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My Radio Show

I’m excited about my new radio show, Relationships 2.0, which airs on Tuesdays from 3-4:00 pm on KCAA AM-1050. I interview guests who present their unique perspectives and expertise on topics that cover all aspects of relationships in our lives! Check back for upcoming guest information and podcast links.

 

If you live in the Inland Empire area in Southern California you can listen to my show on KCAA AM-1050 (an NBC affiliate). If you live outside of the area you can listen live through the radio station website, with the “TuneIn Radio app,” download podcasts from iTunes, or listen to the podcasts of my show that are posted on this page.

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday August 7

I am excited to have as my guest Ken Solin, author of Act Like a Man: Really There’s Hope Men Can Change.

 

About Ken’s Book:

 

Men can—and do—change. And Act Like a Man invites you to eavesdrop as eight guys help each other identify, examine, and move beyond their dysfunctional behavior as partners, fathers, and friends.

 

There’s nothing special about these guys—other than their commitment to becoming better men—and everything they accomplish, the man in your life can accomplish, too. All it takes is the honesty to admit that things aren’t working and the desire to turn them around.

 

Well, not quite all. Women have a role to play, too. Men who have the courage to change all need the support of a woman committed to her own growth and that of her relationship. If you’re with a man but want more emotional intimacy or are still looking for a man who can meet you on your emotional level, this book is for you.

 

About Ken:

 

For twenty years, author and lecturer Ken Solin has worked with men to move them beyond the issues that limit their lives. Divorces, sharing kids, single parenting, relationships, dysfunctional boyhoods, anger, depression, anxiety and other issues that affect men have been successfully dealt with.

 

Both men and women follow Ken since he deals with issues that affect both, particularly in relationships.

 

Before devoting himself to this work, Ken enjoyed a successful twenty-five year career as an entrepreneur, financing high-tech companies and wineries. He raised two sons as a single father and lives in California.

 

“What I’ve learned over two decades is that there are no shortcuts for healing the emotional wounds that hold men back in every aspect of their lives. The ‘work’ is men helping each other by listening to each other’s stories, and responding from their own experiences in similar situations. Judgment and advice are meaningless. When a man shares his feelings with other men, he is expressing his absolute truth.”

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday July 31

I am pleased that I will have as my guest Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, the author of The Anger Workbook for Teens, and a National Board Certified Counselor and a Licensed Professional Counselor in the states of NC and SC.

 

About Raychelle’s book:

 

In The Anger Workbook for Teens, an anger management counselor offers forty-two activities and exercises adolescents can do to examine what makes them angry and learn to communicate their feelings more effectively. The activities also teach coping skills that help young readers handle anger-provoking situations in healthy ways.

 

Between family life and the pressures of school, there’s no doubt that it’s stressful being a teenager. But if they’ve noticed they are beginning to take out their frustrations on the people they love most—their parents, brothers or sisters, and friends-it may be time to make a change. The Anger Workbook for Teens shows them effective skills to help them deal with feelings of rage without losing it.

 

By completing just one ten-minute worksheet a day, they’ll find out what’s triggering their anger, look at the ways they react, and learn skills and techniques for getting their anger under control. They’ll develop a personal anger profile and learn to notice the physical symptoms they feel when you become enraged, then find out how to calm those feelings and respond more sensitively to others. Once they fully understand their anger, they’ll be better prepared to deal with their feelings in the moment and never lose their cool.

 

About Raychelle:

 

Raychelle Cassada Lohmann, MS, LPC has worked in middle school and high school settings as a professional school counselor. She has done extensive research in anger management and specializes in individual and group counseling for anger management. She is an active member of the American Counseling Association, American School Counseling Association, SC Counselors Association, and SC School Counselors Association.

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday July 24

My guest for this week is Michelle Skeen…  yes, I will be host and guest! I will also have a close friend of mine on my show (I will reveal his name at the beginning of the show). Over the last month, I have been having frequent conversations with people about the subject of my book The Critical Partner. It has become clear to me that there are many people who feel trapped in the role of the “critical” partner and they truly want to end the toxic role that they play in their relationship. So, I will be discussing the primary schemas that trigger this behavior as well as the alternative coping strategies that can help them move on from their maladaptive behavior.

 

More about The Critical Partner

 

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday July 17

This promises to be a fun show.  My special guest for my radio show on July 17th is Charlee Ziegler.  She is a matchmaker for the new dating service TAWKIFY.

