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Hello, I am a marital therapist, communications trainer and author. I have thirty-five years helping couples and individuals make better relationships. I have written twenty-plus self-help books which include the international best-sellers ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ and ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ My books have been translated into twenty languages. I trained with RELATE the UK’s largest counselling charity. Perhaps it has been turning sixty but I have become interested in spiritual as well as psychological questions. Who am I? What are my values – as opposed to my parents, my teachers and the wider society? What makes my life meaningful? What do I believe about life, the universe and everything? Although my clients might come to me because of destructive arguments, falling out of love and infidelity, they are also interested in having more meaningful relationships and a more meaningful life. So what is the meaningful life? Why do we so easily lose our way and get lost in depression, anxiety, doubt, addictions and obsessions: the swamplands of the soul? One thing I know for sure is that there is not one answer. Each of us has to find out for ourselves what makes our life meaningful. But we can learn from each other, share our experiences of how to navigate the journey, how to endure and learn from the swamp, and finally how to find solid ground. I have decided to use my original training in radio and journalism to interview witnesses for what makes life meaningful. Each week, I invite someone who is a therapist, academic, self-help coach or who has an enlightening personal story to share their knowledge or experiences. I hope our discussions will help you discover what makes your life meaningful and find more purpose and contentment.
Episodes
22 hours ago
22 hours ago
Our “shadow” is made up of the unconscious parts of ourselves that we try to suppress or deny. Acknowledging and understanding shadow can be a powerful path to healing and authenticity.
If we pursue spiritual growth, we will certainly encounter shadow - both our own, and those of our teachers (whose secret desires around money, sex and power can come into play).
In this episode, psychotherapist and author Connie Zweig PhD talks with Andrew about her new book, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path. Connie shares some of the ways we can heal from bruising encounters with shadow on spiritual journeys, and how we can “recover from loss of faith and move from spiritual naivete to spiritual maturity”.
Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is a retired psychotherapist, writer, and Climate Reality Leader. Known as the Shadow Expert, she has written several books about shadow-work, including a bestseller about ageing as a spiritual practice, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for more than 50 years, and is a wife, stepmother and grandmother.
Subscriber Content This Week
If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:
⭐️Projection: how we see our shadow in others.
⭐️Three things Connie Zweig knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Read Connie Zweig’s new book Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path: The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening.
Take a look at Connie Zweig’s other books
Visit Connie Zweig’s website
You can email Connie Zweig about the questions raised in this episode at conniezweig@gmail.com
Follow Connie Zweig on Twitter @InnerWorkofAge and on Facebook at @Dr.ConnieZweig
Listen to Andrew’s previous interview with Connie Zweig on From Role to Soul: How to Become an Elder Rather than Just Old
Get Andrew’s advice on creating real change in your life and relationships in his book Wake Up and Change Your Life: How to Survive a Crisis and Be Stronger, Wiser and Happier
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Sep 25, 2023
Monday Sep 25, 2023
How do we fall in love? And do men and women experience this differently?
Psychiatrist Dr Paul Dobransky has combined science with the study of real-life case studies, and concludes that we do. Moreover, if we can understand something of how our brains move through the stages of love, we can make better romantic choices and create relationships that last.
Paul Dobransky, M.D., is a psychiatrist and author of The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love and The Power of Female Friendship. He works with AI and machine learning models and algorithms for analyzing romance, dating, relationships (human courtship), the development of character maturity and virtues, and the theory of personality.
Subscriber Content This Week
If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:
⭐️ Power imbalances in relationships: How they cause fights.
⭐️Three things Paul Dobransky knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Buy Dr Dobransky’s books: The Secret Psychology of How We Fall in Love and The Power of Female Friendship.
Read Dr Dobransky’s Substack articles.
Read Dr Dobransky’s articles for Psychology Today
You might also be interested in hearing Cheryl Fraser talking with Andrew about How to Stay in Love or with Mairi Macleod about Finding a Good Man in Midlife.
Join our Supporters Club on Patreon to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Sep 18, 2023
Monday Sep 18, 2023
When families enter family therapy, they usually point to one person as the “problem” - this individual is seen as too much, or too angry, or too sensitive.
Family systems theory, however, looks at the whole family ecosystem to identify how this “problem” is being created, and whether it is in fact a symptom rather than a cause.
