Dr. Ardeshir Mehran's Podcast

Dr. Ardeshir Mehran
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Not Depressed. Just UnFinished. Hosted by Dr. Ardeshir Mehran, Ph.D. What if your depression isn't a diagnosis; it's a dare, it's a signal? Not Depressed. Just UnFinished. is the podcast for leaders, high achievers, and entrepreneurs who have built impressive lives on the outside and sense something is dying on the inside. If you've ever stared at everything you've accomplished and felt strangely empty, this is the show you didn't know you needed. Dr. Ardeshir Mehran is a Columbia University-trained psychologist, depression and anxiety expert, and bestselling author of You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.  This work is personal. Over 30 years of research and clinical work, and his own personal battle with depression at the peak of his leadership career, Dr. Mehran arrived at a truth that upends everything you've been told: depression and anxiety are not broken-brain problems. They are your body's loudest, most insistent signal that you are living an unfulfilling life. The science is clear: executives and high achievers experience depression, anxiety, and addiction at two to three times the rate of the general population. Status, wealth, and relentless productivity mask the fight, but they don't end it.  Dr. Mehran's pioneering framework, the Bill of Emotional Rights, identifies the seven universal human rights that we are wired to fulfill from birth. When these rights go unmet, we don't fall apart quietly. We achieve loudly, and ache privately. Each episode brings Dr. Mehran's signature warmth, clinical depth, and zero-nonsense directness to the questions that actually matter: Why do high achievers suffer in silence? What does your anxiety know that you don't? How do you go from managing symptoms to building a life that makes you feel fully alive? This is not a podcast about coping or reducing symptoms. It's a podcast about naming and claiming what was always yours. Website: https://ardeshirmehran.com/ The Bill of Emotional Rights: https://ardeshirmehran.com/copy-of-bio/ See Amazon for Bestselling Book: You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.  https://ardeshirmehran.com/general-clean/

  1. 5d ago

    Rethinking Ketamine: Evidence, Hope, Hype

    Let's cut through the hype and stigma and learn what ketamine is, how it works, and who it may help.  For someone who has lived with depression for a long time, hope can begin to feel very far away, especially when the usual treatments haven't helped.  Ketamine may offer some people better results and hope. For people living with persistent depression, ketamine has become a source of intense interest, uncertainty, and debate.  Is it a meaningful clinical option, an overhyped promise, or something more complicated in between? My podcast guest is Nico Grundmann, MD, a board-certified emergency medicine physician who left the ER to focus on a different kind of crisis: the emotional pain that seems hard to treat. He is the co-founder and CEO of Ember Health, a physician-led IV ketamine practice that, according to his guide, has delivered more than 40,000 infusions across five New York City locations since 2018. In this episode, we move beyond the headlines. What is ketamine? How is it being used in mental health care? Who might be considered for treatment, and who might not? What can patients expect, what risks and unanswered questions matter, and how can someone identify responsible medical care? This is not an endorsement or a miracle-cure story. It is a fact-based conversation about evidence, safety, uncertainty, and what hope can look like when familiar options have fallen short.  **Disclaimer. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not medical or mental health advice and should not replace care from a qualified professional. If you have concerns about your health or well-being, please speak with your doctor or mental health provider.**   TIMELINE: 3:22 — What is ketamine? 3:42 — Ketamine as a battlefield anesthetic 5:30 — From ER doctor to depression treatment 7:50 — Clinic’s early outcomes 9:05 — Depression's hidden prevalence and healthcare gaps 12:41 — Measurement-based care and collaborative model 17:06 — How ketamine works: three distinct effects 23:00 — Who benefits from ketamine treatment 28:27 — What patients experience during a ketamine infusion 38:00 — Ketamine safety, misuse, and Matthew Perry’s public case   Watch the Podcast on YouTube.   CONTACT NICO GRUNDMANN: Ember Health: https://emberhealth.co/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicogrundmann/   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN   Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  2. Aug 14

