Sex, Drugs &amp; Enlightenment

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My Story: Why I Decided to Take Down the Therapy Walls

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

09/14/22 • 40 min

Oakley’s mission is clear: as a therapist and guide for young adults, she combines her studies in eastern mindfulness and western psychotherapy into valuable tools for clients transitioning into adulthood.

In 2020, Oakley observed the escalating mental health crisis and wished there were more hours in the day to help those suffering with anxiety, depression, abuse, and trauma. If only her clients could hear each other’s stories, feel supported in talking about taboo topics, and trade seeds of wisdom, maybe they wouldn’t feel so alone. Thus, the concept for her podcast Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment was born. It is a platform for tearing down the walls of the therapist’s office and giving listeners access to her private sessions.

Each episode features a different anonymous client who bravely allows listeners into their session with Oakley where they discuss a wide range of topics, exploring the connection between mind, body, and spirit. With her intention to broaden the reach of her practice, Oakley offers practical healing tools for navigating the challenges of young adulthood that apply to listeners at all stages of life.

Main Topics

The path and inspiration that led Oakley to create her podcast (01:45)
Oakley’s passion for working with young adults and how they inspire her work (05:23)
Mapping the terrain to help young people navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood with specific tools for success (09:26)
Connection between the human mind and spirit in applying healing modalities (11:00)
Oakley’s life-threatening car accident and subsequent diagnosis that led to major shifts personally and professionally (13:15)
The rebirth of Oakley’s therapeutic healing practice which helps bridge spirituality with everyday life (29:44)

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

Check out the website!

Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

North Star Visualization: Accessing Our Internal GPS

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

10/28/22 • 50 min

Oakley hears it all the time in her practice working with young adults: “How do I know which choice to make?” For many college graduates, the transition into adulthood can leave them feeling disappointed and directionless. Regardless of age, people often look outside themselves for guidance on difficult decisions, especially those that impact jobs and careers. In this episode, Oakley offers a valuable tool for connecting with the internal guidance system available to everyone that always points to true North.

Through mindfulness practices, North Star work asks the individual to connect with the love-based emotion they want to experience such as joy, peace, passion, etc. That feeling becomes their North Star. They then activate that feeling by visualizing people, places, and experiences that make the feeling come alive in their body. Through consistent practice, the body becomes fine-tuned to what does and doesn’t resonate with it. In this way, a person can change their brain chemistry and begin attracting opportunities that align with their North Star.

Main Topics:

Oakley’s client shares her professional journey, from her original trajectory in diplomacy to her current position as an account manager at an international technology company (06:40)
The difference between a job and a career (13:45)
Practical Tool: North Star work meditation and visualization (17:25)
The power of visualizing the perfect day (30:57)
Applying North Star work every day to alter attitudes from fear-based to love-based (36:10)
How this technique leads to greater fulfillment and living life in alignment with the authentic self (43:19)

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

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Introduction

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

08/08/22 • 0 min

Welcome to sex, drugs and enlightenment. Where we open the door and take down the walls of the therapy office. Hi, I'm Oakley Ogden, a licensed professional counselor and coach with over 17 years of experience, working with young adults. In this podcast, I unpack the profane to recognize how the tough stuff is the sacred stuff. Join us as we explore it all, the taboo topics and otherwise nothing is off-limits. In this space of safety and love, let's work it out and learn how we can all build resilience and strength of character to make each day count as we live our best life... and have fun doing it.

Reflections and Celebrations for Season One

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

03/31/23 • 15 min

Wrapping up the first season of Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment, Oakley reflects back with copious gratitude on the beautiful clients and powerful interviews that made each episode so impactful. The intention of this experimental journey was to equip listeners, especially young adults, with tools for healing and building emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence requires awareness, self-regulation, and articulation of needs. In Oakley’s experience, much of the pain people are living through is linked to over- or under-stimulated nervous systems as a result of feeling disconnected from self, source, or others. Season one has been a deep dive into strengthening those connections so that we can live our fullest, most authentic lives.

Main Topics

Episode recap: How Ketamine Saved a Young Life (02:15)
Episode recap: Accessing Our Inner GPS System (02:45)
Episode recap: Give back, Take Back Method for Doing Lineage Work
Episode recap: Addressing Underlying Beliefs That Impact Relationships (04:24)
Episode recap: Relationships as Mirrors (05:42)
Episode recap: Oakley’s personal story (07:30)
Episode recap: special guests Erika Rose and Dayanand
Emotional intelligence (10:50)

Episode Links

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

Check out the website!

Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

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Breaking Down Barriers to Love and Intimacy

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

11/11/22 • 57 min

Have you ever heard the saying “You can’t love another person until you love yourself”? Oakley’s client, an adult in his mid 20s, has done his personal work. Now he’s ready to take the next step to find his romantic partner and commit to a relationship. But something is holding him back from being able to be vulnerable. So Oakley pulls from her enlightenment toolbelt and offers practical steps for reprogramming the patterns that keep his walls up so that he’s ready to receive his future partner when she comes along.

Vulnerability, or allowing another person to see the full breadth of your strengths and weaknesses, can be scary. To assist her client in working with the wall around his heart, Oakley leads him in a somatic practice that allows him to observe his blockages without judgment and tap into his own healing power. Through this practice, he is able to activate his heart center which clears him of any blocked energy that might prevent him from experiencing what he desires most: a safe, loving relationship where he feels comfortable being himself and can offer that same love to another person. By visualizing the life he wants, he slowly removes the limitations that prevent him from stepping fully into intimacy in relationships. This is how people are able to use the power of love to change old patterns and rewire neural pathways that keep them stuck. Everyone has the ability to work this magic on themselves, and it’s Oakley’s mission to bring these powerful tools to anyone willing to do the work.

Main Topics

Oakley’s client shares his struggle with vulnerability and his desire for an intimate relationship (04:08)
The role the past plays in our current relationship patterns (07:15)
Vulnerability in relationships means asking to be seen (10:27)
Oakley’s Give Back, Take Back strategy for transmuting old patterns (16:27)
Using somatic body work to find and release energetic blockages (24:00)
Quick explanation of the chakra system or energy centers in the body (34:50)
Activating the torus, a measurable electromagnetic field around the heart, to change thoughts and behaviors (43:48)
Reaching the realm of possibility in meditation to create new realities (46:33)
Daily practice for activating the heart (51:25)

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

Check out the website!

Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

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Using the Mind to Overcome Lyme

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

01/06/23 • 37 min

The collective energy of each new year inspires people to make changes they believe will bring more happiness and success. We all know how the New Year’s resolution trend goes. Stereotypically, January finds gyms full, liquor cabinets empty, and fridges stocked with leafy greens. By spring, most of the promises made in the attempt to improve our lives lie broken, collecting dust in the basement. We take this to mean we’ve failed or that our will power simply wasn’t strong enough. We didn’t push ourselves hard enough.

Oakley knows the struggle of pushing herself beyond her limits and would like to offer a gentler approach. Before being catapulted into a new phase of her healing journey through a life-threatening car accident, she was doing all the right things. She worked out, meditated regularly, and drank green juice. Her professional life was thriving. But she knew something wasn’t right. Her body was trying to process her unconscious programming still present from childhood. After her accident and a Lyme’s Disease diagnosis, Oakley was forced to come face to face with her own darkness. That journey is what led her to utilize meditation and visualization to bring in more joy. Using neuro-linguistic practices helped her create new pathways in her brain that opened her heart and released old negative patterns. Now she guides clients and listeners in this life-changing practice to redirect the brain. Taking sovereignty over our thought processing is the best resolution for transforming every facet of our inner and outer lives.

Main Topics:

Oakley’s negative thought patterns from childhood that prevented her from experiencing joy (03:40)
Internalizing trauma from childhood as normal (08:40)
Despite using all the external tools, Oakley still struggled with finding inner peace (13:50)
Overactive will power was one factor that led to chronic inflammation in Oakley’s body (17:20)
A visualization tool to change your beliefs and call in love-based feelings (24:15)
Box Breathing practice for emotional triggers (28:00)
How approaching change from the inside out transformed Oakley’s life (31:00)

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

Check out the website!

Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

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Is It Me, Or Is It You? Releasing Traumatic Family Patterns

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

11/25/22 • 52 min

Six out of ten Americans have been diagnosed with one or more chronic illnesses, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. While this statistic may seem shocking, even more astounding is the lack of research into common diseases, such as Lyme Disease, that Oakley’s client lives with every day. Many people don’t know that inflammation in the body can create overwhelming anxiety. Because of a lack of understanding of the connection between these symptoms, people with chronic illness diagnoses are often left untreated or even worse, gaslighted about the very real nature of what they’re experiencing.

