The Pressures of Privilege

Diana Oehrli
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Updated Weekly

The Pressures of Privilege explores class, achievement, family legacy, and the responsibilities that come with advantage — through conversations with inheritors, founders, advisors, doctors, artists, writers, and those who have chosen a different path. Hosted by Swiss-American journalist and producer Diana Oehrli, the show asks how greater consciousness can help us live more fully, connect more deeply, and become better stewards of what we have.

  1. 1d ago

    Ep52 Sara Vetter—How to Heal Your Relationship With Money When Having Plenty Still Feels Like Not Enough

    In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Sara Vetter, CEO of the Soul of Money Institute and a longtime work partner of Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, for a conversation about what it takes to feel at home with yourself when a full bank account has never been able to do that for you. Sara grew up in a big Italian ranching family in Central California that farmed almonds and had lots of land. The money belonged to her mother, who held all the power in the house, and it was never discussed. Everything was about appearances. She later married into more wealth and built a beautiful life in Silicon Valley, and the more she had, the less she felt like enough. When her marriage ended, she went looking for what sat underneath the money. That search led her to Lynne Twist, who became her work partner for the next 18 years, and eventually to more than 50 trips into the Amazon rainforest with the Pachamama Alliance. Diana, drawing on her background as a Mayo Clinic-trained coach and her own lived experience navigating the hidden costs of a privileged life, walks with Sara through her money story and her body story and through what Indigenous leaders in the Amazon showed her about wealth held in community. By the end of this episode, you will know... → How to trace your own money story back to the unspoken rules of the home you grew up in, and why Sara says almost everyone, at every income level, carries some version of not enough. → How to spot the three toxic myths about money in your own thinking (there's not enough, more is better, and that's just the way it is), and why the third one keeps so many people of wealth resigned and quiet. → How to ask for money, whether for your own coaching work or a cause you care about, by treating it as enrolling someone in something that will benefit them, and why a no can still hold a gift. → How to examine the story you tell yourself when one partner brought the money and the other did not, and what a partner contributes beyond a dollar sign. → What Indigenous leaders in the Amazon taught Sara about money, including how they make decisions as a community and why they have no hierarchy around it. → What it means to lead from the body, and how Sara moved from performing to being in front of a room. → Why working through your money story in a group teaches you things that private reflection can't, and what happens when you hear that someone else is going through it too. → Why Sara points to Dolly Parton when asked what happens when the power of love replaces the love of power. This episode is for anyone who has stood inside a life full of beautiful things and quietly wondered why the feeling of enough never arrives. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction to Sarah Vetter and Pressures of Privilege(00:02:11) - Sarah's Childhood Money Story and Wealthy Upbringing(00:04:01) - Marriage, Emptiness, and the Dark Night of the Soul(00:06:10) - Healing and Meeting Lynn Twist(00:08:25) - Transformed Relationship with Money and Contentment(00:09:45) - Rethinking Judgments About Wealth and Villainizing Money(00:13:30) - The Soul of Money and the Three Toxic Myths(00:16:20) - Money as a Mirror: Enrolling vs Selling(00:18:38) - Overcoming Fear of Asking and the Value of 'No'(00:20:13) - Everyone's Not-Enoughness and Unique Money Stories(00:22:18) - Money, Power, and Relationship Dynamics(00:25:09) - Lessons from the Amazon and Indigenous Communities(00:30:17) - Community, Trust, and Transformation in the Amazon(00:31:57) - Embodiment: Leading from the Body, Not Just the Mind(00:35:39) - Play, Joy, and Humor as Vital Life Tools(00:37:00) - Programs, Circles, and the Power of Community(00:40:18) - Love Over Power: The Dolly Parton Example(00:42:05) - Living Fully Expressed and Closing Resources

    Ep52 Sara Vetter—How to Heal Your Relationship With Money When Having Plenty Still Feels Like Not Enough

  2. Sep 13

    Ep51 Dr. Louise Stanger—Keep Falling Up: Addiction, the Myth of Rock Bottom, and How to Help Someone You Love Before It's Too Late