    TOUCH: The Body’s Forgotten Language of Healing

    What if the body remembers what the mind tries to forget?  What if touch is medicine, not just contact? Let’s explore the path back to wholeness. Somatic Trauma Therapist Barbara Collier on Why the Path to Wholeness Runs Through the Body, Not Around It. For more than 30 years, Barbara Collier has studied what touch can heal that words cannot.  A Licensed Professional Counselor, certified Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and Embodied Psychosexual Practitioner™, she was among the first therapists in Arizona to bring touch into psychotherapy, introducing a massage table into her office.  She is the co-founder of Equinimity Tucson, a longtime collaborator of Dr. Peter Levine, and a trauma survivor whose own trauma recovery shapes her clinical work. In this podcast, we talk about what happens in the nervous system the moment safe touch occurs, and why so many of us are severed from our own bodies in the first place.  We examine why talk therapy alone often can’t heal a traumatized body, where grief actually lives in the body, and how she knows the difference between touch that heals and touch that re-traumatizes.  Barbara also shares what a horse can teach a nervous system that a human often can’t. What we learned is that healing isn’t only something we talk our way into. It’s something we feel our way back to. TIMELINE: 0:30 – Touch as a primary human need 3:20 –  Non-verbal communication: the body's language 6:00 –  Barbara's path into touch-based therapy 8:50 –  Presence as touch & ethics of touch in psychotherapy 11:10 – Somatic experiencing & the business executive case study 17:00 – The original wound: separation from nature 19:30 – CEO loneliness and the autonomy-connection paradox 24:10 – Touch, trauma, and sexual abuse healing 26:30 –The massage table practice & the anesthesiologist case 31:30 – Grief in the body and touch in daily relationships Watch the Podcast on YouTube.   CONTACT BARBARA COLLIER, LPC: Website: https://www.barbaracollier.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headhearthandsjourneyinc/   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN: Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  3. Jul 30

    Always Camera Ready: How She Helps the City Wake Up.

    She's interviewed thousands. Now she's the one being asked. What does it take to be the voice a whole city wakes up to? What does it take to be warm and steady before the sun comes up, every single day, for forty years? We hear from the anchorwoman who has spent four decades telling Cincinnati's stories, and who is finally telling her own. Sheila Gray is the host of Good Morning Cincinnati on WKRC Local. She's a member of the Ohio University Broadcasting Hall of Fame, a magna cum laude Scripps journalism grad, and a fixture in the community through Pink Ribbon Girls, the YWCA Career Women of Achievement, and a Key to the City.  In this conversation, we talk about what it actually takes to be publicly cheerful on privately hard days.  Sheila reflects on what her mentor saw in her before she saw it in herself, and what thousands of interviews with accomplished people have taught her about who they really are once the camera stops rolling. We get into what her reporting reveals about the quiet challenges families aren't talking about enough, what separates a story that truly connects people from one that simply informs, and what she's noticed people rarely say out loud even when their lives are public.  We also talk about what Cincinnati still understands about belonging that bigger, faster cities have forgotten, why the people who hold everything together for everyone else are so often the ones nobody checks on, and what local television still knows about trust that national news and social media have lost. After four decades of telling everyone else's stories, it turns out the best one Sheila had was her own.   Watch the podcast on YouTube.   TIMELINE: 1:21 — Career origins: from West Virginia reporter to Cincinnati morning anchor 2:25 — "Sheila energy": bringing warmth and consistency to work every day 4:04 — Building trust and storytelling with genuine care 7:45 — Losing her father young and how grief shaped her values 10:06 — Choosing kindness over bitterness through hard times 11:06 — How celebrities and public figures behave on camera vs. off camera 15:15 — Balancing facts with human connection in interviews 24:39 — My mentor on finding the human story 30:02 — How news consumption and media trust are evolving 37:34 — Cincinnati culture and identity (Skyline Chili, goetta, community spirit)   CONTACT SHEILA GRAY: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN: Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  4. Jul 30

    Holding it Together: A Psychiatrist on Why You Could Always Be Composed and Quietly Breaking.

