Don't Get A Therapist... Yet!

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Dr Ellen Astrachan-Fletcher, clinical psychologist, Lecturer at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a senior Radically Open DBT clinician trained directly by its founder, Dr Thomas Lynch. She is the co-author of three workbooks, including The Radically Open DBT Workbook for Anxiety: A Path to Peace Through Openness, Flexibility, and Connection, published in 2026.This is part one of two, and it covers a framework for understanding anxiety that is genuinely different from most of what gets discussed in this space.The conversation opens with high-functioning anxiety: the experience of feeling all the physical symptoms of anxiety, the racing heart, the dread, the tension, and continuing to function anyway. From the outside, nothing looks wrong. On the inside, the cost can be significant.Dr Astrachan-Fletcher introduces the concept of emotional overcontrol and what distinguishes it from simply being organised or disciplined. Overcontrolled people are not controlling in the way that word is usually meant. They have a particular temperament: high threat sensitivity, high detail focus, low reward sensitivity, low novelty seeking, and superior inhibitory control. This means they can hold things in for a very long time. And eventually, something gives, often in private, or suddenly and disproportionately in front of the people they trust most.The episode also covers the three mind states in Radically Open DBT: fixed mind, which pushes feedback away with hostility and opposition; fatalistic mind, which escapes by going silent or suddenly agreeing; and flexible mind, the goal of treatment, which asks whether there might be something to learn. This framework is especially relevant to perfectionism, because for someone who believes they must appear perfect at all times, feedback does not feel like information. It feels like an attack.There is also a genuinely moving section on why overcontrolled people often feel profoundly alone even when surrounded by people, and why the apparent self-sufficiency that makes them so competent at life can quietly signal to others that they are cold, untrustworthy or uninterested in connection, when what they are actually feeling is fear.Part two continues the conversation with Dr Astrachan-Fletcher next week.The Radically Open DBT Workbook for Anxiety is available on Amazon and at all major booksellers.To contact Dr Astrachan-Fletcher or find out more about EAF ReCenter:👉 https://www.eaf-recenter.com📧 [email protected] learn more about Wendy’s work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined again by Dr Neil Stanley, independent sleep expert with 44 years of research behind him, past Chairman of the British Sleep Society and author of How to Sleep Well and co-author of A Sleep Divorce: How to Sleep Apart, Not Fall Apart. This is part two of their conversation, and it goes into the sleep problems that come up most often and are least well understood.The episode opens with nightmares, and Neil immediately reframes the conversation. Most nightmares are not signs of anything significant. They are simply the horror films in what he describes as your nightly multiplex, the 4 or 5 dreams you have every night, most of which you will never remember because you slept through them. The ones that stay with you are the ones vivid enough to wake you. There is an important exception though: nightmares that relive a traumatic event in real time are a different matter entirely, and Neil explains clearly why those point towards PTSD and need to be addressed at that level.He also explains the difference between a nightmare and a night terror, which is something many parents get badly wrong. A child having a night terror is displaying the behaviour of fear without experiencing fear, because it is happening in deep sleep with no conscious awareness. The child will have no memory of it. The distress belongs entirely to the parent watching, and well-meaning intervention can make things worse. Neil’s advice is practical and reassuring.From there, the conversation covers snoring in real depth: why it happens, why the causes vary so widely between people, what actually works and what does not, and why sleep apnea is a serious medical condition that is consistently underdiagnosed, particularly in men. Neil is straightforward about the case for sleeping in separate rooms, and points to his own book on the subject for anyone who wants to navigate that conversation with their partner without it becoming a referendum on the relationship.There is also a frank and useful section on napping, including the key distinction between a 20-minute power nap, which is generally fine and will not affect night-time sleep, and anything between 20 minutes and 2 hours, which risks waking someone in deep sleep and leaving them feeling worse than before. Neil’s rule of thumb: 20 minutes or 2 hours, nothing in between.The episode closes with advice for parents of newborns that is notably free of judgment: why babies are not being manipulative when they cry at 3am, why the old advice to let them scream themselves to sleep never made much biological sense, and why the most practical thing couples can do is stop sharing every wakening and start thinking about who is actually best placed to handle what and when.Dr Neil Stanley’s website is at:👉 http://www.thesleepconsultancy.comHis books are available via Amazon and all major booksellers.To learn more about Wendy’s work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Dr Neil Stanley, one of the UK’s leading independent sleep experts, with 44 years of sleep research behind him. He is a past Chairman of the British Sleep Society, a member of the European Sleep Research Society, the American Academy of Sleep and the World Sleep Society, and the author of How to Sleep Well: The Science of Sleeping Smarter, Living Better and Being Productive and co-author of A Sleep Divorce: How to Sleep Apart, Not Fall Apart.This is part one of two, and it covers the foundations of sleep in a way that is clear, practical and frequently surprising.It opens with one of the most common sleep myths there is: that everyone needs 8 hours. Neil explains why