Other People's Problems

CBC

Season 5 coming June, 2024.

Real people. Real problems. Real talk. Normally, therapy sessions are totally confidential — but this podcast opens the doors. Hillary McBride and her clients want to help demystify mental health. No actors. No auditions. No artifice. This is what people really sound like when they talk about traumatic births, turbulent divorces, eating disorders and tough childhoods.

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Our Editor's Take

Other People's Problems is a podcast that discusses therapy. The host of the show, Hillary McBride, Ph.D., is a Clinical Counselor in Canada with a private practice. She is also the author of several popular psychology books. Those include The Wisdom of Your Body and Mothers, Daughters, & Body Image. In her practice, she works with clients on issues around anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and much more.

In Other People's Problems, McBride records her sessions with her clients. The clients have consented to the recording and subsequent airing of their conversations. She then plays them back for listeners. She inserts commentary in key parts of the conversation. The result is part wish fulfillment, part enlightenment. Listeners eavesdrop on conversations meant only for the therapist's ear. People are at their rawest and most vulnerable states in these moments. Every few minutes, McBride interrupts the recording for a commentary. She explains an event a layperson might have missed. For example, fragmented syntax might be the result of imperfect memory, a sign of trauma. She then tells the listener how she plans to address the situation.

Over the course of the podcast, listeners hear back from certain clients. Sloane has recurring nightmares about her wedding. All the nightmares somehow involve her mother. Maggie feels stifled in her life as a stay-at-home mom. She engages in sometimes destructive thrill-seeking behavior. Patti wants to heal from a traumatic birth experience. Belle uses food to stanch feelings of self-hate. Hannah's anxiety is affecting her professional life. Listening to people as they grow and heal is a cathartic experience.

Other People's Problems is a podcast that invites people to set out on their healing journey.

McBride exercises great compassion and caring with her patients. Listeners will hear their own stories reflected in the sessions of Other People's Problem. They might also appreciate the guided meditations that intersperse the recordings.

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Coming soon: new episodes of Other People's Problems

Coming soon: new episodes of Other People's Problems

Dr. Hillary McBride is back with a new season of Other People's Problems. Unlike most therapy podcasts that feature sessions between a therapist and a one-off client, Hillary's clients have been working with her for a long time. This is what people sound like when they talk about difficult childhoods, the stress of day-to-day-life and sudden changes to our lives with someone they trust.

Season 4

Coming soon: Season 4 of Other People's Problems

Coming soon: Season 4 of Other People's Problems

What does it mean to come out of isolation? In a year where we’ve needed it, this season is all about reconnecting with ourselves and one another. Dr. Hillary McBride helps her clients talk through a range of issues heightened by these uncertain times. An all new season of Other People’s Problems begins May 18, 2021.

Guided meditation: "Feel life flowing through your feet”

Guided meditation: "Feel life flowing through your feet”

Slow down today and join Dr. Hillary for five minutes of mindfulness. This meditation, which she wrote, is intended to help you feel grounded and more at ease. (If you're too busy today, then you may want to play it twice.)

Julia: Hiding away the hard parts

Julia: Hiding away the hard parts

As someone who has struggled with addiction and a bipolar diagnosis, Julia carefully hides away parts of herself. Dr. Hillary McBride helps her embrace her complexity, and reconcile it with her new identity as mom. “Your identity was never in addiction, was never in illness, your identity has always been something much deeper.”

Kristin: Sibling loss in early life

Kristin: Sibling loss in early life

Kristin’s brother died when she was very young and she blamed herself, the way children sometimes do. She has carried that unresolved shame for decades. As the anniversary of his death stirs up hard feelings, Dr. Hillary helps Kristin begin to heal this deep wound. She also guides adult Kristin, now a parent herself, toward saying the words she needed to hear as a child.

Ethan: A deep political rift in the family

Ethan: A deep political rift in the family

Ethan’s parents have become committed to extreme right wing ideologies, which they keep pushing on Ethan. He has tried and failed to explain to them why their views are harmful. Now, in the midst of helping his wife deal with a health crisis, Ethan has decided to step away from his relationship with his parents, despite how much it hurts. Dr. Hillary helps him navigate his grief.

Hannah: Stop pleasing and start trusting connection

Hannah: Stop pleasing and start trusting connection

Hannah has found a range of ways to earn love and protect herself from getting hurt. In Dr. Hillary McBride’s words, she “has found a way to stay connected to people by figuring out who they want her to be, and then being that.” The two work to help Hannah trust that she can show up as her authentic self, and to believe that she is lovable as she is.

Vanessa: Surviving the fear that 'everyone leaves'

Vanessa: Surviving the fear that 'everyone leaves'

Dr. Hillary needs to tell her longtime client Vanessa that she’s pregnant and that they'll soon need to take a break, when Hillary goes on maternity leave. This is hard to hear for Vanessa, who has been left, physically and emotionally, by important people in her life when she needed them most. Hillary helps Vanessa navigate the pain of feeling abandoned while also assuring her: although their situation will change, their bond is secure.

