Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Updated: 06 Oct 2025 • 440 episodes
rickhanson.com/being-well-podcast

Forrest Hanson is joined by clinical psychologist (and his dad) Dr. Rick Hanson and a world-class group of experts to explore the practical science of lasting well-being. Conversations focus on the key insights from psychology, science, and contemplative practice that you need to build reliable inner strengths, overcome your challenges, and get the most out of life. New episodes every Monday.

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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the silent killer of relationships: resentment. They discuss resentment as a combination of perceived grievance (“I was wronged”) and helplessness (“and I can’t fix it”), before talking about how over-functioning and control tendencies can lead to resentment in relationships - one person sh

78 min
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01:18:39
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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore humanistic psychology, the mid-20th century movement that redefined how therapists relate to clients. It challenged the pessimism of Freud and the mechanism of behaviorism, offering a more hopeful alternative: that our nature is fundamentally good, and our job is to let it shine through. Th

81 min
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01:21:17
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AI chatbots may already be the largest providers of mental health services in the United States, raising big questions about safety, effectiveness, and oversight. Dr. Rick and Forrest are joined by Dr. Nick Jacobson to explore the risks and opportunities of AI therapy: Can a chatbot be good at therapy? Will it replace

85 min
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01:25:50
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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how to use a life crisis productively, drawing on developmental stage theories, existential philosophy, literature, personal experience, and Rick’s clinical work. They examine the anxieties of death, freedom, responsibility, and choice that often underlie these crises, and discuss how we ca

72 min
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01:12:02
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Forrest and therapist Meg Josephson explore the fawn response, a survival strategy where safety is sought by pleasing other people. They discuss how fawning can start as self-protection in childhood, but later morph into overthinking, hypervigilance, and self-abandonment. Meg shares her own experience, including how fa

74 min
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01:14:32
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Dr. Rick and Forrest open up the mailbag to answer questions about complex situations where good process really matters. They discuss whether to get back with an ex who has seemingly changed, relationships with someone with addictive tendencies, the difference between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and narcissistic

71 min
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01:11:30
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