this has never actually been the advice, why sleep need is as individual as height or shoe size, and why the best measure of whether you are getting enough is not a tracker but a simple question you ask yourself at 11 o’clock in the morning.From there, the conversation covers why being tired and being sleepy are not the same thing, what a bedroom conducive to sleep actually looks like, and why the quiet mind is the hardest piece of the puzzle in an age of screens and constant information. Neil is refreshingly direct on all of it, including his view on sleep trackers, which he argues create more anxiety than they resolve, and on the 8-hour obsession that has led many people to catastrophise perfectly normal sleep.There is also a detailed and genuinely useful section on waking at 3am, covering why it happens, what keeps people awake once they are up, and what thought-blocking techniques can help, as well as the case for fixing your wake-up time as one of the single most powerful changes you can make.The episode closes with a frank assessment of melatonin and sleeping tablets, including why melatonin is not a sleeping tablet, what it actually does, and why the dosing and timing make it essentially impossible to use correctly without specialist guidance.Part two is coming soon.Dr Neil Stanley’s website is at:👉 http://www.thesleepconsultancy.comHis books are available via Amazon and all major booksellers.To learn more about Wendy’s work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is part two of Wendy’s conversation with Lou Lasprugato, licensed psychotherapist, internationally recognised ACT trainer and ACBS Fellow. If you haven’t listened to part one yet, it covers the foundations of ACT and the hexaflex model, and is well worth starting there.Part two gets practical. Lou opens with one of the most common experiences that brings people to therapy: feeling stuck. Not stuck in one dramatic way, but in the quieter, more persistent sense of repeating the same patterns, being unable to move forward, or living in a way that feels smaller than it should. From an ACT perspective, two processes sit at the root of most stuck loops: cognitive fusion, where we are so entangled with our thoughts that we cannot see them as thoughts, and experiential avoidance, where we repeatedly reach for relief from discomfort in ways that end up restricting our lives rather than expanding them.Lou explains how negative reinforcement works and why avoidance strategies tend to grow rather than shrink over time, using opiate addiction as a clear and sobering example of where that trajectory can lead. He then walks through how ACT helps people build willingness gradually, always in the service of something that matters to them.The couples work section introduces a concept not covered in part one: yearnings. Distinct from values, yearnings are the deep enduring longings we carry into our closest relationships, for connection, partnership, validation, shared meaning and security. Helping partners recognise and meet each other’s yearnings, Lou explains, is some of the most meaningful work he does.The episode closes with two perspective-taking exercises that are simple, memorable and immediately usable. One asks what you would want someone to say about you at your 100th birthday. The other asks what one small but meaningful thing you would want to have done by the time your head hits the pillow tonight. Both are grounded in the same ACT insight: values are not just a direction to aim for, they are a daily source of motivation, and regret, rather than being something to avoid, can point us clearly towards what still matters.Free guided ACT meditations, including Lou’s hexaflex exercises of one to two minutes each, are available on YouTube and Insight Timer without a premium subscription:👉 https://www.youtube.com/c/LouLasprugato👉 https://insighttimer.com/loulasprugatoFurther resources, blogs and training information at:👉 http://loulasprugato.com/Training and consultation information via the ACBS website:👉 https://contextualscience.org/lou_lasprugatos_training_pageTo learn more about Wendy’s work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Lou Lasprugato, licensed psychotherapist, internationally recognised ACT trainer and ACBS Fellow, who has facilitated over a hundred training events on acceptance and commitment therapy and spent more than 23 years working as a therapist across private practice, crisis intervention, intensive outpatient and integrative medicine settings. Lou also served as Chair of the ACBS Training Committee from 2022 to 2025, and specialises in therapy for intimate partners and anxiety disorders.This is part one of two, and it focuses on the foundations of ACT: what the model is, where it came from, and how its core concepts work in practice.ACT takes a different starting point from many other therapeutic approaches. Rather than trying to reduce or eliminate difficult thoughts and feelings, it asks a different question: can you make room for what is happening inside you while still moving towards what matters most in your life? That shift, from symptom reduction to values-based living, is what Lou describes as the thing that made ACT a game changer for him both professionally and personally.The conversation covers the hexaflex, the six-process model at the heart of ACT, explained clearly and without jargon. Lou walks through the open pillar of acceptance and cognitive defusion, the aware pillar of present moment contact and the observing self, and the engaged pillar of values and committed action. Along the way, he demonstrates several practical defusion techniques, including how singing a self-critical thought to the tune of Happy Birthday can genuinely loosen its grip, and perspective-taking exercises that invite compassion for a younger version of yourself.There is also a really useful clarification of what acceptance actually means in ACT, which is not resignation or giving up, but a willingness to be with our inner experience as it is, particularly when the alternative is avoidance strategies that tend to cost us far more in the long run.Part two continues next week, going deeper into values, committed action and how ACT applies to specific challenges.Lou has