Kristin: Let yourself be excited about friendship

Kristin: Let yourself be excited about friendship

Kristin recognizes she feels isolated and alone, at least in part because she’s kept people at a distance to protect herself from getting hurt. Dr. Hillary uses her own relationship with Kristin to model friendship and the excitement that can come from deep connection.

Guided meditation: The shape of breathing

Guided meditation: The shape of breathing

As we wind down the season, Dr. Hillary McBride invites you to catch your breath and feel yourself in this particular moment. Imagining as you exhale that this breath could support you in the practice of letting go.

Patti: You don’t need to be perfect to be lovable

Patti: You don’t need to be perfect to be lovable

A COVID scare in the kids’ group Patti manages wakes up the perfectionist inside her — the part of her that feels she needs to be perfect in order to deserve connection with others. She and Dr. Hillary trace this feeling back to her younger years, and help Patti draw from her personal growth to comfort that version of herself.

Season 3

Andrew: Opening up during lockdown

Andrew: Opening up during lockdown

Andrew has been working on connecting with others. Although he is making great strides, Andrew is finding it hard to connect with his wife. As the corona virus forces him to close his restaurant and isolate at home with his family, Andrew must get vulnerable and ask for what he's been longing for — intimacy.

Coming soon: new episodes of Other People's Problems

Coming soon: new episodes of Other People's Problems

Dr. Hillary McBride is back with a new season of Other People's Problems. Unlike most therapy podcasts that feature sessions between a therapist and a one-off client, Hillary's clients have been working with her for a long time. This is what people sound like when they talk about difficult childhoods, the stress of day-to-day-life and sudden changes to our lives with someone they trust.

Lacey: Healing from a neglectful mother

Lacey: Healing from a neglectful mother

Growing up, there was a lot of conflict in Lacey’s family. After her parents divorced, the conflict stopped, but Lacey and her sister were often left alone. By connecting with her younger self, Lacey realises what she was missing: being seen and loved just as she is. Now, Lacey is doing her best to let go of the childhood patterns — the shield — that once protected her, in hopes of creating healthier ways of being for herself and her children.

Tom: Riding big waves of emotion

Tom: Riding big waves of emotion

Tom connects with Hillary over Zoom during a lunch break at work. He's been working to understand and experience his emotions, connect with his wife and kids, and compassionately factor in his ADHD. Hillary is amazed at how far Tom has come from their first session to where he is today, taking the time to take care of himself, and model for his kids how to express big feelings appropriately when they come up.

Emily: Letting yourself be sad

Emily: Letting yourself be sad

Emily was taught as a kid to avoid some of her emotions, including sadness. Now as an adult, she is learning how to sit with her feelings without pushing them away. She hopes to resolve past traumas and develop new ways of coping with the ups and downs of life.

Louise: Surviving an eating disorder and COVID-19 (Plus, a special interview with Hillary)

Louise: Surviving an eating disorder and COVID-19 (Plus, a special interview with Hillary)

Louise had to be hospitalized because of anorexia. In the hospital, she contracted COVID-19 and has had to be isolated for weeks. She and Hillary speak compassionately to the eating disorder part of Louise for how it has helped her cope with her suffering, and ask it to move aside so that the real Louise, the parts of her that want to live fully, can begin to take over. Plus, we hear a candid interview with Hillary, who has personal experience with an eating disorder. NOTE: This conversation was recorded over video conferencing software over weak hospital wifi, and the audio quality is hard to understand at times. We’ve done our best to improve it but recommend listening in a quiet space with good headphones.

Andrew: Unlocking memories of childhood sexual abuse

Andrew: Unlocking memories of childhood sexual abuse

As a teenager, Andrew was sexually abused by someone he trusted. Even though the perpetrator was an adult, and to an outsider it would be a clear case of child sexual abuse, the experience felt more complex to him at the time.

Vanessa: “The life I have isn’t working”

Vanessa: “The life I have isn’t working”

Vanessa’s daily life is difficult. Between coping with the demands of work and raising a daughter with special needs, Vanessa is falling into old patterns of negative thinking and self-silencing. Can she learn to break old patterns and recognize her own feelings of loneliness?

Louise: Ready to feel alive

Louise: Ready to feel alive

It’s been a few weeks since we released a bonus episode from Louise about being hospitalized for anorexia and contracting COVID-19 in the hospital. Now, she’s home, healing, and determined to take steps toward recovering from her eating disorder and letting her true self shine through.

Lacey: Looking back with accepting eyes, forward to more joy

Lacey: Looking back with accepting eyes, forward to more joy

As we know from the earlier episode with Lacey, she grew up with a mother who neglected her. It has left her with a deep sense she is not good enough. In this episode, Hillary and Lacey travel back to Lacey’s childhood home to witness the situation through the eyes of caring responsible adults who see little Lacey’s suffering and take care of her.