As Oakley reminds her clients and listeners, the physical body is intimately connected with the mental, emotional and spiritual health of an individual. In this episode, she digs deeper with her client into some of the familial patterns that may have played a role in the physical expression of her disease. Healing generational trauma begins with awareness. This resilient young woman was able to identify unhealthy patterns such as body shaming, codependency, and emotional manipulation within her family relationships and has made choices to set appropriate boundaries. Taking back control of her life has increased her self-esteem and given her the confidence she needs to move forward with healthy relationships with friends, her partner, and most importantly, herself.

Main Topics

Oakley’s client discusses her chronic illness diagnoses of Lyme, Labisia, and Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) (2:06)
The definition of gaslighting and how to validate your own experiences (12:30)
The connection between disease and anxiety (18:55)
Trigger Warning: Oakley’s client shares about her early teenage years when she felt suicidal and struggled with self-harm (23:03)
How caretaking can easily become a person’s identity, leading to codependency (31:05)
Education about sexual health and various strains of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) for female-bodied individuals (40:50)
Conscious coping mechanisms and setting boundaries (49:10)

Episode Links

The Body Keeps the Score- Bessel van der Kolk

Betterhelp.com

Psychologytoday.com

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

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Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

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Riding Out of the Darkness: How a Young Equestrian Learns to Ask for Help

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

02/03/23 • 74 min

In today’s episode, Oakley talks with a resilient client who faced down a particularly dark night filled with despair and thoughts of suicide. This young woman shares the story of the stressful external situations that seemed to perpetuate her suicidal idealizations, including a difficult relationship with her coworker and roommate. Oakley challenges her client and listeners to view all relationships as mirrors into the truth of our own psyches. Through this exercise, the young woman uncovers unhealed dynamics in her past relationship with her mother and the stories she believed about herself based on those early experiences.

One of humans’ basic fears sometimes leads us to wonder, “Am I lovable?” Oakley’s client speaks candidly about her struggle with isolation and feelings of invisibility which inevitably led to depression and hopelessness. When she recognized the danger of her situation, she reached out to trusted friends and signed up for therapy. Something within her wanted to prove to herself and the people in her life that she is stronger than whatever threatens her happiness and peace. By recognizing that making decisions in an emotional state is not conducive to wellness, she gave herself time to experience and express those dark emotions. Once she honored her authentic self, she was able to move through those times when life didn’t feel worth living. Opening ourselves up to be loved exactly how we are allows us to integrate parts of us we may have exiled from childhood trauma or familial conditioning. Self awareness helps us engage in the world as a whole, healed individual.

Main Topics

Spectrum of suicidal idealization and suicide intent (02:25)
Relationships act like mirrors for us to see ourselves (08:10)
Paradox of change: People or situations don’t change until we meet them exactly where they are (12:50)
Law of Resonance: Our vibration attracts energies with the same resonance (21:27)
Familial conditioning can lead us to hide parts of ourselves (32:16)
The night of Oakley’s client’s suicidal thoughts (36:00)
Tools for alleviating and redirecting thoughts of suicide (44:40)
We become the people we surround ourselves with (55:05)
Homework assignment: Write a letter to someone you’ve had a challenging relationship with (1:04:33)

Episode Links

https://www.betterhelp.com/

988- Suicide and Crisis Line

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

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Connect with Oakley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxn6BnlaAAK_i9utOIg2KOQ

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How Ketamine Saved a Young Life

Sex, Drugs & Enlightenment

09/14/22 • 44 min

Oakley’s client shares her journey through debilitating depression and anxiety and how the monitored use of ketamine may have saved her life—or, at the very least, months and years of her time. Join us to learn about the ins and outs of this treatment, its effects, proper use, and how most of us are still learning about this drug.
In this session, the client shares incredible insights into panic attacks, the use of anti-depressants, and what these treatments really taught her about what’s possible in her life and how they gave her a chance to step out of being a slave to her anxiety and learn to work with it to create the life she is proud of.

Main Topics

The client’s journey with ketamine treatments as one of the first patients to go through ketamine treatments with her integrative physician following a depressive state in college (02:30)
What is ketamine? (10:05)
The client’s first experience with a ketamine treatment and the most beneficial and helpful factors in the experience (12:43)
How ketamine works and how it treats the symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks (25:05)
Learning how to understand and manage panic attacks after ketamine treatments and how it’s transformed her life (29:14)
Debunking the damaging myths around “personal development” and striving for perfection (39:11)

Episode Links

National Sexual Assault Hotline • 1-800-656-4673

Want to learn more or apply to be a guest on Sex, Drugs and Enlightenment?

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