When Life Falls Apart: How To Break Old Patterns, Rewrite Your Inner Scripts, and Find Purpose | Dr. Suzan Song
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When Life Falls Apart: How To Break Old Patterns, Rewrite Your Inner Scripts, and Find Purpose | Dr. Suzan Song

2026-11-02

01:00:25

Why "how am I feeling?" isn't always the right question, why resilience doesn't mean what you think it means, and how rituals can steady you.

Dr. Suzan Song is a Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, humanitarian researcher, and adviser. For more than two decades, she has dedicated her work to building resilience in individuals and communities affected by adversity. She has a private practice in Washington D.C., is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, and is a sought-after speaker on the science of healing. Her new book is Why We Suffer and How We Heal: Using Narrative, Ritual, and Purpose to Flourish Through Life's Challenges.

In this episode we talk about:

How a violent attack on her father shaped her life's work Why we recreate the painful situations we swore we'd avoid Why chasing stability causes so much of our suffering Three tools for hard times: narrative, ritual, and purpose How to spot and rewrite the scripts running our lives How people heal in countries with almost no therapists Why validation has to come before asking someone to change Why purpose is about being needed, not achieving more Why she thinks we've gotten "resilience" all wrong

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