This week Andrew talks with psychotherapist Elaine Carney Gibson about family systems theory, and how “it is the relationships we experience within our families that shape who we are, how we feel about ourselves, and how we attach and relate to others”.
Elaine Carney Gibson, LMFT, LPC, is a practicing psychotherapist of 50 years. She sees individuals, couples, and families, specialising in Relationship Therapy. She taught graduate courses in marriage and family therapy for many years and is the director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Training Institute of The Link Counseling Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
Subscriber Content This Week
If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:
⭐️Family Secrets: To tell or not to tell?
⭐️Three things Elaine Carney Gibson knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read Elaine Carney Gibson’s book Your Family Revealed .
Visit Elaine Carney Gibson’s website
You might also be interested in hearing Galit Atlas talking with Andrew about Buried Trauma: How the Past Can Unconsciously Trap You or with Julia Samuel MBE about How We Inherit Pain from Our Parents and Grandparents.
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Sep 11, 2023
Monday Sep 11, 2023
Anxiety can be as contagious as a yawn. People who are feeling more anxious often try to get others to take some of their anxiety from them, and people who are not feeling as anxious naturally resist taking on someone else’s anxiety.
In relationships, it’s often the case that one person takes on the role of the anxious person, whilst the other feels responsible for managing their partner’s anxiety. Combine this with damagingly rigid gender roles, and you have a recipe for disconnection.
This week Andrew welcomes Dr Avrum Weiss onto the podcast for a second time. Andrew and Avrum discuss “playing hot potato” with anxiety in relationships.
Dr Avrum Weiss is a US-based author and psychotherapist specialising in the internal lives of men. His writing and his work with couples help men and women understand each other more deeply and build a stronger connection.
Subscriber Content This Week
If you’re a subscriber to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Patreon), this week you’ll be hearing:
⭐️What is your relationship with change?
⭐️Three things Dr Weiss knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Buy Dr Avrum Weiss’ book Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships
Andrew and Avrum also discuss Avrum’s book Change Happens: When to Try Harder and When to Stop
Read Dr Avrum Weiss’ article in Psychology Today “Why Some Couples Play Hot Potato With Anxiety”
Find Dr Avrum Weiss’ other books via his website
Follow Dr Avrum Weiss on Facebook @AvrumWeissAuthor and on Twitter @avrum_weiss
Read Andrew’s books on relationships and self-development
Listen to Andrew and Dr Avrum Weiss’ previous conversation: Why Men Withdraw When Women Get Angry
Join our Supporters Club to access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50: https://www.patreon.com/andrewgmarshall
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Sep 04, 2023
Monday Sep 04, 2023
Are you allowing your life to be run by “ghosts” - empty narratives, expired beliefs, tired fears, people who should no longer hold sway over your choices?
“When the old stories and beliefs that once defined us have played out and grown exhausted,” writes Dr. James Hollis, “our task is to access our inner compass, the promptings of the psyche that help us find our way through the complex thickets of choice.”
In this episode world-renowned Jungian analyst Dr James Hollis explores with Andrew the ways in which you can hear and answer a “summons of the soul”, and find your own individual sense of life’s meaning.
Dr. James Hollis is a Washington D.C. based Jungian psychoanalyst and the author of nineteen books; the most recent is A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity
Dr Hollis was Executive Director of the Jung Educational Center in Houston, Texas, for many years and Executive Director of the Jung Society of Washington (JSW) until 2019. He also worked as a Senior Training Analyst for the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, as a Director of Training of the Philadelphia Jung Institute, and is Vice-President Emeritus of the Philemon Foundation.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️Relocating your centre of spiritual gravity.
⭐️Three things James Hollis knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read James Hollis’ new book A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity.
Join James Hollis’ September ‘23 poetry course with the Jung Society of Washington: Mosaic: A Gathering of Poems to Stir the Depths
Read Andrew’s review of James Hollis’ book Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places:
Read Andrew’s review of James Hollis’ book Living an Examined Life: Wisdom for the Second Half of the Journey.
Read Andrew’s review of James Hollis’ book Living Between Worlds: Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times:
Visit James Hollis’ website: https://jameshollis.net
You might also enjoy Andrew’s interviews with other Jungians, including Lisa Marchiano on Being a Mother, Connie Zweig on How to Become an Elder, Robert Hopcke on Synchronicity and Susan Schwartz on Fathers and Daughters.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Aug 28, 2023
Monday Aug 28, 2023
What can Korean culture teach us about being happier and more fulfilled? New York literary agent and author Barbara Zitwer has spent decades figuring this out, culminating in her book, The Korean Book of Happiness.