    What actually happens inside a family when someone is drowning in addiction... and everyone around them is quietly drowning too? In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Dr. Louise Stanger, who is a nationally recognized interventionist, licensed clinical social worker, founder of All About Interventions, and author of six books, including her most recent, Trauma Is Your Superpower. Named Interventionist of the Year by Harvard-affiliate McLean Hospital in 2024, Dr. Stanger has spent over 40 years working with families at their most vulnerable. She has also lived through six sudden deaths of her own, navigated loss in ways that would break most people, and emerged with a philosophy built not on theory but on hard-won truth: keep falling up. Diana doesn't come to this conversation as a passive interviewer. She brings her own lived experience with love addiction, unprocessed childhood grief, and the particular silence that wealth and privilege tend to demand. That shared honesty makes this exchange something rare. What listeners will learn from this episode is genuinely practical. Dr. Stanger dismantles the dangerous myth that someone must hit rock bottom before help is possible - and explains what to do instead of waiting. She walks through her invitational approach to intervention, including how to prepare the people in the room, how to write a letter built around heart, hurt, and hope, and how to gently break through what she calls the honeycomb of denial without confrontation or ultimatums. She also speaks plainly about how privilege quietly enables addiction—not through cruelty, but through the very resources that allow consequences to disappear before they land. Diana and Dr. Stanger explore how unprocessed grief becomes one of the most overlooked gateways to compulsive behavior, why over-diagnosis can obscure rather than clarify what's really happening, and how to choose a treatment center based on something far more important than price or reputation. And for anyone who has been sitting on the fence, unsure whether to say something or do something or make one uncomfortable phone call on behalf of someone they love... Dr. Stanger makes it very clear what courage actually costs compared to what silence does. Chapters (00:00:00) - Introduction to Dr. Louise Stanger(00:01:55) - What Interventions Really Are(00:03:22) - Rock Bottom, Denial, and Codependency(00:08:07) - How Interventions Work in Practice(00:11:30) - Breaking the Honeycomb of Denial(00:14:20) - Choosing Treatment Facilities and Relapse(00:15:57) - Diana's Own Recovery Story(00:17:53) - Wealth, Isolation, and Asking for Help(00:21:20) - Finding Courage and Hope(00:22:57) - Diana's Childhood Abandonment Story(00:26:28) - Grief, Trauma, and Healing(00:28:03) - Diagnosis vs. Describing Behavior(00:30:02) - Keep Falling Up Philosophy(00:31:47) - Louise's Career and Continued Growth(00:35:13) - Today's Addiction Landscape and Digital Addiction(00:36:39) - Taking the First Brave Step(00:39:05) - Choosing the Right Treatment Center(00:43:32) - Closing Thoughts and Outro

    Ep51 Dr. Louise Stanger—Keep Falling Up: Addiction, the Myth of Rock Bottom, and How to Help Someone You Love Before It's Too Late

  3. Sep 8

    Why Work If You Don't Need The Money?

    What if "why work?" is the wrong question? In this solo episode of The Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli takes on a question she's heard more than once, from a relative who asked why she'd work when she didn't need the money and from an ex who said he'd take her back if she got a job. She traces it back to a call with her Swiss lawyer, who told her an inheritance meant a bigger social security bill unless she took a job. That contradiction sends her looking past the usual answer. She talks through Sister Teresa's advice to a friend's wealthy children (skip the ice cream, give the savings to your own neighbors), the Van Gogh locked in a bank vault while a print hangs in its place in the film A Good Year, and the line she was raised on: to whom much is given, much will be required. Diana lands on stewardship: the care, cultivation, use, and transmission of whatever you've been given, money included, but also time, health, talent, and opportunity. It's her case for trading privilege guilt for something closer to gratitude and for treating paid work as real contribution, not a lesser version of it. If you've ever been asked why you still work, or asked it of yourself, this episode gives you a better question to sit with. Chapters (00:00:04) - The Right to Steward Your Money(00:07:02) - How to Manage Your Money

    Why Work If You Don't Need The Money?

