Shrink Me? I am just waking up

Dr. Lia Roth
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Shrink Me? I’m Just Waking Up is the podcast for people who suspect their self-knowledge might be performing for an audience. Dr. Lia Roth — psychoanalyst, author, and professional detector of scripts people mistake for personality — takes apart the roles we slip into when the relational field stops feeling safe. Betrayal. Shame. Desire. Relational theory. Narrative identity. Meaning. Recognition. Autonomy. Attachment. No wellness platitudes. No soft-focus healing theater. Just short, sharp episodes about what the body registers before the mind writes the press release. Every Sunday, we clear the noise, spot the crack, and come back to what actually matters. Questioning your favorite self-description may have side effects. Fortunately, I'm not that kind of doctor, so this is not medical advice. It's worse. It might actually start to make sense. Topics: psychoanalysis, relational theory, betrayal, shame, attachment, narrative identity, meaning-making, autonomy, recognition vs. approval, psychology podcast, self-help critique, desire

  1. 2d ago

    Regulate- The Hand That Was Never Waving

    Regulate the body. Not because the feeling is wrong, but because it is carrying questions it cannot answer alone. Sometimes the smallest things can leave us activated. You reached, and the response did not arrive on schedule. Sometimes, dysregulation is is not a feeling that got too loud. But an interrogation arrived without words. This episode looks at primary shame, the positions we take when belonging goes uncertain, and how to return to yourself before you decide what an unanswered gesture means. What you'll take away: Why being unanswered lands differently than being threatened, and why the usual advice misses itPrimary shame, and what happens the moment wanting someone stops producing themOne-minute practice you can do tonight, with a message you have already sent References Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Gratz, Kim L., and Lizabeth Roemer. "Multidimensional Assessment of Emotion Regulation and Dysregulation: Development, Factor Structure, and Initial Validation of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale." Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 26, no. 1 (2004): 41–54. Thompson, Ross A. "Emotion Dysregulation: A Theme in Search of Definition." Development and Psychopathology 31, no. 3 (2019): 805–815.

    Regulate- The Hand That Was Never Waving

  2. Oct 18

    Land Somewhere Safe - Regulate, Read Decide & Become

    Someone else’s dysregulation can reach you in seconds. Suddenly, you’re explaining, fixing, apologizing, or becoming whatever the moment seems to require. In this episode, Dr. Lia Roth uses the Four Moves—Regulate, Read, Decide, Become—to create an interval between someone else’s affect and the position you take. Because you can care about what happens between you without becoming a function for it.

    Land Somewhere Safe - Regulate, Read Decide & Become

  3. Oct 11

    That Text You Almost Sent · Need, Demand, and the Freedom to Be Yourself

    You know the text. You want someone you love. You miss them. Maybe you need them. And somewhere between the feeling and your thumb hitting send, I wish you were here becomes You haven’t checked in on me all week. Both sentences may come from the same place. But they do something very different to the person receiving them. In this episode of Shrink Me? I Am Just Waking Up, Dr. Lia Roth explores the difference between need and demand.. and why the and how that difference opens the space for choice, freedom, and love. Drawing from Binary Relationship Theory (BRT), Hegel’s recognition problem, and Jessica Benjamin’s work on mutual recognition, Roth looks at what happens when another person’s freedom becomes difficult to tolerate. The episode moves through the Four Moves—Regulate, Read, Decide, Become—to a different understanding of autonomy. Autonomy is not learning not to need people. It is being able to need someone without requiring them to stop being themselves. Four Takeaways Need and demand are structurally different. A forced yes cannot give you the same thing as a free yes. No is part of mature love. Autonomy is not self-sufficiency. References & Further Reading Jessica Benjamin — work on mutual recognition, intersubjectivity, and recognition of the other as a separate subject. G. W. F. Hegel — recognition and the master–bondsman dialectic, particularly the problem created when recognition comes from a consciousness whose independence has been subordinated. Lia A. Roth — Get In or Get Out, But Don’t Stay in the Freakn’ Middle — on the space between the status quo and the growth required to change it. Lia A. Roth — Not Anymore — forthcoming; on relational roles, recruitment, and the development of autonomy within relationship. Binary Relationship Theory (BRT) — the relational field, recognition, recruitment, mattering, and autonomy.

    That Text You Almost Sent · Need, Demand, and the Freedom to Be Yourself

  4. Oct 4

    I Want This: Wanting Clearly Is Not Wanting Freely

    "I want this.” ...A coffee. A promotion. A second chance. The sentence feels obvious, almost invisible. But inside those three words, an entire world has already been built. An “I" doing the wanting. A “thing" not yet here. An ache between them. And rushing in to fill that ache, a small cast nobody invited: fear, shame, belonging, loyalty, and a role at the bottom waiting to be resumed. The promotion was never only about the promotion. The this was carrying far more than a job title. This episode looks at what desire actually arrives with, why wanting clearly is not the same as wanting freely, and what it means to be slightly more awake to our own choices. Takeaways: Desire does not arrive alone. Notice who and what came with it.Wanting clearly is not wanting freely.Sometimes another person's certainty feels like shelter. That is usually the moment we hand over the meaning. References: Benjamin, Jessica. The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988. Winnicott, D. W. Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications, 1971. Roth, L. Get In or Get Out but Don’t Stay in the Freakn’ Middle