Barbara and Andrew discuss the ancient Korean philosophies of Han, Heung and Jeong (resilience, joy and the art of giving), and Barbara’s experiences staying in a Buddhist temple and meeting with nuns in the mountains.
They also touch on the exuberant joy of modern Korean culture (which many of us may have experienced via Squid Game, K-pop, the 10-Step skincare routine or Korean daytime dramas).
Barbara J. Zitwer is an international literary agent specialising in Korean literature. She discovered Man Booker prize winning author Hang Kang (The Vegetarian) and New York Times bestseller Kyung-sook Shin (Please Look After Mom) along with Jeong you-jeong (The Good Son) and Un Su Kim (The Plotters).She was awarded the 2016 International Literary Agent of the Year Award by the British Publishing Association.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️How to feed your soul (Korean style).
⭐️Three things Barbara Zitwer knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read Barbara Zitwer’s new book The Korean Book of Happiness
Watch this KBS World Radio interview with Barbara Zitwer about her work promoting Korean literature and culture.
Follow Barbara Zitwer on Facebook @barbara.zitwer, on Instagram @barbarajzitwer and on Twitter/X @BZitwer
You might also enjoy our episodes on How to be Happier with Richard Nicholls; or A Deeper Connection With Everything Through Haiku with Clark Strand.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Monday Aug 21, 2023
Psychologist and author Renee Mill believes that practical, solutions-focused approaches to anxiety can be as important as deep psychotherapeutic work.
Renee’s career has combined both approaches, and today she helps many of her clients manage anxiety with practical tools designed to “rewire” patterns in the brain that may date back to infancy.
In this episode Renee and Andrew discuss some of these tools, and how they can help you to recognise, analyse and address automatic thoughts and behaviours. They share insights on how anxiety relates to our emotions, relationships and family history.
Renee Mill, who is based in Sydney, is one of Australia’s foremost clinical psychologists. Her books include Anxiety Free, Drug Free and Parenting Without Anger.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️Parenting myths that make you anxious.
⭐️Three things Renee Mill knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read Renee Mills’ books: Anxiety Free, Drug Free; Parenting Without Anger; No Sweat Parenting; Anxiety Management Workbook ; and The Anxiety Management Manual for Therapists.
Visit Renee Mill's website.
Read Renee Mill's blog
Follow Renee Mill on Facebook and YouTube @AnxietySolutionsCBT, and on Instagram @anxiety_solutionscbt
You might also be interested in our other episodes on anxiety, including: Make Anxiety Your Friend with Kathleen Smith, How to Sit With Anxiety with Anna Colton, Friedemann Schaub on How to Get Out of Survival Mode, No More Overthinking with Richard Paterson and The Neuroscientist’s Guide to Anxiety with Wendy Suzuki.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Aug 14, 2023
Monday Aug 14, 2023
“Stop crying now”, “cheer up”, “what a lovely smile” - these are the kinds of messages most of us hear from infancy. Karla McLaren’s work is all about undoing this learning, and valuing ALL of our emotions. Even though the way you work with emotions can have positive or negative outcomes, the emotions themselves are not good or bad.
In fact, anger, shame or sadness are the bearers of important messages. And according to Karla, they also bring with them the skills and energy you’ll need to cope in each situation.
Karla McLaren, M.Ed. is an award-winning author, educator, workplace consultant, and social science researcher. Her work revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens startling new pathways into self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy. She is the founder and CEO of Emotion Dynamics Inc.
She is also the author of many books, including The Language of Emotions, The Power of Emotions at Work, and Embracing Anxiety, and she is the developer of the online learning site EmpathyAcademy.org. She is online at karlamclaren.com.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️ Conscious Complaining
⭐️Three things Karla McLaren knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read Karla McLaren’s new book The Language of Emotions
Read Karla McLaren’s other books
Visit Karla McLaren’s website
Find out about upcoming courses at the online learning site developed by Karla McLaren, Empathy Academy
Follow Karla McLaren @KarlaMcLarenAuthor on Facebook, @karlamclaren.m.ed on Instagram, @EmotionDynamics on YouTube and on LinkedIn.
