If you didn’t peak in high school, college, your 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s, this episode is for you!
Find out why "mid-life" is such a fork in the road, and how to decide which way to go. Dana offers three useful strategies to approach this sometimes-complex time of life, derived from her extensive experience as a clinician. Also, get surprising (and happy!) news about what often happens to relationships that may have been "stuck" for decades as we hit these new thresholds of development.
Hey, listeners! Do not fret. We are taking a summer break for ourselves! (Actually, we’re only taking a break from The Couch, but we’re using some extra time this summer for Dana to get her book proposal out there and for me to become even funnier!) Stay tuned for our return in late summer/early autumn when we’ll be back with more wisdom, wit, and (Oh, no, what else starts with “W” that we’ll actually be bringing you???!!!) WEEKLY episodes! xo, Dana & Amy
If you didn’t peak in high school, college, your 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s, this episode is for you!
Find out why "mid-life" is such a fork in the road, and how to decide which way to go. Dana offers three useful strategies to approach this sometimes-complex time of life, derived from her extensive experience as a clinician. Also, get surprising (and happy!) news about what often happens to relationships that may have been "stuck" for decades as we hit these new thresholds of development.
For maybe the first time in history, there are currently four generations sharing the workplace. No matter what generation you belong to, the other ones can be so ANNOYING!
Come sit with Dana and Amy as we crack the code of how to get along with EVERY generation and how to understand their weird behaviors! You’ll get some hints about why we’re practically hard-wired to find “those young whippersnappers” annoying and why they’re just as programmed to find us clueless.
At the end of the episode, whether you’re a Gen X’er or a millennial, Gen Z or a Boomer, we hope you’ll look at your next inter-generational irritation in a new and more productive light!
Most everyone has felt like a fraud at one point or another. Amy was surprised to learn that even confident-seeming white guys can fall prey to impostor syndrome! Join the 2 Moms on the Couch as we tell you how to get over your Impostor Syndrome—except for those rare times that it's normal and appropriate to feel out of your depth!
It’s easy to feel like a victim of the pressure to pressure your kids to achieve more, do more, and do it all better. Our intentions are great; it’s the system that’s become so messed up and hyper-competitive! Join Dana and Amy on the couch as Dana shares strategies she’s developed over years of helping families out of this achievement anxiety spiral.
Join us on the couch as we process some BIG disappointments, the result of some big expectations.
Dana and Amy understand that, in the scale of problems and disappointments, the ones they discuss are good ones to have, considering what's possible. In their exploration of the underlying emotion of disappointment—and strategies for working through it—they hope you can find something that resonates for you and helps you process whatever you have going on, even if you weren't expecting to get a necklace when you woke up today!
In this episode, we explore the tension between perfection and “good enough,” and speculate on why the Seven Deadly Sins make such a great selling point for a life of moderation!
You’ll also find out how much $$ it would cost to make Amy’s teeth cosmetically perfect (pictured in their current state with no image brightening, if you click below on “Read More”). Listen to the latest episode to find out what’s “wrong” with Amy’s teeth in the first place.
This one hit close to home for Dana and Amy! Join us on the couch as we learn what's really going on when you put off that one thing—or many things!
Dana helps us understand why procrastination is a perfectly normal and natural self-protective mechanism—and then, how to move past it to get on with our lives.
In this episode, find out why talking about lust gets weird once you’re a mom (it’s not fair!) and why, to some, talking too much about what turns you on might turn you off.
If your fires have cooled, and you’re not cool with that, get expert advice from Dana about how to re-stoke them. And some idiotic advice from Amy about the notes you should pass to your partner.
Envy! Oh, the toxicity! But when Dana and Amy sit down on the couch to talk about envy and their shame about it, they find some surprises.
Listen to discover how envy can be used for good!
Dana offers incredibly helpful advice about how to impart your values around money, material goods, community, and honoring special moments. And Amy offers her own services at a deep discount.
In our series on the Seven Deadly Sins as vehicles to explore big emotions, it’s Greed time. We decided to use our kids' impending religious rites of passage into adulthood (B'nai Mitzvot) as the context for the conversation. This life-cycle event is full of family decision-making: how many people to invite, what kind of party shall we have, and, if we're being honest with ourselves, who are we trying to impress.
Yes, we are GenX women, brought up with Jane Fonda's thigh gap and some funky ideas about good foods and bad. And food in general. And ourselves in general. In this episode, we share a LOT about where this got us.
Dana has helpful strategies to help us move past some of our food baggage, but we also both dish on our hang-ups and habits that are so ingrained, we don't even notice them most of the time.
As part of our series on the Seven Deadly Sins, we cover Anger (often referred to in sin lit as "Wrath"). This sin cut to the front of the line when Dana had an anger incident brought about in part by the hell arcade that is Dave & Buster's. We learn that Dana's anger flares when someone tangles with her kids; Amy's is activated when someone eats her food. Please don't judge Amy too harshly for her skewed priorities.
Dana offers helpful insights about the positive value of anger and how to express it in a way that it doesn't overwhelm the recipient. We also explore the relationship between anger and depression that sometimes exists, which was something Amy learned this week!
For our concluding section of recommendations, "No, You HAVE To!", Amy offers tips for something money can't buy, and Dana recommends something money CAN buy, because sometimes, you HAVE to.
It’s one thing to be confident. It’s another thing to be so prideful that you think rules don’t apply to you. The Seven-Deadly-Sin-Makers believed Pride was sin numero uno from which all others arose. This week, as we look at the college admissions cheating scandal that ensnared Felicity Huffman (noooooo!) in its web, among many others, we see why pride/ hubris/ narcissism/ vanity and other ego-related sins can lead to bad outcomes—and how to check yourself before you wreck yourself.
This episode was inspired by Michelle Obama speaking truth to “Lean In.” We’re not going to show you how to stop juggling too many balls in the air. We just want to help you identify the right balls for YOU. Find out when judging other parents can actually be productive. (C’mon, you already know when it isn’t!)
Both Dana and Amy admit that they always want others to think that they’re smart. But what is “smart?” Dana and Amy discuss their own ideas about whether raw brain-power and measurable intelligence are over-valued and what’s the purpose of intelligence anyway.
In NYC, where we live, it’s not unusual for people to start stories at brunch, “My therapist said…,” but we realize not everyone is comfortable talking about or even asking about therapy.
Tune in to hear what therapy can and can’t do, when to seek help, what to look for, and how a therapist differs from a paid friend! Believe it or not, we’ll have a few laughs, too.