over 16 free guided ACT meditations available on the Insight Timer app, accessible without a premium subscription:👉 https://insighttimer.com/loulasprugatoFurther resources, blogs and training information at:👉 http://loulasprugato.com/Lou's YouTube channel:👉 https://www.youtube.com/c/LouLasprugatoTraining and consultation information via the ACBS website:👉 https://contextualscience.org/lou_lasprugatos_training_pageTo learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every relationship goes through stress, disappointment and conflict. You argue. You get irritated with each other. Someone forgets something important. None of that on its own means a relationship is toxic or abusive. What matters most is the pattern.In this episode, Wendy explores one of the questions that comes up in her therapy room more than almost anything else: how do you tell the difference between a relationship going through a hard patch, one that has become unhealthy, and one that is genuinely harmful?Part one begins with what healthy actually looks like, because it helps to know the baseline before looking at where things go wrong. Wendy walks through six building blocks of a healthy relationship, covering emotional safety, mutual respect, trust, responsiveness, closeness and independence, and constructive conflict and repair, bringing each one to life with short examples that make the patterns easy to recognise.From there, the episode moves into unhealthy and toxic dynamics, including the important difference between a tearful apology and actual sustained change, and why some relationships that feel good in the moment can gradually shrink your confidence, your independence, and your sense of who you are. Wendy also covers coercive control, which has been a criminal offence in England and Wales since 2015, and makes clear that abusive patterns affect people of all genders.There are four detailed relationship scenarios, two healthy and two toxic, and a set of honest questions to sit with as you listen.Part two is coming next week and will go deeper into abusive relationships, the cycle of harm and repair, and how to leave safely.A note before you listen: this episode is designed for reflection, not to diagnose your relationship. If anything here stirs something up, please be gentle with yourself and reach out to a therapist or your GP if you need support.To learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have ever caught yourself overthinking a text message, apologising for things that are not your fault, or feeling like you have to be perfect just to be liked, this episode is for you.Today Wendy is talking about reparenting, a framework that draws on CBT, schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, imagery rescripting and EMDR to help you build a more protective, compassionate relationship with yourself as an adult. It is not a treatment on its own. Think of it as a way of pulling those evidence-based approaches together into something you can actually practise day to day.Because here is the thing. Childhood experiences shape how we see ourselves, other people and the world. If yours involved criticism, neglect, unpredictability, rejection, emotional unavailability or having to grow up too fast, your brain adapted to that. It learned to expect danger. And the tricky part is, it can keep expecting danger long after life has actually become safe.That shows up as overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism, hypervigilance, constant reassurance-seeking, or feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions. Healing does not mean erasing what happened. It means teaching your adult brain and body that the old danger is not happening right now.Wendy walks through 13 practical strategies, from calming the body before trying to think your way out of anxiety, to identifying the beliefs you formed as a child, developing a compassionate inner voice, building boundaries, challenging avoidance gradually, and using imagery rescripting to reach the memories that logic alone cannot shift. The episode closes with a simple eight-question daily reparenting exercise you can start tonight.There is also an important note on when self-help is not enough, and when trauma-focused therapy, or immediate crisis support, is what is genuinely needed.To learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you are experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please contact the Samaritans on 116 123, visit your GP, or go to your nearest A&E.If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Sherry Van Dyke, psychotherapist, EMDR clinician and consultant, and author of the DBT Workbook for CPTSD, who has spent over 22 years working with adults navigating the long-term consequences of trauma, and has trained clinicians in DBT and EMDR across the world.The episode opens with something genuinely clarifying: a plain-language explanation of the difference between PTSD and complex PTSD, including why a CPTSD diagnosis can be so hard to obtain in some countries, and why people are so often misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder when the real picture is developmental trauma. If you or someone you care about has ever felt that a diagnosis didn't quite fit, this section alone is worth listening to.From there, the conversation builds into one of the most thorough and accessible explanations of dialectical behaviour therapy and why it is so well suited to complex trauma. Sherry describes DBT as CBT on steroids, and unpacks all four of its modules, core mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and emotion regulation, explaining not just what each one does but how they work together for someone whose nervous system has been primed by years of unsafe or unpredictable experiences.There is a particularly valuable section on dissociation, a topic that Sherry argues Western medicine has largely dissociated from itself. She covers the difference between depersonalisation and derealisation, explains why dissociation is a survival mechanism rather than a disorder, and describes the practical, collaborative tools she uses to help clients recognise their early warning signs and find their way back to the present moment.The episode also