 

About Tawkify:

 

Tawkify is the newest way to meet someone . . . using the oldest method in the world. Tell us your interests and what you’re looking for, and we (actual human beings) will personally match you. (We know! So old-school!) Then at 10pm (EST) / 7pm (PST) – we’ll let you know – when your phone will ring. Answer it. It will be the person we hand-picked for you. It’s thrilling! It’s scary! It’s provocative! It’s audacious! It’s brilliant! It’s archaic! It’s romantic!

 

About E. Jean and Kenneth, the founders:

 

E. Jean Carroll writes the Ask E. Jean column in Elle magazine. Incredibly it’s the longest, currently-running advice column in American publishing. She has six million readers. E. Jean was a writer for Saturday Night Live, a contributing editor to Esquire, Outside, and Playboy. Her TV show on MSNBC was called—what else?—Ask E. Jean. She founded, with her sister, Cande Carroll, the breakthrough dating site, GreatBoyfriends.com (where women recommend their ex-boyfriends to each other) and which has been profiled in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, the LA Times, Men’s Health, Details, etc., and has been seen on The Today Show, The Early Show, Oprah, constantly on CNN, FOX, etc.

 

After two glasses of wine, E. Jean estimates that what with her column, her book, Mr. Right, Right Now, her coaching site, Dating: E. Jean, her YouTube Channel, and her television appearances, she has helped more people find enticing mates than any advice columnist in history.

 

Kenneth Shaw was most recently the principal imagineer at One Kings Lane. He began his career at Microsoft, and moved on to become the bashful firebrand who created My Purity Test, one of the most popular Facebook apps of all time. He also created the Elle magazine Facebook App. He graduated from Stanford in ’07—he’s a geek, a black belt in Hapkido, and possesses such a sunny disposition he makes a basket of puppies look depressed.

 

Computer Verses Human:

 

So the question is:  Who’s better at making romantic matches? Kenneth and E. Jean? Or computers?

 

“Please,” says E. Jean. “I’m an admirer of the big dating sites and they all use computers, but come on. Computers don’t get jokes. A computer can’t tell the difference between someone playful, someone weird, someone mean, and someone stupid. Kenneth and I are just waaaaaay better at picking up on wit, kindness, irony, warmth and wisecracks in people’s answers. We can tell at a glance if someone is lovable. And we beat computers all to hell when judging sexual charisma displayed in photos. Kenneth Shaw and I make better matches than computers do.”

 

About Charlee, matchmaker and go-between:

 

Charlee Ziegler is a life coach. Charlee started as a go-between at the age of six, when at sleepovers, whenever there was trouble, she created reconciliations by getting the kids to talk it out together in the bathroom while she mediated.

 

Split between a very conventional upbringing in suburban Arizona with her dad and a bohemian lifestyle in New York City with her actress mother, Charlee straddled two worlds and longed for unification. Often, when relatives had trouble in love, she intervened.

 

Between stints at Bennington College (E. Jean wrote her recommendation—Ed) Mills College, NYU, and St. John’s College, Charlee traveled and had many adventures.

 

Once when she was trying to find the bathroom in a Parisian bar, a man stopped her and said in a thick accent, “You have what we call an overture of emotion,” and then stoically walked away. Stunned by this announcement, and not really sure what it meant, she felt it had something to do with her destiny in life.

 

She’s still not sure what it’s all sussed up to be, but she’s always believed that true love was possible between people and that the life of the heart used the love of another to express it’s entire reason for being. The cosmic dimensions of relationship and the eternal struggle for love and, at times, crowning achievement of claiming it, for almost every individual in an entire planet of people enchants, baffles, and inspires her.

 

Married with a five-year-old daughter, Charlee investigates every aspect and dimension of love, marriage, and family and finds it to be a mysterious, beautiful, and epic saga.

 

For more information go to www.tawkify.com

 

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday July 10

I am happy to announce my guest will be Kaitlin Bell Barnett, journalist, blogger and author of Dosed: The Medication Generation Grows Up, which examines what it’s like for young people to come of age taking psychiatric drugs that alter emotions, behavior and identity in a society that at once encourages and criticizes the use of psychopharmaceuticals.

 

Kaitlin writes about mental health at The Huffington Post and about young people’s experiences of medication at My Meds, My Self, a blog at the psychology website Psych Central. I also review books for several psychology and mainstream outlets.


About Kaitlin’s book:

 

Over the last two decades, we have seen a dramatic spike in young people taking psychiatric medication. As new drugs have come on the market and diagnoses have proliferated, prescriptions have increased many times over. The issue has sparked heated debates, with most arguments breaking down into predictable pro-med advocacy or anti-med jeremiads. Yet, we’ve heard little from the “medicated kids” themselves.