    What if being normal is a myth? What if there is a quiet cost of always being normal? Let’s look behind the composure. We hear from the psychiatrist who studies why the strong ones often struggle quietly. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Peter Zafirides, MD has sat across from people who seem to have it all together, hearing the things they never say out loud.  Dr. Zafirides is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Ohio State's College of Medicine and co-founder of Central Ohio Behavioral Medicine in Columbus, Ohio, where he has spent nearly three decades treating depression, anxiety, and trauma.  A seven-time Best Doctors in America honoree and recipient of the Compassionate Doctor Award, he built his career around one uncomfortable question: what if being normal is a myth, and there's a quiet cost to always holding it together? In this conversation, we talk about why the people everyone else depends on are often the least likely to admit they're struggling. Someone can be lonely while surrounded by others every day, and why closure is something we create rather than something we receive.  Dr. Zafirides breaks down the two layers of suffering, the loss itself and the fight against it, and explains how anxiety and depression can quietly become someone's lifestyle without them ever noticing.  We also get into what the body knows before the mind admits it, and what nearly 1,000 lectures and thousands of patient hours have taught him about when people finally reach out for help. What we learned is that strength was never about carrying it alone.  It's about knowing when to put it down.  If you're the one everyone else leans on, consider this your sign to lean on someone too. Watch the podcast on YouTube.   TIMELINE: 3:54 — Living "normal" while secretly battling anxiety and depression 6:03 — The tipping point: when suppressed struggles start to "break down" relationships, work, or health 7:58 — "Death by resiliency,"  the cost of always pushing through 8:14 — When it's time to see a clinician 9:42 — How medication helps (and its limits) 11:30 — Healing as a complex interplay of biology, psychology, and human connection 15:59 — The power of simply asking "Are you happy?" 24:59 — Loneliness as an epidemic, even in a room full of people 28:22 — Understanding closure: pain vs. the suffering we add through interpretation 37:06 — The two layers of suffering explained   CONTACT DR. PETER ZAFIRIDES, MD:  LinkedIn  Website   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN:  Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  5. Jul 12

    How to Listen to Depression. Often It's The Most Honest Voice in the Room.

    Let's Learn to Listen to Depression. Depression is never the enemy. It’s often the most honest voice in the room, asking to be heard.  ABOUT DR. LARA HONOS-WEBB • PhD clinical psychologist and author of seven books, including Listening to Depression and The Gift of ADHD • Listening to Depression was named one of the best therapy books of 2006 by Health Magazine • Longtime Psychology Today contributor; completed her postdoctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco • Known for finding the gift inside the diagnosis; depression as a wake-up call, ADHD as a strength Dr. Lara Honos-Webb is a clinical psychologist licensed in California. Honos-Webb completed a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at University of California, San Francisco, and has been an assistant professor for graduate students. She has published 26 scholarly articles her website is www.addisagift.com She is the author of six books: Tools to Help Teens Improve Focus, Stay Organized, and Reach Their Goals (2020), Brain Hacks, The Gift of ADHD, The Gift of ADHD Activity Book, The Gift of Adult ADD, The ADHD Workbook for Teens, and Listening to Depression. Dr. Honos-Webb shared that “Depression is a signal that something new has to come into your life.”  There are 4 Ps that accelerate depression healing: The Permission Principle, the Pleasure Principle, the Presence Principle, and the Power Principle.  Watch the podcast on YouTube. TIMELINE 0:06 — Welcome & Introduction 0:35 — Depression Has Wisdom, Not Just Symptoms 2:53 — Disclaimers & Session Purpose 7:21 — The Hero's Journey of Healing 10:32 — Depression as Self-Communication 15:45 — The Four Ps: Presence, Pleasure, Permission, Power 26:32 — Discovering Your Strengths 34:01 — Purpose and Enthusiasm Over Prestige 43:36 — Momentum: M&M for the Soul CONTACT DR. LARA HONOS-WEBB Website LinkedIn Instagram   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN  Website LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book: You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.