    I Want This: Wanting Clearly Is Not Wanting Freely

  5. Sep 27

    That Controlling You Felt? It May Not Have Been Aimed at You

    Someone you know rearranges the room when they are anxious. They have rules about how the towels hang, which route to take to the airport, where the bowls go in the dishwasher. From the outside, it can look like having things handled. From the inside, they are holding their universe up with both hands. This episode is for the people who became excellent at managing someone else's universe before they could name what they were doing. Not to fix it. Not to leave anything. Just to recognize what has been running underneath, so that some bandwidth can quietly come back. Take with you: The snap is not feedback. It is weather.The flip-flop is not betrayal. It is depletion.Control is not power. It is panic with better posture.Your anxiety might be the weather inside someone else's universe. References: Shapiro, D. Neurotic Styles. New York: Basic Books, 1965. Shapiro, D. Autonomy and Rigid Character. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

    That Controlling You Felt? It May Not Have Been Aimed at You

  6. Sep 20

    The Pressure to Be the Right Kind of Human

    Ever notice how the wrong word or a thought can lose confidence before anyone even disagrees with it? In this episode, Dr. Lia Roth explores that strange second between having a thought and speaking it aloud. The split second where we stop asking, "Is it true?" and start wondering, "Where will this place me in the room?" Because recognition doesn't just influence what we say... it may influence what we are able to notice in the first place. Takeaways -How the need for belonging can shape not only what we say, but what we notice, what we feel, and how we understand ourselves -How to recognize the split second between an experience and its interpretation -What freedom is before it becomes expression References: Jessica Benjamin — The Bonds of Love — mutual recognition as the third D. W. Winnicott — transitional space / playground as the site of thought Erving Goffman — The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life BRT — Dr. Lia A. Roth — third space, belonging test, shame as threshold between comfort zone and the unknown

    The Pressure to Be the Right Kind of Human

  7. Sep 13

    When the People Who Know You Best Don't Actually Know You

    You are at a family dinner. Someone says the thing that begins with you have always been... and before the sentence finishes, your body is already taking the shape it was assigned twenty years ago. Between being known and being cast, there is one small half-second where your body decides whether to become the role again. This episode is about how to catch that moment before it catches you. Takeaways Spot the role assignment as it is happeningTell the difference between being known and being cast.Create space between the projection and your response.

    When the People Who Know You Best Don't Actually Know You

  8. Sep 6

    The Coffee Machine Was Never the Problem, Why We Meet Functions Instead of People

    Projection, Hyper-Attunement & Recognition A woman is yelling at a gas-station cashier about a broken coffee machine. He never touched it. He was just wearing the uniform of the place that owned it. In this episode, psychoanalyst Dr. Lía Roth uses one ordinary morning to unpack three things we constantly confuse: projection, hyper-attunement, and recognition — the difference between sensing another person and actually meeting them. If you've ever been read perfectly and still felt alone, or caught yourself assigning someone a role before they opened their mouth, this one names the room you're already standing in. Drawing on Jessica Benjamin's theory of recognition, Thomas Ogden's intersubjective third, and Binary Relationship Theory, Dr. Roth explores why projection is easier than recognition, why hyper-attunement looks like care but isn't, and why the people closest to us often get the most rigidly assigned roles of all. What you'll take away: Projection is the opposite of seeing. It turns another person into a screen for what's already inside you — and you can do it to someone you've never met.Hyper-attunement is not care. Reading the room flawlessly can mean you've become the thermostat, managing everyone's temperature instead of being a person in the room. Time is not recognition. Knowing someone for forty years is not evidence you've ever actually seen them.Autonomy requires recognition. References cited: Jessica Benjamin — The Bonds of Love; theory of mutual recognition and the subject-to-subject relationThomas Ogden — the analytic third / intersubjective fieldBinary Relationship Theory (BRT) — the relationship as a third element with its own pressure and logic. Get In or Get Out, But Don’t Stay in the Freakn’ Middle

    The Coffee Machine Was Never the Problem, Why We Meet Functions Instead of People
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About

Shrink Me? I’m Just Waking Up is the podcast for people who suspect their self-knowledge might be performing for an audience. Dr. Lia Roth — psychoanalyst, author, and professional detector of scripts people mistake for personality — takes apart the roles we slip into when the relational field stops feeling safe. Betrayal. Shame. Desire. Relational theory. Narrative identity. Meaning. Recognition. Autonomy. Attachment. No wellness platitudes. No soft-focus healing theater. Just short, sharp episodes about what the body registers before the mind writes the press release. Every Sunday, we clear the noise, spot the crack, and come back to what actually matters. Questioning your favorite self-description may have side effects. Fortunately, I'm not that kind of doctor, so this is not medical advice. It's worse. It might actually start to make sense. Topics: psychoanalysis, relational theory, betrayal, shame, attachment, narrative identity, meaning-making, autonomy, recognition vs. approval, psychology podcast, self-help critique, desire

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