covers the tri-phasic model of complex trauma treatment, the three stages of safety and stabilisation, trauma processing, and integrated functioning, and how DBT weaves through all of them, including the assertiveness and boundary-setting work that often becomes possible only after the deeper processing is done.Sherry's book, the DBT Workbook for CPTSD, is designed for both clients and clinicians, and is available on Amazon and via New Harbinger Publications. More information, including contact details, at:👉 www.sherryvandyke.comTo learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Chris Whitehead-Baines, UK-based psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and founder of The Skool Trauma Hub, who has been working with complex trauma, PTSD and CPTSD since 2009. Chris brings both professional expertise and nearly 30 years of his own lived experience of trauma and recovery to a conversation that covers one of the most underused and underexplained tools in trauma healing: imagery.The episode opens with a story from Chris's childhood, growing up in a domestic violence environment, where he would paint and draw as a way of externalising what he could not yet say, then walk to the postbox and send his paintings away addressed to no one. He only understood years later, in his own therapy, that he had been instinctively doing something deeply therapeutic. It is a quietly remarkable way to begin a conversation about why imagery reaches places that words sometimes cannot.The conversation covers what therapeutic imagery actually means, which is far broader than visualisation or closing your eyes and picturing something. It includes memories, metaphors, drawings, colours, dreams, bodily sensations and imagined places. Chris explains how imagery weaves through every modality he works with, from art psychotherapy and EMDR to psychodynamic therapy and CBT, and why trauma, which is stored in fragments of sensation and image rather than as a coherent verbal story, can often be reached more directly through a different kind of language altogether.There is a powerful section on how imagery helped a client shift an ingrained belief that nothing else had moved, as they began to look at themselves as a vulnerable child rather than judging themselves through adult eyes, and what happened when their adult self began to tend to that child through the work.Chris also introduces the concept of co-regulation, one of the most important and frequently overlooked elements of trauma recovery, and explains why safe community can be as healing as therapy itself. That belief sits at the heart of The Skool Trauma Hub, his global community bringing together people impacted by trauma, trauma-informed parents and trauma professionals.The episode closes with a simple, safe imagery exercise anyone can try today, no closed eyes required.To find out more about Chris's private practice, visit:👉 https://www.virtualtraumatherapy.comTo join The Skool Trauma Hub community:👉 https://www.skool.com/the-skool-trauma-hub/aboutFollow Chris on Instagram: @virtualtraumatherapyChris is also on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube under Virtual Trauma Therapy.To learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Wendy is joined by Dr. Kira Mauseth, clinical psychologist, Teaching Professor at Seattle University, and founder of Astrum Health LLC, who has spent her career working with disaster survivors, refugees and first responders across the world. From the Lahaina wildfires to earthquake recovery in Haiti to refugee camps in Northern Jordan, she brings a rare combination of clinical expertise and extraordinary frontline experience to a conversation that is far more relevant to everyday life than the word "disaster" might suggest.The episode opens with two concepts that reframe how we understand stress and crisis. The disaster cycle describes the ongoing loop of preparedness, response and recovery that individuals and communities move through after any significant event. A disaster cascade is what happens when a second or third crisis hits before the first one has been processed, and as Dr. Mauseth explains, the mental health consequences of that compound exposure are significant, measurable and deeply underestimated.At the centre of the episode is a clear, practical explanation of what prolonged stress actually does to the brain and body, including the cognitive symptoms of brain fog, poor memory and difficulty concentrating that many people experienced during and after the pandemic, and wrongly attributed to something more serious. Dr. Mauseth explains the role of cortisol, why the present moment is the single most powerful place to bring the nervous system back to, and what practical techniques, from the engagement of awe to sensory grounding, and her favourite tool of all, a frozen orange, can reduce stress hormones quickly.She also outlines the four ingredients of individual human resilience: connection, adaptability, hope and purpose, each mapped to a part of a tree in a framework that is easy to remember and genuinely useful for self-assessment. The distinction she draws between hope and optimism is one of the most clarifying things in this conversation. Optimism is everything will be fine. Hope is tougher and more honest than that. It is about finding the third door when the first two are closed.The episode closes with the concept of purpose after crisis, illustrated by two stories from her disaster work, a grandfather in Haiti and a Syrian surgeon selling gum in a refugee camp, that are among the most quietly powerful things to have appeared on this podcast.To find out more about Dr. Mauseth's work, visit:👉 https://www.astrumhealthllc.orgFor information on the Health Support Team disaster curriculum and community training:👉 https://www.healthsupportteam.orgConnect with Dr. Mauseth on LinkedIn:👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/kira-mauseth-ph-d/To learn more about Wendy's work, explore resources, or stay up to date with future episodes, visit:👉 https://wendycastelino.com/If you found this episode helpful, please consider subscribing, leaving a review, or sharing it with someone who might benefit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.