  4. Sep 6

    Ep50 Howard Kaplan—The Wealth Manager Who Quit Believing in Retirement

    In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Howard Kaplan, CEO and founder of Personal Strategic Design, who spent 30 years as a Harvard MBA, CPA, and wealth manager telling accomplished people how to retire, before his own life forced him to admit that doing everything right hadn't delivered what he actually wanted.  Now he helps successful people in the second half of life find health, happiness, and emotional prosperity, drawing on life design training with Stanford's Bill Burnett and personal mastery work with Srikumar Rao. He didn't build his own next chapter until his 60s, and his upcoming book is proof the door doesn't shut when everyone says it does. Howard traces the moment that changed everything: a month before turning 50, sitting at a Cheesecake Factory with his wife Sherry, then wandering into a Barnes & Noble and picking up a book called "Are You Ready to Succeed?" That single afternoon led him to call the author, enroll in a 10-week immersion program, and start unraveling why a Harvard MBA and a thriving CPA background still hadn't made him feel like he'd succeeded. They get into why Howard now refuses to use the word "retirement" at all (he says it literally means coming to an end), what he calls "the gift years" instead, and the health scare he had to face before he could ask anyone else to change their life. By the end of this episode, you will know... → Why Howard believes the word "retirement" is the actual problem, and the "gift years" reframe he uses instead. → The Cheesecake Factory afternoon that sent a Harvard MBA, CPA, and 30-year wealth manager into a decade of what he calls "personal R&D." → Why he hid a type 2 diabetes diagnosis for years, and what becoming "the role model" for his own son finally forced him to confront. → The "internal operating system," beliefs, patterns, self-talk, and identity that Howard says have to shift before anyone can design what's next. → Why real change requires both pain and a clear vision, and what happens when people escape the pain without ever building the vision. → The five areas Howard uses instead of the traditional "wheel of life," and why it stops being about money once someone reaches this stage. → Why he split his own practice in half once he studied the Experience Economy, keeping products and services on one side and transformation on the other. This episode is for anyone who has done everything they were supposed to do, built the career, hit the number, and still feels like something hasn't clicked yet. Chapters (00:00:00) - Why Poverty Is Good for People(00:00:40) - Howard Kaplan on the Pressures of Privilege(00:06:20) - The Search for Excellence in Accounting(00:09:56) - Are You Ready to Success?:(00:15:11) - In the Elevator With Srikumar(00:16:55) - The Courage to Live to 100(00:24:04) - The Secret to Retirement: Connection(00:32:21) - The Importance of Passion in Your Work(00:39:48) - A Woman's Exit From Her Job(00:40:53) - The Power of Experience in Business(00:46:12) - In the Elevator With Positive Psychology(00:49:19) - Designing a Lifetime of Success(00:56:10) - A conversation about emotional prosperity

    Ep50 Howard Kaplan—The Wealth Manager Who Quit Believing in Retirement

  5. Aug 31

    Ep49 Matt Grace—How to Set a Boundary With Someone You Love When You're Terrified It Will Hurt Them

    In this episode of The Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Matt Grace, founder of the family recovery practice, Saving Grace, who has spent more than twenty years sober and over ten thousand hours walking wealthy families through a child's, a spouse's, or a sibling's addiction. His memoir, God Doesn't Relapse, released on August 11 and traces his own years of active addiction, an overdose in his boss's office, and a father who paid his bills until he turned twenty-nine.  Matt has sat across from families spending twenty and thirty thousand dollars a month on an Amex Black Card that funds nothing but the addiction. Wealth, in his experience, usually works by removing the consequences that would otherwise force a family to face what's happening. The fear he hears most from parents is that saying no will get their child killed, and how quickly that fear can become something an addict learns to use. Diana, who has spent her career studying the specific loneliness that comes with inherited wealth, walks with Matt through what a family actually has to do once it stops paying for the addiction and starts doing its own work instead. By the end of this episode, you will know... → Why paying a child's bills into adulthood can quietly keep them sick, and what Matt's own father missed for twenty-nine years while footing every bill. → Why the fear that a child will die if a parent sets a boundary can become the exact thing an addiction uses to keep a family stuck in the same pattern for years. → Why Matt believes the whole family, not just the addict, has to do its own work before real recovery is possible. → Why Matt walked away from private practice when parents kept caving on the boundaries he helped them set, and what he tells families who call him for advice they have no intention of following. → Why service, not willpower, carried Matt through the spiritual experience that got him sober on October 3, 2004, and later through a chronic illness that nearly put him in a wheelchair. → How Matt sat with his mother as she died last month and administered her pain medication by syringe, sober, and why he calls that the best gift twenty-one years of recovery ever gave him. → What Matt tells parents who are afraid to drug test their own kids, take away the car, or pull them out of school, and why he says most families already know the answer and are just afraid to use it. This episode is for anyone who has ever loved someone so much they made every excuse, paid every bill, and smoothed over every consequence, and quietly wondered if that love was the very thing keeping the people they love the most from getting better. Chapters (00:00:00) - What's the Problem with Thinking About Problems?(00:00:38) - Matt Grace on the Pressures of Privilege(00:05:03) - On the Rich and Their Addiction(00:11:00) - God Doesn't Relapse(00:18:05) - In the Elevator With Alcoholics(00:23:25) - Reasons for staying in recovery(00:25:20) - How To Help Your Child Get Out of Drug Addiction(00:31:03) - How to Help a Drug Addict Get Out of Treatment(00:37:00) - Service Positions for Recovering Addicts(00:42:35) - Matt Grace on His Dad's Drug Use(00:47:25) - How to Talk to Your Partner About Addiction

