Break Down. Wake Up.
Meg Mateer
All episodes
Best episodes
Seasons
Top 10 Break Down. Wake Up. Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Break Down. Wake Up. episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Break Down. Wake Up. for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Break Down. Wake Up. episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
015 - Exploring alternate realities to get healing with Oryx Cohen
Break Down. Wake Up.
09/15/20 • 70 min
How experiencing extreme states of consciousness helped a non-profit chief operating officer process childhood challenges, improve his marriage and shift his approach to leadership
Oryx Cohen was a leader in an organization training people to better support those in an emotional crisis. He knew about the value of these periods because he experienced several extreme states of consciousness throughout his life.
So when he entered an altered state of consciousness suddenly at the end of leading a large conference, he saw this as an opportunity to wake up. In the midst of psychological space travel, he processed the devastating grief of his parents divorce and realized that his wife was indeed his soulmate.
In this episode, we explore the value that extreme states of consciousness have in processing unresolved trauma, how we can ground ourselves when we are feeling disconnected through physical touch and present attention, and how feeling connected to people and things influence our care and investment in them.
You can find out more about Oryx or his documentary Healing Voices by visiting https://power2u.org/. If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
011 - Discovering safety and wisdom within the body with Elisabeth Kristof
Break Down. Wake Up.
08/18/20 • 70 min
How simultaneously losing both her business and the health of her partner showed an ambitious wellness entrepreneur that her stability started with herself.
Elisabeth Kristof had poured herself into her business for years until she lost it. It was then when she realized that she had also lost herself in the process of vigorously building the company, losing both identity and her health. But it was in the search for solutions to her partner's unexpected diagnosis of cancer where she found a new perspective on her approach to business and life - from seeking safety and value outside of herself to getting back to basics and listening to her body.
In this episode, we explore how the tendency to attach our personal value to our businesses or professions can push us to overwork ourselves, the body's incredible creative ways to bring itself back into a state of balance and safety, and how trauma works itself both through the body and through our relationships.
You can find out more about Elisabeth by visiting https://brainbased-wellness.com or connecting with her on Instagram @elkristof. If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
018 - Giving voice to gender inequity with Helene Geijtenbeek
Break Down. Wake Up.
10/06/20 • 55 min
How an educational trip on diversity and inclusion helped a grants consulting partner realize her own complex experiences with gender inequity as a female corporate leader and inspired her to create change in her organization and beyond
Helene Geijtenbeek had a successful 20 year career in corporate grants consulting when she attended an educational trip to Silicon Valley to learn about Inclusion and Diversity and learn how the big tech companies address it.
During this trip, she had a wake up moment - she not only realized that her own fears and insecurities were also shared by many of the top tech female leaders, but she learned about gender inequity in the workplace. It was then that she realized that throughout her career she had several experiences where her strong female leadership style was challenged simply because of her gender.
When she had this realization, she began making a difference both within her organization by serving as a representative standing for diversity and inclusion and as the lead organizer at TEDxAmsterdamWomen.
In this episode, we explore the importance of involving both men and women to bring awareness and shift the gendered narrative that shapes the picture of a leader, the power that personal story has on helping organizations support diversity and inclusion, and how the gendered expectation of what it means to be a "good mother" still today impacts the decision for women to pursue leadership roles.
You can find out more about Helene by visiting https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenegeijtenbeek/. If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
027 - Using different modes to manage uncertainty with Sam Swidzinski
Break Down. Wake Up.
12/07/20 • 50 min
How shifting his emotional states helped a psychology researcher survive challenging life events that were out of his control.
What happens when your own emotions feel overwhelming in a situation you cannot control? And what about if you've learned through your environment that strong emotions are not welcome?
In this story, Sam Swidzinski, a researcher focused on innovative therapeutic methods to support mental health, shares a unique experience of how shifting into different emotional modes has helped him manage challenging uncertain life events.
For example, when it seemed like his life was up in the air as a teenager, having lost a number of friends and his sister diagnosed with a terminal illness, Sam needed a way to have some control in this challenging and incredibly uncertain environment.
So he switched into a mode he calls "Samuel" a calm, monk-like, stoic type, to manage his life and his feelings. He has a more emotional mode, driven by passion and justice called "Adrian" and a more childlike, playful mode called "Sammy".
Sam began to learn that each of these modes actually can help him in different situations. He now taps into these different modes consciously. For example, when he needs to get things done, do research or when writing his book, he taps into stoic "Samuel"; when working on passion projects, he taps into "Adrian" whose emotion fuels his energy for social impact work; and when connecting with friends he taps into playful "Sammy".
In this episode, we explore how different emotional states can be helpful in different situations, the influence that an environment unaccepting of strong emotions can have on our own tendency to shove down our pain, and the various ways we all respond to life tragedies that we cannot control.
You can find out more about Sam by visiting his LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-swidzinski-078a441b4/. You can also check out his book, "Winning the War with Bipolar" here.