 

In Dosed, Kaitlin Bell Barnett, who began taking antidepressants as a teenager, takes a nuanced look at the issue as she weaves together stories from members of this “medication generation,” exploring how drugs informed their experiences at home, in school, and with the mental health professions.

 

For many, taking meds has proved more complicated than merely popping a pill. The questions we all ask growing up—“Who am I?” and “What can I achieve?”—take on extra layers of complexity for kids who spend their formative years on medication. As Barnett shows, parents’ fears that “labeling” kids will hurt their self-esteem means that many young children don’t understand why they take pills at all, or what the drugs are supposed to accomplish. Teens must try to figure out whether intense emotions and risk-taking behaviors fall within the spectrum of normal adolescent angst, or whether they represent new symptoms or drug side effects. Young adults negotiate schoolwork, relationships, and the workplace, while struggling to find the right medication, dealing with breakdowns and relapses, and trying to decide whether they still need pharmaceutical treatment at all. And for some young people, what seemed like a quick fix turns into a saga of different diagnoses, symptoms, and a changing cocktail of medications.

 

The results of what one psychopharmacologist describes as a “giant, uncontrolled experiment” are just starting to trickle in. Barnett shows that a lack of ready answers and guidance has often proven extremely difficult for these young people as they transition from childhood to adolescence and now to adulthood. With its in-depth accounts of individual experiences combined with sociological and scientific context, Dosed provides a much-needed road map for patients, friends, parents, and those in the helping professions trying to navigate the complicated terrain of growing up on meds.

 

Kaitlin explains:


I got interested in the topic of young people spending their formative years on medication after reading a case study on the topic several years ago by The New York Times’ mental health columnist. At that point, I was 25 years old and had been taking various medications, mostly antidepressants, for anxiety and depression since I was in high school; I had been contending with the underlying psychological conditions for several years before that. Until reading that column, I had thought I’d had a relatively uncomplicated experience with pharmaceutical treatment. For me, the medication had seemed to make my apathy, boredom, despair and panic vanish where introspection and therapy had failed to make any inroads.

 

But the more I thought about it, I realized that psychiatric meds do alter one’s personality in fundamental ways, and that when taken in childhood and adolescence, as one is trying to locate a sense of self, they must inevitably affect one’s developmental trajectory. I decided to embark on a project interviewing my peers about their own experiences taking medications for a variety of psychiatric conditions ranging from panic disorder to ADHD to bipolar disorder. The result was Dosed.

 

blogs.psychcentral.com/my-meds/

www.huffingtonpost.com/kaitlin-bell/

 

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday July 3

My guest will be Karen Kropf, who is the author of Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control: A Parent’s Survival Guide

 

Karen discusses her book:

 

Mom… Dad… Can We Talk?

 

There is an abundance of evidence which proves the strategies of well-meaning people trying PREVENT teens from being sexually active has produced exactly the opposite result. That’s why this book was originally titled “Did You MEAN to Raise a Sexually Active Teen?”

 

But very few people seem to be aware of the proof, or that the methods educators and parents have been using since the 1960s DON’T WORK.

 

I’ve spoken to hundreds of parents who were completely unprepared for the anarchy of adolescence. They usually sought me out when things were on fire. Navigating an unexpected pregnancy, reeling from an abortion decision, dealing with sexual infections, or obsessive behavior.

 

In every single case, those parents had put off the training THEY needed to guide their child through the minefield of adolescence. “Hoping for the best” is not a strategy. These weren’t bad parents. They just kept thinking they had more time.

 

If what you were looking for was a book that would guide you through “The Talk” – the one where you sweat bullets for months, finally arrange that special weekend, Mom takes the girls, Dad takes the boys, you lay it all out, pray they don’t ask any tough questions and then hope to God you never have to discuss it again – this is NOT that book.

 

If you were looking for a book that explains how to convince a teen to use protection consistently and correctly, this is NOT that book. That book does not exist. Teens use condoms the way they clean their rooms. Always have and always will. You are fooling yourself if you think otherwise.


I wrote Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control: A Parent’s Survival Guide because I didn’t want to watch another generation of teens fall for the same misconceptions and outright lies their parents had. It’s written so that each chapter can stand alone – in case you’re not the kind of person to read a book cover-to-cover, although I hope you will. I invite you to dive in somewhere and let me earn the right to coach you.

