with Matana
For the 20th anniversary of 9/11, I had the privilege of interviewing one of the few people who survived the attack from a higher floor in the tower. Ari Schonbrun worked on the 101st floor in the accounts receivables department of a stock market firm. Of their 960 employees in that office, only 302 survived. Most of those who lived were not in the office that day.
There has been a lot of talk on social media about the Netflix show My Unorthodox Life these last couple weeks, and it has brought up a lot of different emotions for me. I thought I had healed from my upbringing, but I have found that I am still broken. After listening to others express their feelings for several days, I wanted to share how it has made me feel and what I have learned from this experience.
As the Jewish Holiday of Shavuot approaches, Matana faces her Trauma, as this was the date that she had her first panic attack, which was the drive behind creating this podcast and creating a space dedicated to helping those in need, who also suffer from depression and anxiety.
Dr. Kobernick is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Founder and Director of The CBT/DBT Center. DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy which is a “behavior therapy”. She helps patients target behaviors in order to affect how they are feeling. The additional layer here is Dialectics – which is a type of philosophy that states that there are always multiple truths and more than one way of looking at something in our world. This is important because it helps us to see the grays rather than getting stuck in the black and white.
Lisa Wells is raising a son with Borderline Personality Disorder. As a little boy, her child was diagnosed with ADHD. He was throwing furniture, had to be taken out of school and went through all kinds of treatment. He endured a lot of ridicule, punishment, and rejection from school staff for not behaving in the way they expected. Lisa assumes this contributed to the trauma which led to him to develop BPD and an older teen.
Hannah Galliers has navigated through her journey with Borderline Personality Disorder, known in the United Kingdom as Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD). Although Hannah’s official diagnosis with BPD was recent, she has been on a healing journey through meditation and mindfulness practices and other therapies for several years.
Debbie DeMarco Bennett grew up in a difficult home situation and moved to foster care as a teen. She went through her own Hell, and chose to go back, to help those who live there. For Debbie, recovery started with a diagnosis.
In this short solo episode, Matana outlines the coming episodes dedicated to discussing Borderline Personality Disorder with those affected by it. From being diagnoses to determining the elusive diagnosis, this crippling disorder causes shame, panic and few known treatment options. The stigma is real, but those suffering need not be alone. Join us in upcoming episodes and hear firsthand how those affected are determined to persevere.
Within the next 24 hours, more than 3,000 teenagers in the United States will attempt to take their own lives. Seventeen of them will succeed. Jackie Simmons’ daughter, Stephanie, shared that statistic when delivering a speech which would change lives and inspire teens to come together with Stephanie’s sisters and to create, “The Teen Suicide Prevention Society.”
On December 22, 2020, 24 year old Yocheved Gourarie took her own life. Yocheved was a kind and thoughtful person. Loved by all. She was a top student, always maintaining perfect grades in school and at the time of her passing, was in the process of applying to PHD nursing programs. Posthumously, the family learned that she was accepted at Columbia University in their DNP program on track to becoming a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner. Unfortunately, her battle with mental illness raged, and she succumbed to it, not having fulfilled her dreams.