Psychologists Off the Clock: 375. From Crisis to Curiosity with Meg McKelvie and Debbie Sorensen

Are you in the midst of a midlife transition, grappling with big questions about purpose, change, and self-discovery?

For this week’s episode, cohost Debbie Sorensen celebrates her 50th birthday with a discussion on the transformative period of midlife with her friend, Dr. Meg McKelvie. 

A period rich with psychological shifts, existential questions, and challenges in finding deeper meaning, they get into acceptance and commitment therapy, emotional, psychical and cognitive changes, ways to overcome people-pleasing habits, and much much more. 

With practical exercises and writing practices, this episode is a gift to anyone navigating midlife transitions and relationships, offering insight, reflection, and a path toward deeper understanding and fulfilling connections. We hope you enjoy this heartfelt and poignant conversation! 

• Opportunities that midlife brings for deeper understanding and transformation

• Confronting body changes and the aging process 

• How your relationships can become deeper in midlife; letting go of surface-level bonds and embracing genuine honesty and shared experiences

• The myth of the midlife crisis and how, contrary to what stereotypes lead us to believe, it frequently involves a sharp internal existential shift rather than a dramatic upheaval

• Living with unanswered questions and learning to sit with the discomfort of uncertainty

• Ways you can cultivate a personal space that nurtures self-reflection and self-sufficiency

• The lessons that regret can teach us

• The value of sitting with challenging emotions such as anger and grief, and how these feelings can provide critical insights into your life 

• The difference between body neutrality and body positivity and how stepping back from the internal debate about your body can lead to a more peaceful relationship with yourself

Psychologists Off the Clock: 199. Belonging From the Inside Out with Meg McKelvie

Humans are social animals by nature. Throughout our existence, it has proved important to belong to groups in order to survive and thrive in our environments. The yearning to belong is so strong that, when it’s mismanaged, it can control our behavior in unhelpful ways that are inconsistent with our relationship values. In this episode of Psychologists Off the Clock, Debbie talks with her friend and colleague Meg McKelvie, PhD, Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of ImpACT Psychology Colorado, about belonging. Together they unpack what it means to belong from the inside-out and provide practical advice on fostering a sense of belonging. Grab a friend, and listen in today to learn about embracing the ordinary, clarifying your values, expressive writing, and much, much more!

Listen and Learn:

• About Debbie and Diana’s experiences with “belonging”

• What you may have in common with sea anemones when it comes to belonging and vulnerability

• Meg’s expert definition of belonging and why belonging is so crucial to us as humans

• The relationship between belonging, birthright, and social justice

• What typically gets in the way of people feeling a sense of belonging

• How belonging is different from being liked (spoiler alert: belonging is not a popularity contest!)

• Why you might consider dropping the desire to be special and embracing the ordinary

• A way to clarify the motives behind your actions (and clarify your values in the process!)

• The hidden gifts of being ordinary

• What it means to belong from the inside-out and the outside-in, and practical advice for how to foster these types of belonging

• How Meg found a greater sense of belonging from the inside out in her life

• The important differences between self-acceptance and belonging

• Meg’s thoughts on jealousy and competition and how they impact experiences of belonging

• How expressive writing it can be helpful in processing emotions

• How loneliness and belonging are interrelated 

• Meg’s evidence-based suggestions for building meaningful connections with others

ImpACT Psychology Colorado: Online Interview with Steven Hayes, Originator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Video recording of an online Q&A with Steve Hayes about A Liberated Mind, hosted by ImpACT Psychology Colorado. Listen to Steve Hayes open up and inspire us with his remarks about Belonging, Transcendence, Pivoting, and Yearnings. He talks to therapists about learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and shares his personal story of writing this important book.