 

About Karen:

 

Karen Kropf is both the program developer and one of the founders of the organization Positively Waiting! She began exposing sex, love and relationship MYTHS in 1998, while volunteering at a local pregnancy center. In 2003, she and a team of enthusiastic adults began offering free public school presentations promoting delayed sexual activity.

 

www.positivelywaiting.com

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday June 26

Susan Tschudi is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and adjunct professor at Pepperdine University and the author of Loving Someone with Attention Deficit Disorder. After counseling many couples where one partner has Attention Deficit Disorder, she realized that there were many resources available for the partner with ADD but very few existed that directly addressed the frustrations and needs of the non-ADD partner. Drawing upon her clinical experience and personal experience (her husband has ADD), Loving Someone with Attention Deficit Disorder fills the gap for the non-ADD partner by normalizing feelings, acknowledging the specific challenges involved and offering hope for the future.

 

About Susan’s book:

 

Your partner’s attention deficit disorder (ADD) may not seem like a big deal at first, but eventually, the dynamics surrounding his or her impulsivity, forgetfulness, distractibility, and restlessness can really strain your relationship. You don’t want to act like a parent, yet you may feel like you can’t rely on your partner to get things done. Loving Someone with Attention Deficit Disorder is your guide to navigating a relationship with someone with ADD so you can create healthy boundaries while remaining sympathetic to your partner’s symptoms.

 

An essential resource for every couple affected by ADD, her book will help you:

 

• Understand medication and other treatments
• Recover quickly when your partner’s symptoms frustrate you
• Establish personal boundaries to avoid excessive caretaking
• Identify and take care of your own needs so you can feel more relaxed

 

www.newharbinger.com

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday June 19

My guest will be Christine Kniffen, LCSW, who is the author of The Art of Relating: A Primer for Love. Christine offers answers and solutions to your relationship dilemmas to help you move forward and achieve a great relationship.

 

About the Book

 

Divorce rates in America present a sobering picture. It is estimated that 50% of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. People just aren’t getting it right. Time is ticking. In this crazy world, now more than ever, we need help in how to navigate the arena of love and achieve successful relationships.

 

In The Art of Relating: A Primer for Love, psychotherapist and relationship coach Christine Kniffen, LCSW offers readers a real how to when it comes to handling just about every aspect of relationships. Are you on the fence wondering if you should stay or go? Do you find that you continually lose your identity in relationships and want to know why? Do you have a pattern of gravitating to the emotionally unavailable, but don’t know how to stop it? Do you have trouble getting your needs met and can’t understand why? For just about any relationship situation that you find yourself in, The Art of Relating will help to show a clear path forward, while explaining why you have been struggling so hard up to this point.

 

According to Kniffen, “Everyone can have a great relationship and need not settle for crumbs. In the areas of self-esteem and relationship expectations, most of us require some tweaking to get what we want. Instead of wasting energy feeling bad about your love life, why don’t you try doing something about it and begin educating yourself on what is really required to have a great relationship? Then, you can finally begin to recognize the person who can actually give it to you.”

 

Whether you are tired of the dating merry-go-round or want to improve your current relationship, The Art of Relating will guide you through the typical relationship land mines and teach you how to reach the top with the one you love.

 

More About Christine

 

Christine Kniffen, LCSW is a psychotherapist who received her master’s degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Christine works in private practice specializing in Relationship Coaching and couples counseling.  She is a columnist for The Healthy Planet magazine, presents workshops on a variety of topics, is a paid lecturer and currently hosts The Art of Relating on Blog Talk Radio.

 

www.ChristineKniffen.com

TheArtofRelatingBook.com

 

Listen to Podcast

 

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday June 12

Shawn T. Smith, PsyD, is the author of The User’s Guide to the Human Mind:  Why Our Brains Make Us Unhappy, Anxious, and Neurotic and What We Can Do about It.


Shawn’s book is about living with our minds when our minds are driving us crazy. It’s about understanding what the mind is doing, why it is doing it, and how we can live our lives anyway. It is about honestly appreciating what our minds give us? even the thoughts and feelings that we do not want? and gently taking the reins when our minds are blocking our way.

 

Shawn describes his book:


Part 1 looks at ways in which the mind speaks to us, and how to gain distance from our own thoughts and feelings so that we can respond to them with more insight and freedom.

 

Part 2 discusses how to move forward when the mind wants to protect us from things that we want, but that the mind sees as dangerous.