    Ep49 Matt Grace—How to Set a Boundary With Someone You Love When You're Terrified It Will Hurt Them

  6. Aug 23

    Ep48 Anna Holtzman—How to Stop Earning Your Right to Belong When You Were Born Into Privilege

    In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Anna Holtzman, a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City who spent 15 years in publishing and television, including years as a reality TV editor at MTV, before debilitating migraines pushed her toward mind-body healing and an entirely new career in her 40s. Anna is trained in somatic experiencing, internal family systems, and pain reprocessing therapy, and she hosts the podcast How to Trust Yourself. Anna wrote an essay that stopped Diana in her tracks: an unflinching look at what it's like to keep your family's wealth private, even from your own therapist, out of fear of being labeled a "poor little rich girl." In this conversation, she and Diana get into the unconscious code-switching inheritors perform to avoid being othered, and why admitting the fear of judgment can feel even more embarrassing than the privilege itself. They also trace the surprising thread connecting Anna's decade of chronic migraines to what pain researcher Dr. John Sarno called "goodism," a compulsive need to be seen as good that erases your own needs until your nervous system starts sounding the alarm. Anna shares the self-compassion practice that finally broke the cycle and how the aftermath of October 7 became the unexpected moment that revealed her own blind spot around wealth and belonging. By the end of this episode, you will know... → Why Anna kept her family's wealth private for most of her life, even as a client in her own therapy, and what "unconscious code-switching" looks like for inheritors trying not to be othered. → How Dr. John Sarno's concept of "goodism," the compulsive need to be seen as good, explains the link between people-pleasing, perfectionism, and the decade of migraines that finally forced Anna to change careers in her 40s. → The self-compassion practice Anna built by studying how she looks at her cats, and how turning that same unconditional gaze on herself in the mirror helped soften years of chronic head tension. → Why the aftermath of October 7 became the moment that revealed Anna's own blind spot around wealth, when a former client's accusatory email showed her she'd been asking herself to "prove she's one of the good ones" in more ways than one. → The real difference between validating someone's emotion and validating their story, and why conflating the two keeps people from ever fully feeling what they feel. → Why grief that's medicated away or never fully expressed in childhood can resurface decades later as chronic dysregulation, and what it actually takes to finally release it. → Why belonging was never supposed to be something you earn, and how to start practicing unconditional self-acceptance today, whether or not you inherited a dime. This episode is for anyone who has ever quietly wondered whether their wins even count, whether their privilege disqualifies them from struggling out loud, or why loving yourself first still feels like the hardest assignment on the list. Chapters (00:00:00) - Why You Need to Love Yourself(00:00:40) - Anna Holtzman on the Pressures of Privilege(00:08:06) - On Feeling Alone in the World(00:10:42) - What Is Shame?(00:12:57) - How to Heal Chronic Pain With Mind Body Medicine(00:18:02) - How to Really Feel My Feelings(00:25:51) - Crying during the President's monologue(00:26:18) - Self-Compassion for Migraines(00:30:31) - Self-Compassion for Women(00:35:05) - You also wrote in your piece about the Attack on Israel(00:42:17) - On Feeling Like You Deserve to belong(00:51:41) - The Never-Enough Desire

    Ep48 Anna Holtzman—How to Stop Earning Your Right to Belong When You Were Born Into Privilege

  7. Aug 16

    Ep47 Jolanthe de Koning—How to Let Go of Perfect When Achievement Is Your Whole Identity

