It’s Not Therapy!

Many of us have been in a relationship with someone who is wrong for us. This is especially true of people who are 'givers' that find themselves attracted to 'takers'...sometimes repeatedly. Ross Rosenberg is an author and expert on codependency and trauma - such an expert that he believes the term 'codependency' is a misnomer and has instead coined the term Self-Love Deficit Disorder. What is that? Listen as he and Liana discuss SLDD and pathological narcissism, and what you can do to stop falling for people who keep hurting you.

Stigma involves applying negative stereotypes to people who are ill, have certain physical characteristics or other perceived 'deficiencies,' which leads to discrimination and exclusion, sometimes with harrowing results.  Typically, these stigma are inflicted by the judgment of others - but some are also self-inflicted. Liana shares steps people can take to free themselves from the pain of their internalized stigma. 

For most people, being diagnosed with stage four colon cancer represents the end of their life's journey, but for Tim McDonald it was the beginning of a new path. Tim, a stage four colorectal cancer survivor and liver transplant recipient, talks to Liana about how he turned his struggle with his health crises into a renewed purpose as a patient advocate, speaker, host of the Advocacy at Work podcast and author of the book From Patient to Advocate: Turning Survivorship into Impact. Tim's tale is inspiring and important listening for people experiencing life-threatening illnesses and those who love and support them. 

Where's the line between "bad people" and "good people who do bad things"? Using characters from the Amazon Prime series The Boys as examples, Liana examines how intent, mental health, and behaviour intersect to define true "bad person" territory.

No, this episode isn't about politics, but the recent social media tirade from US President Trump threatening to militarily destroy Iran and its people, expressed in vulgar language, is a prime example of how behaviour once considered unfit for public display has now become normalized. Not only normalized, but held up as examples of strength, honesty and courage. Liana takes apart this troubling trend, influences which motivate it, illnesses which may contribute to it, and how we push back against it - without ourselves exhibiting the same behaviour.

"Disabled" works just fine for Todd Vaarwerk: Chief Policy Officer for West New York Independent Living, he's more interested in results. Todd uses a wheelchair due to the effects of cerebral palsy, so nobody is better at separating efforts which are useful support for disabled people from the 'well-meaning but useless' or counter-productive steps taken. And he does it with a rich sense of humour in conversation with Liana, who shares her own stories of 'accommodation' that really wasn't.

Duty of Care means ensuring that you take reasonable steps to provide a safe environment for others. It's a simple definition for a complex practice that takes on many different forms in different situations. Liana shares personal stories to reveal how that care can be applied - and misapplied -in ways that can make a situation less safe and supportive than you intend. Ultimately, a reasonable duty of care means finding a balance between support and the respect of an individual’s autonomy.

The unfortunate occurrence at the BAFTA Awards, where an attendee who has Tourette's Syndrome shouted racial epithets at two Black award presenters (and the way BAFTA chose to handle that), has given prominence to the question of 'reasonable accommodation' of people with disabilities. Liana speaks with LJ, a brilliant scientist whose disability has deterred potential employers, about what he sees as reasonable accommodation and, importantly, how some well-meaning accommodations actually make things more difficult.

Most of us try to be friendly, kind, supportive people. Yet all those things could be true and you still, inadvertently, say something that makes you look like a a*hole, and you don't even know why! Liana takes us through a journey of ways you may unintentionally be acting like an a*hole.

As a member of the Girls Gone Wild tour of the late 1990s Courtney Kocak had a front-row seat to the "good, clean fun" which that media was marketed as. Courtney also felt the impact of sexualized media, how it affected her self-image and sense of healthy femininity. Courtney, author of the forthcoming autobiography Girl Gone Wild, shares with Liana her experiences in the belly of the beast and how she turned her rocky journey into a chronicle that can help other women shed the mental conditioning of sexualized messaging. Also, has "prestige cinema" become indistinguishable from pornography?