What actually makes therapy work?

Writer and therapist Daniel Duane joins Meredith to discuss his recent New York Times opinion piece, “Therapy Needs to Get Help,” which questions the ever-expanding world of therapeutic modalities, acronyms, and certifications—and asks what decades of research can tell us about what really helps people change.

They explore predictive processing, the importance of trust and the therapist-client relationship, how early experiences shape our expectations of the world, and the surprising overlap between psychotherapy, nervous system science, and mindbody approaches to healing.

Ultimately, the conversation returns to what Dan calls “the beautiful fundamentals” of therapy—and a bigger question: How do human beings actually change?

Check out Dan's work

Therapy Needs to Get Help

Yosemite Falls (preorder)

Caught Inside

What happens when the version of success you built your life around suddenly stops working? In this episode of the Anxious Achiever podcast, host Morra Aarons-Mele and I talk about ego death, anxiety, nervous system healing, and what it means to let go of the need to prove yourself. We cover all the hits: career humiliation, social media comparison, identity, chronic pain, and the process of realizing that the things that once made you feel successful or special no longer fit who you are becoming.

The Anxious Achiever is a popular podcast that sits at the intersection of mental health, anxiety, and professional success. Ego death lives squarely at this intersection: it is all about surrendering control and accepting that your worth cannot come from achievement, productivity, attention, or external validation. Here's a breakdown of some of the other things we cover here:

00:00 Why success, validation, and recognition can become your identity.
06:15 What does ego death mean to you?
10:00 Solutions for letting go of control and external validation.
16:30 Why ego death happens in layers over time.
18:30 How anxiety fuels the need to feel special or secure.
25:30 What is nervous system regulation?
29:15 How chronic pain led Meredith into mind-body healing work.
36:00 How to process emotional pain without shutting down.
41:45 Using symbols, imagery, and intuition to understand emotional healing.
45:00 Spirituality, energy, and finding support beyond achievement.
51:45 Why surrender is central to ego death.
55:45 How to think differently about work in midlife.

To learn more about Morra's work, or her books, go to https://morraam.com/books
or follow her on Linkedin.

In this episode, I sit down with the somatic psychotherapist, writer, and teacher Ailey Jolie to explore the evolving intersection of trauma, embodiment, and technology.

Ailey shares her journey from eating disorder recovery to psychedelic-assisted research to writing, and her commitment to bringing body-based wisdom into mainstream psychology. She reflects on leaving modeling and medicine after listening to an unmistakable inner “no,” watching her mother make a life-defining decision guided by intuition, and how those early experiences shaped her trust in the body’s voice.

Ailey’s credentials are impeccable. She holds a Master of Counseling Psychology, a Master of Arts in Depth Psychology with an Emphasis in Somatic Studies, and is a graduate of Harvard Medical School’s Global Mental Health: Trauma Recovery Masters certificate program. She’s a certified Focusing Oriented Therapist (FOT), Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner (CI), Certified Internal Family Systems Therapist (C-IFS), and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). Furthermore, she has trained to deliver MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD (MAPS USA) and Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy in a research setting. She brings this wide range of experience to her Substack newsletter Words From This Body.

In exploring AI as a kind of “spiritual technologist,” Ailey speaks candidly about her shifting relationship with screens, nervous system regulation, and the need to titrate between in-person depth and digital reach. Together, we discuss dorsal vagal “rest,” the somatic cost of not being believed, why trauma lives differently in female bodies, and the generational work of translating mind-body science — especially through a feminist lens — into something more accessible, embodied, and alive.

Links

In this Body, Ailey's podcast that explores the hidden impact of the unconscious

In Body Method, Ailey's 14-week guided journey

Words From This Body, Ailey's Substack newsletter