It hurts to have unmet needs. And it sucks to scurry after crumbs when you’re starving. Join Kelly Brogan MD, as she teaches us how our pain points are portals. She’ll help you discover a world where every seeming challenge is a new chapter in your most audacious story. Plot twists, body symptoms, and heartbreak each represent an opportunity to own ourselves and learn to better wield the power of choice. Kelly will take you on a reclamation journey from the battlefield of victim consciousness to the sovereignty of self-devoted pleasure and expose every surprising place you’ve given your power away. Explore the tools you’ll need to find out what you want, how to ask for it and how to stand in fierce alignment with yourself.Kelly Brogan is a soul alchemist and threshold guardian devoted to the transformation of collective consciousness. As a young know-it-all atheist, candy-addict, straight-A MIT neuroscience major and Ivy-league trained psychiatrist, she specialized in feeding women, herself included, straight into the mouth of the medicated beast. After a Hashimoto’s healing journey inspired her to sound the alarm on the bait-and-switch of big pharma, she became a renegade activist—authoring the New York Times bestseller, A Mind of Your Own, and its follow-up, Own Your Self; co-editing the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression; and eventually becoming an honorary member of the Disinformation Dozen. She is the creatrix of Vital Mind Reset, the online health reclamation program, and the membership community Vital Life Project. She’s a human, cat, and chicken mom.
It hurts to have unmet needs. And it sucks to scurry after crumbs when you’re starving. Join Kelly Brogan MD, as she teaches us how our pain points are portals. She’ll help you discover a world where every seeming challenge is a new chapter in your most audacious story. Plot twists, body symptoms, and heartbreak each represent an opportunity to own ourselves and learn to better wield the power of choice. Kelly will take you on a reclamation journey from the battlefield of victim consciousness to the sovereignty of self-devoted pleasure and expose every surprising place you’ve given your power away. Explore the tools you’ll need to find out what you want, how to ask for it and how to stand in fierce alignment with yourself.Kelly Brogan is a soul alchemist and threshold guardian devoted to the transformation of collective consciousness. As a young know-it-all atheist, candy-addict, straight-A MIT neuroscience major and Ivy-league trained psychiatrist, she specialized in feeding women, herself included, straight into the mouth of the medicated beast. After a Hashimoto’s healing journey inspired her to sound the alarm on the bait-and-switch of big pharma, she became a renegade activist—authoring the New York Times bestseller, A Mind of Your Own, and its follow-up, Own Your Self; co-editing the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression; and eventually becoming an honorary member of the Disinformation Dozen. She is the creatrix of Vital Mind Reset, the online health reclamation program, and the membership community Vital Life Project. She’s a human, cat, and chicken mom.
Ask Kelly your burning questions in her monthly Vital Life Project membership.
You’ve been gaslit into distrusting your own impulses—here’s how to take them back.
In this episode, Kelly dives deep into one of the most powerful yet overlooked skills in personal growth: reclaiming your native desires. She unpacks a brilliant question from her Vital Life Project community—what’s the difference between discernment and judgment?—and uses it to expose the subtle ways we self-domesticate, override our needs, and live out of “shoulds” instead of self-trust.
Through intimate personal stories (yes, including peeing mid-interview and belting into the void with a vocal coach), Kelly reveals how she’s rebuilt a relationship with her own body, voice, and creative fire—not by changing who she is, but by expanding her awareness and nervous system capacity to hold discomfort. If you’ve ever felt caught between the urge to grow and the desire to be accepted as you are, this episode is your permission slip to do both. Expect provocative insights, radical reframes, and one audacious answer you won’t forget.
You’ll Learn:
Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction
[00:38] The difference between discernment and judgment
[01:22] When it might be time to pause with a coach
[02:00] How structure and discipline build capacity
[02:45] Why rituals help reclaim personal choice
[03:30] Transitioning from “I should” to “I want”
[04:10] Honoring impulses as a path to healing
[05:00] Restoring trust in cravings like dark chocolate
[05:55] Biological impulses and meeting basic needs
[06:50] Peeing as a practice of self-trust
[07:30] The fear of creative self-expression
[08:15] What awareness really means
[09:05] Singing in front of a stranger despite fear
[10:00] How awareness builds nervous system capacity
[10:45] The trap of self-improvement driven by rejection
[11:35] Reclaiming childhood desires as valid
[12:10] Real growth comes from self-acceptance
[12:55] Why change isn’t the real goal
[13:30] Romantic relationships and the illusion of change
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Find more from Kelly:
Instagram: @kellybroganmd
Website: kellybroganmd.com
Join Kelly's monthly membership, Vital Life Project here.
Get Kelly’s new book The Reclaimed Woman here and join the companion program, Reclaimed, here.
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