He is still physically female but has always identified as a male. He talks about what it means to be genderfluid or genderqueer as well as pansexual and the difficult road in discovering who he is and expressing that around others, especially family.
Raised by attentive, loving parents she nevertheless grew up with a pervasive feeling of emptiness that she sought to soothe through relationships with men. In her words she, “Burnt her life to the ground”, but used the experience and pain to grow.
The 22 year-old opens up about the guilt and anxiety of growing up feeling like it was his duty to keep his mother out of her depression, even though she was emotionally incestuous with him, how he finally rebelled, and the toll it has taken.
Paul reads an article written by Alan Rappoport PhD about Co-Narcissism, which he describes as a result of being raised by one or sometimes two narcissistic parents.
The standup comedian (Late Night with Craig Ferguson) opens up about her conservative Catholic upbringing, doing volunteer work in Jamaica and coming to terms with being lesbian. She and Paul talk about bad porn, being turned on by things we wouldn’t want in real life and the heavy burden of being co-dependent.
The 3rd generation Japanese-American psychologist shares his experience and observations counseling sexual predators (rapists and child molesters) at Coalinga, a lockdown mental hospital in central California and how he used Buddhism to help him cope.
The 31 year-old listener ponders her low self-esteem, food issues, history of self-mutilation, compulsive spending and suicide attempts when her parents were “nothing but supportive”.
Two sons of Holocaust survivors, Michael Rozbruch and Amir Tiles, sit down with psychotherapist Joel Schwartz whose grandparents are also survivors and they discuss the PTSD’s ripples still being felt today within the families. Amir’s father, an 85 year-old Polish survivor also joins them.
The therapist who is also in recovery helps Paul and some listeners (via surveys) navigate their discomfort and confusion about their current issues. They discuss the cliched but effective tools of self-parenting and inner-child work, as well as the line therapists draw regarding self-revelation to their clients.