  6. Jul 8

    How to Become a Calm & Trusted Leader

    Calm Leaders Build Stronger Teams. Why you cannot build a healthy culture from a reactive emotional state, and how leaders trade reaction for regulation. Every leader knows the moment. The meeting turns tense. The email lands wrong. The pressure spikes, and before you’ve chosen anything, your body has already chosen for you: flooded, controlling, defensive, or shut down. Julia LeFevre calls it what it is: you cannot build a healthy culture from a reactive state. Julia is the founder of Brave Restoration, a relational trust specialist, and a Certified NeuroChange Professional Coach with 25+ years in education and leadership.  She helps executives regulate their nervous systems so decisions come from the prefrontal cortex rather than self-protection, rebuilding trust, accountability, and real connection. In this podcast, we explore what regulated leadership actually takes, not as a personality trait, but as a trainable capacity. What is happening in a leader’s brain under threat? How do you repair a trust rupture you caused?  And what has to be full before a leader has anything real to give? Watch the podcast on YouTube. About Julia LeFevre: Founder of Brave Restoration; relational trust specialist and human-first leadership coach.Certified NeuroChange Professional Coach with master’s degrees in Organizational Leadership and Education, and 25+ years in education and leadership.Creator of the CORE 4 framework — Connection, Definition, Integration, Collaboration — and the six-week Regulated Leader Cohort for executives facing imposter syndrome, anxiety, and burnout.Known for the maxim: “Regulated leadership is not personality. It is capacity.”TIMELINE: 0:30 — Why leaders become reactive/anxious and lose team trust 2:17 — Real-life test of capacity: the 29-hour travel ordeal 4:53 — History of neuroscience research on brain flexibility (1980s–2000s) 7:30 — Brain stem, limbic system & the "bottom-up" brain model 9:01 — The 5th core human need: relational belonging 10:43 — Defining "capacity": staying regulated under relational threat 11:38 — Case study: the table-pounding, micromanaging boss 17:18 — The "fire pit" metaphor: expressing emotion instead of suppressing it 20:31 — Team exercise: releasing tension in a high-tech product team 23:06 — Reframing "dysregulation" as lack of psychological safety 26:35 — Capacity as a muscle: atrophy vs. growth through discomfort 29:36 — You can't fake regulation: showing up vs. what you say 32:12 — Julia's personal story: anxiety, burnout, and neurochange development work 35:43 — The turning point: "I don't need you to change those things" 37:54 — Separating performance from relational connection at work 40:02 — The Core Four Framework explained: Connection, Integration, Collaboration 43:03 — Building your "fire pit": finding brave people to journey with CONTACT JULIA LeFevre:  Link to the nervous system audit: https://lp.braverestoration.org/executivecapacity-audit Website: www.braverestoration.org Email: julia@braverestoration.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliaklefevre/   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  7. Jul 5

    Fly Free Forever: After the Fire, Love Still Remains

    From Heartbreak to Living a Fuller Life What heartbreak, caregiving, grief, and hope teach us about becoming fully alive again. Every life has a before and an after.  For Jenny Brandemuehl, the after began with a devastating plane crash that left her husband, Mark, with life-threatening burns over most of his body, and placed Jenny in the unchosen role of caregiver, advocate, witness, and eventually widow. Jenny is a seasoned technology executive turned memoirist, speaker, and advocate.  Her memoir, Forever Fly Free, tells the story of trauma, fierce love, grief, intuition, community, and the stubborn miracle of hope. In this podcast, we talk about what happens after heartbreak - not as a slogan, but as a lived human journey.  How do we stay open after loss?  How do we trust life again?  And how do we discover that healing is not a straight line, but a slow return to the heart? Watch the podcast on YouTube. About Jenny Brandemuehl: Former technology executive with leadership roles at Hewlett Packard, Gap Inc., JDS Uniphase, and Chegg.Author of Forever Fly Free, a memoir about trauma, love, caregiving, grief, miracles, and hope.Advocate for burn survivors and families, including work with the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivors.Bay Area resident and passionate supporter of women leaders. TIMELINE: 1:02 – Introduction: Jenny Brandemuehl and her book "Forever Fly Free" 1:12 – The accident: Mark's plane crash and emergency landing 2:48 – Before Jenny: life as executives, avid skiers, empty nesters 4:26 – The after Jenny: crisis mode at the Arizona Burn Center 5:39 – Love as an energy: the story of nurse Crystal Anne and David 10:16 – Becoming an "emotional athlete" while caring for Mark 16:23 – The two phases of loss: amputation and Mark's death 19:35 – The miraculous rescue by Thomas Honeycutt 26:16 – Shifting from left-brain to whole-being (head, heart, body) 41:48 – Hope, perspective, and advice for those facing hardship CONTACT JENNY BRANDEMUEHL https://www.foreverflyfree.com/ Jenny's Brandemuehl's Substack Jenny Brandemuehl LinkedIn Jenny Brandemuehl Facebook Jenny Brandemuehl's Instagram   CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

  8. Jun 24

    Confidence Is Your Currency: Own the Room.