You might also be interested in our other episodes, including: Healing Your Lost Inner Child with Robert Jackman, or What Do You Really Want? With Charlotte Fox Weber.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Aug 07, 2023
Monday Aug 07, 2023
Filmmaker and Dad Saves America host John Papola is on a mission to celebrate the inspirational force of fatherhood.
Rather than dwelling on the discourse around “toxic masculinity”, John’s work celebrates “the heroic role we play as men” by being present and joyfully involved in children’s lives. Rather than being a burden or an obstacle to self-fulfilment, John sees raising children as exciting and empowering.
John discusses his own fatherhood journey. He describes how the birth of his son made him feel liberated from the pressures of a creative career, and enabled him to take risks he would not otherwise have considered.
John Papola is the CEO and Co-Founder of the nonprofit aspirational content studio Emergent Order Foundation and the host of their hit celeb interview series Dad Saves America. John’s mission through his foundation is to celebrate fatherhood and promote the positive representation of fathers and father figures in popular culture.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️How stories help us understand ourselves and the world.
⭐️Three things John Papola knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Visit the website of the Emergent Order Foundation, John Papola’s non-profit aspirational content studio.
Watch John Papola’s Dad Saves America series on YouTube.
Watch John Papola’s documentary about Oscar and Bafta winning deaf actor Troy Kotsur and his relationship with his father.
Follow John Papola on Twitter @JohnPapola.
You might also be interested in other episodes on fatherhood: Men, Fathers and Meaning with Joe Horton; Becoming a Father with Jack Underwood; Daughters and Fathers with Susan Schwartz PhD; and Jed Diamond PhD on Your Personal Creation Story.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall
Monday Jul 31, 2023
Monday Jul 31, 2023
How can we find the joy, connection, healing and sense of the miraculous that so many of us crave? For poet and spiritual teacher Clark Strand, the answer lies in writing Haiku.
The ancient Japanese art of Haiku is the only form of poetry in all of world literature that makes nature into a spiritual path. Its message is simple: Haiku teaches us to return to nature by following the seasons—seventeen syllables at a time. By finding a connection to nature in this way, we can find resilience and hope amidst the world’s chaos.
In this episode, Andrew and Clark discuss Clark’s spiritual journey; how to begin a Haiku practice if you’ve never written a poem in your life; and Andrew shares his own experiences of writing a Haiku every day for a year.
Clark Strand has been writing poetry for fifty years and teaching haiku for thirty. He is a former senior editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and has been Vice President of the Haiku Society of America. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog. He is the co-founder of Way of the Rose, a growing nonsectarian rosary fellowship open to people of any spiritual background. His latest book is an updated version of his classic book of Haiku, Seeds from a Birch Tree, and he is also the author of Waking Up to the Dark, Waking the Buddha, Meditation Without Gurus and How to Believe in God.
If You’re Looking for More….
You can subscribe to The Meaningful Life (via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts) and hear a bonus mini-episode every week. Or you can join our Supporters Club on Patreon to also access exclusive behind-the-scenes content, fan requests and the chance to ask Andrew your own questions. Membership starts at just £4.50.
This week supporters will hear:
⭐️How your paleo brain wants to sleep.
⭐️Three things Clark Strand knows to be true.
⭐️AND subscribers also access all of our previous bonus content - a rich trove of insight on love, life and meaning created by Andrew and his interviewees.
Follow Up
Read Andrew’s new Substack newsletter The Meaningful Life, and join the community there.
Read Clark Strand’s updated classic, Seeds from a Birch Tree
Read Clark Strand’s other books Waking Up to the Dark, Waking the Buddha, Meditation Without Gurus and How to Believe in God.
Study Haiku with Clark Strand.
Read the book by William Elliott mentioned in this episode, Tying Rocks to Clouds: Meetings and Conversations with Wise and Spiritual People
Follow Clark Strand on Instagram and Twitter @clarkstrand
You might also be interested in our other episodes: John McCullough on Seven Ways Poetry Could Make Your Life Richer, Deeper & More Meaningful; and Henry Emmons on The Road to Calm and Joy.
Andrew offers regular advice on love, marriage and finding meaning in your life via his social channels. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube @andrewgmarshall