    In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Jolanthe de Koning, PhD researcher, yoga teacher, and founder of Amid the Mess, for a conversation that cuts well beneath the surface of wellness culture and gets honest about what it actually takes to feel well when real life keeps getting in the way. Jolanthe spent nearly nine years inside academia studying how physical activity and loneliness intersect in older adults. What she found surprised even her. The wealthiest people in her research, the ones with the beautiful homes and the impressive children scattered across continents, were often the loneliest. The ones with less, whose families never traveled far, were quietly thriving. She calls it the curse of the privileged, and it has everything to do with why achieving more doesn't always translate to living better. Diana, drawing on her background as a Mayo Clinic-trained coach and her own lived experience navigating the hidden costs of a privileged life, walks with Jolanthe through the research, the personal burnout, and the unexpected practice that brought her back to herself. By the end of this episode, you will know... → How to spot the early warning signs of burnout before your body forces the issue, and what Jolanthe actually did when sitting injuries and sleepless nights became her daily reality during her PhD. → How to build a consistent yoga or movement practice even when your home is in chaos, your schedule has collapsed, and the perfect conditions are never, ever coming. → Why the wealthiest older adults in Jolanthe's research were the most isolated, and what that reveals about the real cost of building a life everyone else admires. → How identity shapes physical activity far more than motivation does, and why the older adults who stayed most active all said the same thing about who they were, not just what they did. → Why perfectionism is academically linked to depression and poor psychological outcomes, and how to stop treating it like a personality trait to be proud of. → How to prune your commitments with intention rather than guilt, especially when you are a yes-person stretched across too many plates that all feel equally important. → What the eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga actually are, why the physical poses are only one step in a much larger journey, and how this ancient framework maps surprisingly well onto modern mental health. This episode is for anyone who has quietly wondered why having more... more credentials, more resources, more by every measurable standard... still somehow feels like not quite enough. Chapters (00:00:00) - What Yoga Is Really All About(00:00:42) - Meet Yolante Du Koenig: Pressures of Privilege(00:01:48) - Pushing yourself to the limit in academia(00:05:49) - How the yoga contributed to my PhD(00:09:05) - Loneliness among the well-off in older age(00:13:13) - What does a Recovering Academic Mean to You?(00:20:01) - Bendy Life Yoga: How to Keep Yourself Well in Your(00:23:45) - Do Yoga and Strength Make You More Flexible?(00:29:21) - How yoga relates to letting go of perfection(00:36:34) - Do You Need a Shavasana For Yoga?(00:37:11) - What motivated you to practice yoga again after having a baby?(00:40:20) - How to Get Out of Perfectionism(00:43:59) - In the Elevator With Health Experts(00:45:26) - Finding Purpose in Career(00:47:06) - How to start a yoga practice again(00:48:13) - How to Have It All(00:52:09) - What If Everyone in the World Practice Yoga

    Ep47 Jolanthe de Koning—How to Let Go of Perfect When Achievement Is Your Whole Identity

  8. Aug 9

    Ep46 Todd Sarner—How to Raise Resilient Kids When You're Already Doing Everything Right

    Why do children who have every advantage in the world still struggle to handle a simple no? In this episode of Pressures of Privilege, host Diana Oehrli sits down with Todd Sarner, a licensed therapist who trained under attachment expert Dr. Gordon Newfeld and has spent 22 years working with more than 2,000 families, many of them among the most resourced in the country. Todd is the author of The Calm and Connected Parent, which hit number one in new parenting releases on Amazon, and he built his entire practice around one idea: behavior is the branches, and connection is the root. Together, they get into why kids raised with every material advantage often struggle the most with resilience, what happens in a child's brain the moment they resist a parent's request, and why a firm, loving no is one of the most protective things a parent can offer. Todd walks through the difference between punishment and consequence, why two parents with different instincts are usually both right, and how repair, not perfection, builds a secure, resilient child. If you've ever wondered why doing everything for your kids still doesn't seem to be enough, this episode was made for you. Chapters (00:00:00) - Todd Sarner on the Calm and Connected Parent(00:03:03) - How to Talk to Your Child About Behavior(00:08:01) - We All Acquire Emotions(00:15:09) - How to help a divorce partner with a child(00:18:36) - Understanding the emotional needs of children(00:23:23) - Todd and Elizabeth Kubbler-Ross:(00:27:07) - How to Get a Real Out of Your Tears(00:34:17) - What Happens If You Have a Narcissist Parent?(00:37:50) - How To Get Out Of Trauma(00:41:39) - Do You Need to Protect Your Child's Personality?(00:44:32) - Why Do Kids Resist and Defy?(00:50:13) - How to Raise a Strong Willed Child(00:55:45) - Have Immigrant Nannies Be Mean to Kids?(00:58:07) - Different Parenting Styles(01:04:46) - No More Criticizing My Partner(01:10:02) - How To Apologize To Someone(01:11:21) - The Common Connection: How to Raise Your Child

    Ep46 Todd Sarner—How to Raise Resilient Kids When You're Already Doing Everything Right
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About

The Pressures of Privilege explores class, achievement, family legacy, and the responsibilities that come with advantage — through conversations with inheritors, founders, advisors, doctors, artists, writers, and those who have chosen a different path. Hosted by Swiss-American journalist and producer Diana Oehrli, the show asks how greater consciousness can help us live more fully, connect more deeply, and become better stewards of what we have.

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