then she meets John, a younger man who tells her during their first conversation that he has lived for many years with a rare but manageable cancer. She is swept off her feet in a whirlwind courtship, and within months, made brave by the early death of a friend’s husband, she asks him to marry her! What follows is a year-long odyssey of travel and a growing erotic and creative partnership— until a mysterious bump on John’s forehead proves to be one of several tumors in his brain and spine. Banged-Up Heart comes down solidly on the side of life. It takes you deep inside an ordinary woman, her deeply fel grief butting up against her desire for more than companionship: passion, sexual fulfillment, and self-realization. It bears eloquent witness to the wild trust it takes to fall madly in love and risk profound loss—again. Ultimately, it shows that it is possible to dance with a banged-up heart.

    • 57 min
    Interview with Rebecca Pott Fitton, Author of Wave Rider

    Interview with Rebecca Pott Fitton, Author of Wave Rider

                 Rebecca was is a highly successful woman in the business world, someone who worked in the civil rights movement, then in urban planning, followed by getting an MBA and working in healthcare. Yet something was tripping her up in her relationships and after her second divorce she got into therapy.  As she got further into therapy she uncovered the problem – her childhood sexual abuse, which she had totally blocked from her awareness . Her book, Wave Rider,  is an account through her prose and poetry of her journey  riding the waves of life and moving from abuse to wholeness.   She is very open in her interview, allowing us to see her journey through life with her struggles, her shutting out of her feelings, learning about the issue of sexual abuse and the many ways it can impact someone totally out of their awareness.  With the help of multiple types of therapy, she turned her turmoil  into triumphs  as she explored those hidden problems and then worked to overcome then and move into a much freer and happier place. In this process she found a voice to express herself through poetry that would suddenly come to her along her journey. She has always been a person who worked on issues related to bettering things for many people. She is now extending this to educating people about  abuse and how to overcome it and is engaged on the boards of many non- profit organizations.  

                I think you will find this interview very engaging and enlightening, and it might even give you the insight to help someone you know and love as they journey through their difficult paths. At the very least it will expand your understanding of struggles people can go through despite looking so perfect, and that there is help out there if you will allow your self to seek it. 

    • 47 min
    Ladies, Take Charge of Your Power

    Ladies, Take Charge of Your Power

                As a woman who pushed to achieve what most women didn’t do -  going to medical school at a time when they took ‘token females’ -  it distresses me no end that in today’s world, even though over half the medical students are female, and increasing numbers of women crack the ‘glass ceiling’ in other areas, too many women still feel stressed, unappreciated and downtrodden in the professional arena and in the personal one as well.    It is a  world where women still don’t get equal pay, even though the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed in 2009 as a sequel to the Equal Pay Act of 1963.   Women are still seen as inferior, but having abundant responsibility at home and work

               As women we need to start looking to ourselves for the place to solve the problems. If we don’t feel we are good enough and deserving inside  ourselves, then we become our own set of obstacles.  Mindset really makes the difference.  Part of that mindset is to recognize that succeeding does NOT mean you are never criticized, it means you don't let that stop you.  No matter your gender, ethnic group or other ‘issue’, learning to set your goals and go for them while believing in yourself  and learning to tune out detractors is essential.  No one who has truly achieved has waited for all the praise and cheers before starting their journey.  They certainly didn’t wait for everyone to see them as perfect before they moved forward or they wouldn’t ever have started.  Criticism and resistance from other people is just one of those obstacles one has to push through in life, not something you let stop you.. You are entitled to your success, but until you  believe that, it won’t happen.

    • 34 min
    Psychiatric Diagnoses That Are Often Misdiagnosed

    Psychiatric Diagnoses That Are Often Misdiagnosed

                Medical and psychiatric diagnoses can sometimes be made difficult by the many  symptoms that can overlap for many diseases.  All the media publicity and advertising that occurs tends to worsen that problem because they get you focused on their area of interest and it may distract you from other issues that are going on with you that may be even more important.  Then there are things like Alzheimers, which has become the catch all term for almost anything that interferes with memory, focus, concentration and function.  That should be the LAST diagnosis that is made after everything else is ruled out – because it is still untreatable -  and yet too often it does not work that way.  Jumping right to that diagnosis can interfere with finding some of those things that can be improved or even totally resolved.  ADHD is another diagnosis people are quick to jump to, although those same behaviors may be brought on by a lot of different things, each of which may need to be addressed in a totally different way. To add to the confusion, the overlap between ‘mental’ and ‘medical’ is very high,  so that medical things can cause mental symptoms and vice versa.           

                In this program we will look at some of those more common areas where coming to the right diagnosis just isn’t as simple as it seems, and then tell you about some of the things you need to know and do to be a good partner  with your doctor toward the common goal of getting the right diagnosis and right treatment for you and your loved ones.  

    • 54 min

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