If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
If you would like to help us out, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or share your favorite episode on social media to make sure that these stories reach the people waiting to hear them.
Check out and apply for our upcoming program designed to help you transform your distress into wisdom for personal growth and social impact: www.breakdownwakeup.com/programs
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
030 - Speaking outside of the checkboxes with Nora Bateson
Break Down. Wake Up.
12/29/20 • 70 min
How involuntary family separation during her international migration awakened a complexity systems thinker to the illusion of safety in institutions and an even deeper need for people to listen to and understand context
Nora Bateson has been working in complexity systems thinking for almost her entire career - focused on helping people and organizations contextualize complexity in order to solve challenging problems.
So when she experienced the negative limitations of institutions that focused solely on procedure and stripped context from a decision making process, she knew she had to tell her story. In this episode she speaks up, not just for her family, but also for so many immigrant families whose experiences are absent from the polarized public dialogue that no doubt has significant influence over politics, policy and procedure.
After moving to Sweden for love, Nora found herself and her family in an incredibly tragic and frustrating institutional process that denied her daughter entry into the country where her family resided because of her age, a number on a checkbox on the form to enter the country.
As Nora mentions, this conversation is about much more than just her own experience. It's about identity politics, about who has the right to call a place "home", about empathy that stretches across socio-economic and national identity categories, about losing faith in a system that you thought was designed to support you, about the deep sadness of not being able to have the context of your situation heard in the midst of a life altering decision,
In this episode, we explore the negative impact of objectivity and taking things out of context on polarization and reductionist thinking, our deep need to be seen not just as one identity or category but in our whole complex selves, and the importance of not only understanding the broader narratives surrounding an experience but the history of those narratives in shaping the stories we collectively create about that experience.
You can find out more about Nora and her work by visiting www.batesoninstitute.org.
If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
Please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or sharing your favorite episode on social media to make sure that these stories reach the people waiting to hear them.
Check out and apply for our upcoming program designed to help you transform your distress into wisdom for personal growth and social impact: www.breakdownwakeup.com/programs
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
023 - Giving life to DEI & workplace wellbeing with Vivian Acquah
Break Down. Wake Up.
11/10/20 • 56 min
How her own pregnancy and postpartum depression sounded the alarm for Vivian Acquah about workplace discrimination and the need for deep listening in inclusion efforts
Vivian Acquah was a successful professional working in finance and technology. But when she got pregnant, she started to sense something off about the reactions she was getting. Prior to her pregnancy, she was one of the top employees at her company and afterwards, she felt devalued, experiencing a heightened level of comments and jokes insinuating things about her identity as a mother and a black woman.
When she tried to speak up and share her sadness, frustration and embarrassment at these experiences, her intelligent senses were belittled, being told that what she was upset about was simply a joke, or was not meant to be negative. She learned quickly to bottle her feelings inside.
So when she experienced post-partum depression after giving birth, she could no longer ignore the signs: she had to move on from a discriminatory, unsupportive work environment. And when she did, she dedicated herself to humanizing the workplace so that her son and the next generation could enter the workforce feeling safe, supported and included.
In this interview we discuss the many complex factors that can lead to experiencing prolonged distress, how the buildup of continuous smaller disruptive events can be just as painful (and sometimes more) than one big tragedy, and the importance of explicitly creating safe spaces that encourage people to share their distress with each other and with the organization so that it can learn and evolve from the wisdom within these experiences.
"Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community." - Bell Hooks
You can find out more about and connect with Vivian here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivianacquah/ and more about her business, here: https://vivalavive.com/.
If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own distress, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
If you are interested in learning more about the wisdom within your own distress when it arises and using that wisdom as fuel for new projects, deeper relationships, and maverick activism, check out our latest group program: Breaking down is wisdom waking up (www.breakdownwakeup.com/programs).
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
025 - Control vs. discovery based approaches to transformation - solo episode!
Break Down. Wake Up.
11/24/20 • 25 min
How we can use the experiences we have been trying to control to uncover the answers we have long been searching for - an unique approach to create sustainable change in our personal & professional lives, our organizations and our world.
We've spent too long framing our experiences from a narrative of control.
We've been taught to manage, contain, push down, jump over, fight, things like our physical pain, our vices, challenging emotions, conflicts, and marginalized stories.
And it's not surprising that we have digested this way of operating.
After all, a number of religions and other community doctrines disperse the idea that that, deep down inside, if left to our own devices, we would behave and feel in ways that are ultimately not good for us.
But by trying to control our experiences, we suppress them. This leads inevitably to more tension, pain, challenging emotions, conflict, and marginalized stories. Even worse, it silences the insights coming from these alarm signals.
It's time for us to take a different approach.
In this episode, I discuss how the control approach actually plays out in our attempt to create sustainable change, and introduce a alternative, discovery based frame that unlocks deeper understanding and effects lasting transformation.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
013 - Slowing busyness to find answers in his inner unrest with Mark Harris
Break Down. Wake Up.
