296. Navigating Psychological Avoidance: A Conversation With Dr. Luana Marques
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2023
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Many of us feel stuck when we experience the discomfort of anxiety. But ironically, it’s not the anxiety itself that keeps us stuck, it’s what we do when we’re anxious that keeps us in the cycle of anxiety and inaction — aka psychological avoidance. This week on the podcast we’re digging deep into the brain with Dr. Luana Marques, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of Bold Move. We’ll discuss the three skills you can use to move through psychological avoidance, why aligning with our values can be difficult for women because of the way we were socialized, and how to know if you’re thinking clearly or if your brain has been hijacked by your amygdala.
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The Future Coach: How to Succeed as a Life Coach Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond is finally here. Every other week, you'll hear practical advice about becoming a coach, improving your coaching skills, and antidotes to the most common concerns, questions, and brain drama that come up with this work, whether you're just starting out or you're years into your career. If you want to find out more, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and hit that follow button.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to UnFuck Your Brain. The only podcast that teaches you how to use psychology, feminism, and coaching to rewire your brain |
| 0:16.3 | and get what you want in life. |
| 0:18.6 | And now here's your host, Harvard Law School grad, Feminist Rockstar, and Master Coach, |
| 0:24.7 | Kara Loyenthyle. |
| 0:28.0 | Hello, my chickens. |
| 0:29.4 | I am so excited about this conversation. I love talking to people who have really deep |
| 0:37.1 | academic expertise in the brain and how it works because all of you know one of my |
| 0:42.1 | kind of soap boxes is that self-help and self-development work gets kind of minimized because it's like women doing it. |
| 0:48.8 | And so when we can talk about how it overlaps really with the science, I think that's always such a powerful kind of conversation. |
| 0:56.2 | So our guest today is Dr. Luana and she is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School |
| 1:01.7 | among many other accomplishments that she can tell you about and she's the |
| 1:05.2 | author of Bold Move which we're going to talk quite a bit about which is a new book. |
| 1:09.1 | So you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? |
| 1:11.1 | Sure, thanks for having me first. It's delightful to be here. So I am a |
| 1:16.4 | professor at Harvard Medical School, but I'd say my journey is an unconventional one. |
| 1:21.2 | I grew up in Brazil with lots of adversity, |
| 1:23.7 | climbed my way out of trauma and poverty to get to Harvard, and my passion really is |
| 1:30.7 | is how to take science out of the ivory tower into the inner city. So the last 15 years, all of my research and my work has been training paraprofessionals on the skills that I describe on bold move and this idea and to your point |
| 1:44.8 | to Kara they said already this idea that like we can rewrite our brain that we can train |
| 1:50.1 | our brain if we really understand neuroscience and use skills we can |
| 1:54.7 | exercise our brains to live our best life and that's what I'm really passionate |
| 1:59.3 | about. I love it so I totally want to get into the book and your framework but just already I have like questions based on what you said that I want to talk about because I think that one of the big questions that like I grapple with as a teacher and students of this work grapple with is like what is the balance |
... |
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