When does being “nice” start hurting your health? We explore the surprising science that links suppressed emotions—especially healthy anger and buried grief—to immune function, inflammation, and long-term disease risk. Drawing on affective neuroscience, we break down the core mammalian systems wired for rage, fear, panic and grief, care, seeking, and play, and explain why these circuits exist to protect boundaries and connection, not to create chaos.

Gabor Maté's website: https://drgabormate.com/

I share how anger operates as a boundary-setting signal that says something vital: this is not okay. When that signal gets muted to keep relationships intact, the immune system can mirror the shutdown. You’ll hear clear, practical language for telling the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, plus simple steps to honor your limits without escalating conflict—naming the feeling, identifying the crossed boundary, and choosing proportionate action. We also unpack how childhood survival strategies, like staying quiet to preserve attachment, can turn into adult patterns of chronic niceness, migraines, flares, and burnout.

We look at striking research: longer survival among people with ALS who expressed anger, and a large study of women showing higher mortality when marital unhappiness stayed unspoken. The takeaway is not to explode; it’s to listen to the body’s early alarms and speak plain truths before stress hardens into illness. If you’ve ever wondered why “the good die young,” this conversation reframes goodness as self-respect, not self-erasure.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs better boundaries, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find these tools. Your story matters—what boundary will you protect today?

Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. If you find these episodes valuable, I’d be grateful if you left a 5-star review. As a thank-you, I’ll send you free access to The Complete Mindfulness Toolkit — everything you need to deepen mindfulness and make a greater impact. Just leave the review and let me know, and I’ll send it your way. Thank you for helping us share mindfulness with others.

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For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

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We map a three-stage approach to using mindfulness for PTSD: immediate self-soothing, reconnecting with emotions, and long-term integration. A short guided practice shows how breath, grounding, and softening cues can create ease while we set clear safety guardrails.

• framing mindfulness for PTSD and its stages
• self-soothing practices for the immediate aftermath
• reconnecting with emotions with courage and choice
• integrating trauma healing over the long term
• simple guided breathing and body softening
• safety boundaries, when to pause, and support options
• rebuilding confidence, self-esteem, and relationships

If you experience a psychiatric emergency, please call your doctor and call 911 to get some support

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

Clarity gets practical when you treat attention like a craft. We open the pages of Joseph Goldstein’s The Experience of Insight and translate retreat-honed wisdom into tools you can actually use: breath you don’t control, movement you feel from the inside, and the quiet power of seeing intention before action. No mystique, no shortcuts—just a clean method for meeting each moment without the usual tug of wanting and resisting.

We start with the mental frame that steadies practice: the three refuges as psychological anchors and ethical precepts as the simplest way to clear noise from the mind. From there we build the engine of bare attention—observation without judgment, comparison, or prediction—using two precise breath anchors (abdomen or nostrils), then carry mindfulness into walking and eating. Catching the urge before the move creates a tiny but decisive gap, where choice appears and the story of “me” loosens. Along the way we lean on the Noble Eightfold Path, balancing right effort like a guitar string, and unpack how impermanence reframes identity from a solid self into a flowing process.

We also face the classic obstacles head on. The five hindrances—sense desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, doubt—arrive for everyone. The antidote is immediate mindfulness: notice the visitor, feel its texture, and refrain from feeding it. We explore ultimate realities—material qualities, consciousness, mental factors, and the unconditioned—and examine how concepts like time and ownership can be useful yet blinding. Finally, we talk integration: daily sitting that actually happens, a silent meal to restore sensitivity, returning to the breath in stress, and remembering death as an advisor that sharpens meaning. The monkey trap offers a closing image: the fist that won’t let go keeps us stuck; the open hand walks free.

If this lands, subscribe, share with a friend who loves clear practice, and leave a short review telling us where you first notice intention—breath, step, or spoon?

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Since 2015, we've trained over 2,000 people to teach mindfulness in healthcare, business, education, yoga, sports teams, and the U.S. Government.

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Certify At Your Own Pace: Just complete 40 hours of self-paced meditation + online workbook completion with lifetime access to personalized support.

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