Beyond Well with Sheila Hamilton - Sheila Hamilton

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Ep. 24-Drew Holguin, Open School: Dealing in Hope Jul 08, 2019

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Drew Holguin was born in a predominantly black neighborhood to mixed-race family. "I was too white in my neighborhood, but not white enough at the white dominant schools I attended. Regardless of where I was, I wasn't accepted." Holguin began delivering drugs as a way of getting attention and friends. Holguin is one of 3.45 million kids in this country who are suspended or expelled from public school, with few options for what comes next. Open School is an innovative education program for students like Drew, who needed something different than a traditional school. Open School knows which kids are most likely to drop out. Educators interested in the whole person find those students and surround them with what they need to graduate and get ahead; rigorous academics, teachers who believe in them, and a whole lot of relentless love and support. In this conversation, Drew talks about how emotional skill-building helped him create a healthy relationship, earn his Master's degree in Social Work, and return as a program manager in the counseling department at Open School. www.openschoolnw.org

Ep. 23-Liz Scott, Emotional and Narcissistic Abuse Jul 01, 2019

Show notes

Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD is a condition characterized by an overwhelming need for attention and admiration, a heightened sense of self-importance, and a lack of empathy toward others. It is difficult enough to encounter a partner or business associate with NPD, but Liz Scott grew up with narcissists as parents. Like an archaeological dig, Liz Scott’s memoir This Never Happened goes in search of the answers to the mysteries of her family. In her relentless quest to uncover the truth, she mines photographs and letters, leaving no one, including herself, unexamined. In the end, Liz's struggle clears decades of familial pain to make room for compassion.

Ep.22-Storm Large, Follow the Yes Jun 24, 2019

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Storm Large: musician, actor, playwright, author, awesome. She shot to national prominence in 2006 as a finalist on the CBS show Rock Star: Supernova, where despite having been eliminated in the week before the finale, Storm built a fan base that follows her around the world to this day. Storm joins us to talk about growing up with a severely mentally disturbed mother and the message she received from her mother's doctor, "Oh yeah, you will absolutely end up like your Mother. It's hereditary." But, this conversation is not about Storm's efforts to outrun a diagnosis, it's an artist's journey back to herself. Storm's autobiographical musical memoir, Crazy Enough, played to packed houses in 2009 during its unprecedented 21-week sold-out run in Portland. She's back for the ten-year reunion stronger, wiser, and larger in spirit than ever before. (Don't miss the after the show conversation about cancel culture and what really goes on in therapy.)

Ep.21-Skye Fitgerald, Avoiding Compassion Fatigue Jun 17, 2019

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Skye Fitzgerald is an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker whose work on issues of social justice takes him to the epicenters of suffering. We talk with Skye about how he maintains his sense of self while covering brutally difficult topics. Skye's most recent film, Lifeboat, forced this choice: "When you see someone drowning after falling or being pushed from a boat filled with refugees, do you get the shot or do you pull someone to safety? I put down the camera and grabbed people from the water. It was the decision I made so that I could live with myself."

Ep.20-Nyna Giles, Psychological Suffering Doesn't Discriminate Jun 09, 2019

Show notes

Today’s show with Nyna Giles exposes the good and bad news about psychological suffering. Let’s start with the bad news first… Psychological suffering doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are, how wealthy your friends are, how beautiful you are, or what circles you run it. Psychological suffering can and will affect us all. Of course, privileges give certain people access to resources that may help those people cope more effectively with the suffering life deals them, but the suffering will happen all the same. Nyna’s mother had all the trappings of the “perfect” life: she transcended her humble beginnings to become one of the “beautiful people,” hobnobbing with the rich and famous, including Grace Kelly, who she counted as her closest friend. And yet, psychological suffering, this time in the form of psychosis, came crashing down on that beautiful picture. As her mother’s world shrank, Nyna did what any child would do; she tried her very best to “save” her mom. But, of course, even our best attempts to save our loved ones often fail. But here’s the good news… Being able to live a life of meaning and purpose also does not discriminate. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we live, what forms of suffering life has given us, what we have done or what has been done to us, living whatever life we have been given in a way that is personally meaningful and has integrity for us is possible for every one of us. To find more information, links and After The Show Notes, please subscribe.

Ep.19 -Robyn Cruze, Making Peace With Your Plate Jun 03, 2019

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Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. Without proper treatment, binge-eating disorder and bulimia can also bring misery and death. Robyn Cruz struggled with food throughout much of her adolescent and adult life, most notably, an eating disorder that crippled her spirit. Now, Robyn is traveling the country with her husband and two daughters, determined to raise awareness about the deadly nature of eating disorders and the long journey she traveled to make peace with her body, her food, and herself. A well-known published author, public speaker and coach, Robyn Cruze, MA, is Eating Recovery Center’s National Recovery Advocate. Robyn participates in national media events and conferences exclusively for Eating Recovery Center and its Partner Programs. She also serves as a crucial source of support and knowledge to alumni, families and professionals on behalf of Eating Recovery Center and the Eating Recovery Center Foundation.

Ep.18-Sophia Shalmiyev, The Making of An American Feminist May 26, 2019

Show notes

Sophia Shalmiyev was eleven when she immigrated to New York City from Leningrad, motherless, displaced, and terrified. Shalmiyev is clear-eyed and unsentimental about the trauma and poverty she endured as a child and how it shaped the woman she is today as a feminist, artist, and mother. Shalmiyev is fiery and unapologetic in her views of what it takes to raise a feminist son. Her opinion of her newly adopted country is equally as compelling. "I love America," she says, "It's broken, like me." Shalmiyev is the author of Mother Winter, an MFA graduate of Portland State University, and a visual artist. She lives with her two children in Portland, Oregon.

Ep.17-Anna Debenham, You are Not Broken May 19, 2019

Show notes

Anna Debenham is the founder of the Insight Alliance, an organization that works with men and women in prison and in the community sharing two simple, but profoundly life-changing ideas: We have everything we need inside ourselves to lead a good life Our experience of life is being created moment to moment from the insight out by our thoughts. At the heart of much of our suffering is our experience of life as something that is happening to us, rather than moving through us. As Anna puts it “We are feeling our thinking, not feeling the world around us.” Our minds create a virtual reality of the world that is so convincing that we usually can’t tell the difference between the world and the world as experienced through our thoughts. And it’s that world as experienced through thoughts that we become beholden to and, in that, lose the freedom to choose our path.

Ep. 16- Laurel Braitman/Learning Empathy Through Writing May 13, 2019

Show notes

For the last few years, Laurel Braitman, has been teaching writing and communications skills to medical students and doctors at Stanford University, helping healthcare professionals connect more meaningfully with their patients, their peers, and themselves. Nearly 30% of American medical students are depressed and one in ten have thoughts about suicide. Practicing physicians are even worse off with some of the highest suicide rates in the nation. It's how we learn to communicate with one another that matters most. The most important thing we can do in the time we have here is connect with other people and ideally, make them feel less alone. Laurel also studies we can learn from the emotional lives of non-human animals, including her New York Times bestselling book, Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves helped us see how we can learn a lot from our non-human animal counterparts.

EP.15-Singer-Songwriter Nate Botsford: Music as Therapy May 06, 2019

Show notes

Nate Botsford says he grew up with mental illness in his home, unable to comprehend until much later who much it shaped who he is as a singer/songwriter. Nate began writing music at the age of thirteen and recognized how much of his songwriting was influenced by the dysfunction of growing up in a household where depression, sadness, and malaise was part of the norm. Today, Nate writes directly to the source of the negative voices he hears in his head. Listen in to the extraordinary sound and artistry of Nate Botsford.

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