08/31/20 • 77 min
How finally paying attention to his physical and emotional pain helped a senior finance director reconnect with himself and support key relationships in work and life.
On the outside, Mark Harris had it all: he was a talented athlete, was an incredible student and had a successful career, wonderful girlfriend, and supportive family. He was used to keeping calm and performing in the most challenging situations, taking care of the people around him and carrying the burden of stress.
But when his relationships were disrupted, Mark began to experience a variety of things including panic attacks, memory loss, anxiety, depression and migraines. He discovered that he was staying busy with a crazy work schedule and social life to avoid those difficult feelings and realized that avoiding his own pain did not make it go away but instead increased it, manifesting in a variety of ways. When he finally paid attention to this struggle, he began to heal himself and be more deeply connected to his relationships.
In this episode, we explore the tendency to take care of others to avoid our own vulnerabilities, the role that high performance plays in aiding this avoidance, and how external success does not indicate inner invulnerability.
You can find out more about Mark by visiting https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-harris-cfa-82a18a10/. If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
014 - Discovering her inner compass through loss with Lene Rachel Andersen
Break Down. Wake Up.
09/08/20 • 71 min
How the unexpected death of her mother at a young age helped a futurist thinker and philosopher finally pursue her professional dreams and realize her potential.
Lene Rachel Andersen almost always felt like she did not fit in. She was brilliant and had a lot to offer, but growing up she felt really different from the other kids. She spent years trying to have the "normal package" - a normal job, a normal family, a normal house. She was working as a secretary after finishing her business degree, on the path to normalcy, when her mom suddenly fell ill. In the 10 months that she was caring for her mother in a coma, Lene had a wake up call. She came so close to the impermanence of life and she realized it was time for her to live up to her potential. Within one year of her mother's passing, she began her dream of writing comedy and studying theology. She now writes and speaks about some of our biggest global challenges and how we can shift the foundation of education and development to further our societies.
In this episode, we explore the importance of balancing connection to ourselves with connection to our social groups with collective norms and values, the importance of engaging with aesthetic material like stories, art and music in order to better understand ourselves, and how personal development of a critical mass of people can shift the success of an entire country. You can find out more about Lene by visiting https://nordicbildung.org/. If you are interested to learn more about the Break Down. Wake Up. program to help transform your distress into a catalyst for personal and professional growth, click here to schedule an intro with me here. If you want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own breakdown, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
019 - Sensing an unsafe work culture with Marcel Schwantes
Break Down. Wake Up.
10/13/20 • 54 min
How a sudden physical injury helped a former healthcare leader see the impact that a fear-driven management style was having on his wellbeing and performance in a high stakes environment.
Marcel Schwantes was set up for an accelerated career leading human resources departments in a hospital group. He was put through a two year leadership rotation program that demanded a lot from him - and he was up for the challenge. But pretty soon he began to sense signals of an unsupportive, critical team that was supervising him. His interest to contribute and share his ideas were met with disdain and rejection - he felt isolated, discouraged, and full of fear.
At first, he could not sense how much this toxicity was impacting his health. But then he had a sudden injury that sent him to the hospital, of which the primary cause was stress. It was then that he realized that his stress was not because he was not strong or smart enough to perform in a challenging environment, but about the impact that the attitude and lack of support that his superiors had on his ability to be at his best. He now has transformed this wisdom into helping companies make a transition from restrictive management to servant leadership.
In this episode, we explore how early stress warning signs can fall below the radar in high pressure environments, the need to balance responsibility between individuals to take care of their wellbeing and an organization to provide a supportive environment, and how top-down, autocratic management styles can lead to a culture of passivity and disengagement that ultimately impacts the bottom line.
You can find out more about Marcel by visiting https://www.marcelschwantes.com/. If you like what you've heard and want to be part of our podcast community, participate in special events, or discover the wisdom waking up in your own distress, check out our website at www.breakdownwakeup.com.
The Break Down. Wake Up. Season 1 podcast is sponsored by JAEC Foundation: Rethinking Mental Health.
Show more best episodes
Show more best episodes
FAQ
How many episodes does Break Down. Wake Up. have?
Break Down. Wake Up. currently has 33 episodes available.
What topics does Break Down. Wake Up. cover?
The podcast is about Podcasts and Society & Culture.
What is the most popular episode on Break Down. Wake Up.?
The episode title '032 - FINAL EPISODE SEASON 1 Break Down. Wake Up. podcast :)' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Break Down. Wake Up.?
The average episode length on Break Down. Wake Up. is 49 minutes.
How often are episodes of Break Down. Wake Up. released?
Episodes of Break Down. Wake Up. are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Break Down. Wake Up.?
The first episode of Break Down. Wake Up. was released on Jun 19, 2020.
Show more FAQ
Show more FAQ