 

Part 3 deconstructs some of the underlying mechanisms that keep us mired in unproductive behaviors. When we can observe what’s going on behind the scenes, we have the power to make our own choices rather than following the impulses of the mind.

 

Finally, Part 4 discusses the proper care and feeding of a human mind so that we can reduce the power that it holds over us.

 

Throughout this book, I refer to the mind as if it were a separate entity. Of course it isn’t separate, but if your mind is like my mind, it can certainly seem that way. The brain (the physical structure that gives us a mind?we’ll explore the distinction in chapter 2) is built in such a way that most of its functions and drives lie outside our control, just as the bulk of an iceberg lies beneath the water’s surface. But just because most of the brain’s functions and drives lie outside our control, that doesn’t mean that our minds are working against us. To the contrary, their purpose is to keep us safe. I hold two assumptions that will serve as a foundation as we explore the mind’s pursuit of safety.

 

First, different parts of the brain can act on different contingencies. That means that even when we realize we shouldn’t eat an entire box of cookies, some part of our mind believes it would be useful to do so.

 

Second, the unwanted thoughts, feelings, memories, and compulsions of our mind exist for a reason, even when we face something as trivial as a cookie. A well-functioning mind knows that salt, sugar, and fat are rare commodities?or at least they were rare in the primitive environment. That’s where our brains grew up, and the circuitry that we developed to survive in a younger and more challenging world continues to drive us to this day. Better eat that cookie while you can, says a well-oiled, survival-driven mind, the opportunity may not come again! Because they constantly “worry” about our survival, I call our minds “worry machines.” But they are worry machines with a very important purpose: they are here to help us? whether we like it or not.

 

They can be annoying, to be sure. They can mislead us and can even cause pain, but their quirky behavior, to borrow from computer programming parlance, is almost always a feature of the software, not a bug in the program. However abnormal your mind may seem to you, it is probably functioning as it should. But I don’t want you to take my word for it. Instead, check my words against your own experience.

 

Throughout this book, I invite you to do exercises and experiments designed to illuminate your mind’s surreptitious attempts to continually direct your behavior in ways both subtle and gross. When we can see what the mind is up to, we can then gain the freedom to respond according to our higher values rather than allowing subconscious processes to direct us. Instead of letting our minds drive us crazy, we can learn to harness, and even appreciate, the mind’s naturally protective tendencies.

 

For more information about Shawn T. Smith go to www.ironshrink.com

 

Listen to Podcast

 

 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday June 5

Guest: Stan Tatkin, PsyD, author of Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build A Secure Relationship.

 

Wired for Love challenges partners to experience their relationship in a totally new way. Partners will learn how to engage positively as a couple to help each other feel safe and secure by following the relationship exercises suggested in this exciting new book. In clear, concise language, Tatkin describes the ways that partners can understand and become experts on one another. He suggests building a ‘couple bubble’ wherein each partner is the most important person in the other’s life, the one individual on whom the partner can always count.

 

Tatkin’s model, based upon neuroscience, attachment and moment-to-moment arousal, helps couples keep their bonds fresh and alive. Among the messages interspersed throughout this book are:  finding ways to become experts on one another, knowing the three or four things that make a partner feel good, spontaneously making the partner feel happy and loved, avoiding the things that make the other feel bad, managing one another’s highs and lows, knowing what to do when things go awry, learning how to fight fair and have a win-win relationship that reduces stress.

 

This is a book written for partners who want to be in a thriving relationship, but is also an excellent primer for psychotherapists who want to help their patients engage in and maintain successful relationships.”

For more about Dr. Tatkin go to www.stantatkin.com

 

Listen to Podcast


 

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Relationships 2.0 on Tuesday May 29

My guest was Joe Messina, host of The Real Side with Joe Messina.

 

Listen to Podcast


 

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“Coach on the Couch with Dr. Michelle Skeen”

I was fortunate to co-host a radio show with “Coach” Ron Tunick for several months that we called “Coach on the Couch with Dr. Michelle Skeen.” Below are the archived podcasts.

Listen to Podcasts:

March 28, 2012

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to PodcastWendy Behary author of Disarming the Narcissist discussing narcissism and empathy

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast – Bart Magee, Director of Access Institute in San Francisco discussing bullying


March 22, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast


March 15, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

March 8, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

March 2, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

March 1, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

February 23, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

February 16, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

February 9, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 

February 2, 2012

Two hour live interview

Listen to Podcast

1st Hour: Listen to Podcast

2nd Hour: Listen to Podcast

 


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