    Every leader reaches a moment when looking successful and feeling successful are two very different things.  In this episode, Dr. Ardeshir Mehran speaks with Tara LaFon Gooch, Forbes-featured CEO, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, brand strategist, and host of the globally ranked GRASP Confidence Podcast. Tara has built her work around one bold idea: confidence is not just a feeling. It is currency. It shapes how we enter rooms, tell our story, claim our voice, and create opportunities that match our deeper calling. Tara’s story began in rural Maryland, as the youngest of five children raised by a single mother. Today, she helps entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, and thought leaders turn their expertise into influence, visibility, and legacy.  Her message is clear: your story is not a liability. It is your greatest strategic asset.  When you learn to lead with clarity, conviction, and purpose, your brand becomes more than polish. It becomes presence, power, and impact. In this conversation, we explore the difference between performed confidence and owned confidence, why high achievers often hide a quiet confidence gap, and how personal branding becomes a path to self-ownership.  Tara also shares the heart of her GRASP framework, the role of gratitude and faith in confidence, and what she would say to anyone who knows they are meant for more but cannot yet see the full path.  This is a conversation about owning your brand, owning the room, and owning the life you were created to live. Watch The Episode on YouTube 0:09:  You're not depressed, just unfinished: the show's premise 4:01:  Leaving corporate: depression, misalignment & the leap to entrepreneurship 8:59:  Looking successful vs. feeling successful  12:40:  Happy home life as the ultimate wealth  16:07:  The GRASP Model: five dimensions of confidence 23:27:  Grateful for visualizations as if they're already here  27:31:  Your brand walks into the room before you do  32:21:  AI cannot replace lived experience or original thought  35:23:  The forgiveness book: 27 years of silence & a letter that arrived too late  38:23:  Forgiveness is reclaiming the parts of yourself you abandoned to survive CONTACT TARA LAFON GOOCH Tara LaFon Gooch Website  TEDx LinkedIn Instagram  YouTube Channel  GRASP Confidence Podcast CONTACT DR. ARDESHIR MEHRAN Dr. Mehran Studio LinkedIn Podcasts  Blogs  YouTube Bestselling Book

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Not Depressed. Just UnFinished. Hosted by Dr. Ardeshir Mehran, Ph.D. What if your depression isn't a diagnosis; it's a dare, it's a signal? Not Depressed. Just UnFinished. is the podcast for leaders, high achievers, and entrepreneurs who have built impressive lives on the outside and sense something is dying on the inside. If you've ever stared at everything you've accomplished and felt strangely empty, this is the show you didn't know you needed. Dr. Ardeshir Mehran is a Columbia University-trained psychologist, depression and anxiety expert, and bestselling author of You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.  This work is personal. Over 30 years of research and clinical work, and his own personal battle with depression at the peak of his leadership career, Dr. Mehran arrived at a truth that upends everything you've been told: depression and anxiety are not broken-brain problems. They are your body's loudest, most insistent signal that you are living an unfulfilling life. The science is clear: executives and high achievers experience depression, anxiety, and addiction at two to three times the rate of the general population. Status, wealth, and relentless productivity mask the fight, but they don't end it.  Dr. Mehran's pioneering framework, the Bill of Emotional Rights, identifies the seven universal human rights that we are wired to fulfill from birth. When these rights go unmet, we don't fall apart quietly. We achieve loudly, and ache privately. Each episode brings Dr. Mehran's signature warmth, clinical depth, and zero-nonsense directness to the questions that actually matter: Why do high achievers suffer in silence? What does your anxiety know that you don't? How do you go from managing symptoms to building a life that makes you feel fully alive? This is not a podcast about coping or reducing symptoms. It's a podcast about naming and claiming what was always yours. Website: https://ardeshirmehran.com/ The Bill of Emotional Rights: https://ardeshirmehran.com/copy-of-bio/ See Amazon for Bestselling Book: You Are Not Depressed. You Are Un-Finished.  https://ardeshirmehran.com/general-clean/

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Ardeshir Mehran
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Dr. Ardeshir Mehran's Podcast
  • Show Website
    Dr. Ardeshir Mehran's Podcast