Health Bite

230.From Dissonance to Dialogue: The Psychology of Connection in Challenging Times with Shahrzad Jalali

• Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Share episode

Leave Health Bite a Feedback.Click This Link.

What if the way we handle conflict and division could actually heal our fractured world – starting with healing ourselves?

In our increasingly polarized times, we're all feeling the weight of division – whether it's global tensions, political discord, or conflicts closer to home. But what if the key to bridging these divides isn't found in changing others, but in understanding the deep psychological forces that drive us apart?

In this deeply personal and universally relevant episode of Health Bite, Dr. Adrienne Youdim sits down with psychotherapist and author Shahrzad Jalali to explore what lies beneath our current climate of division and how we can remain grounded, connected, and well in turbulent times.

Who is Shahrzad Jalali?

  • Licensed psychotherapist with over a decade of clinical experience
  • Author of the upcoming book "The Fire That Makes Us" (releasing September 9,2025)
  • Iranian-American who brings both personal and professional insight to understanding identity, trauma, and healing
  • Specialist in somatic therapy and intergenerational trauma work

What You'll Discover in This Episode:

  • How fear and uncertainty prime our brains to see the world in dangerous binaries (ally vs. enemy, safe vs. dangerous)
  • The neurobiological roots of tribal thinking and why group belonging equals survival in our nervous systems
  • How to distinguish between your personal trauma and inherited intergenerational wounds

Why This Episode Matters: 

Whether you're dealing with family tensions, workplace conflicts, or feeling overwhelmed by world events, this conversation offers a path forward that starts with inner work. Dr. Jalali shows us how personal healing and collective healing are interconnected – and how each of us taking responsibility for our own regulation can create ripple effects of positive change.

This episode will help you:

  • Understand why you feel so activated by certain conflicts and how to create space before reacting
  • Navigate conversations with people who hold opposing views without losing your center
  • Break free from the "us versus them" mentality that keeps us stuck in cycles of division

Connect with Shahrzad Jalali:

Ways that Dr. Adrienne Youdim Can Support You

  • Join the Monthly Free Mind-Body Workshops: Participate in engaging mind-body practices designed to help manage your stress response. Register here.
  • Sign Up for the Newsletter: Stay updated with valuable insights and resources by subscribing to the newsletter. Sign up here.
  • Freebie alert. Register for our monthly free MindBody Workshop and receive a downloadable guide on emotional labeling to help you manage your emotions effectively.


Connect with Dr. Adrienne Youdim

Adrienne Youdim

Welcome back, listeners. Welcome back to Health Bite, the podcast where I explore essential ingredients to nourishing our physical, emotional, and professional health and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim, and today we have a conversation that feels both deeply personal to me and universally timely, which is how we navigate division in a world that is increasingly feeling divided and polarized. I'm here with a special guest, psychotherapist, author of the soon-to-be-published book, The Fire That Makes Us, Shahrzad Jalali. She, like me, shares Iranian roots, but from different cultural backgrounds. And together, we're going to explore what lies beneath our current climate of division and how identity and fear shape our relationships and most importantly, how we can remain grounded, connected, and well. Welcome to the podcast.



 Shahrzad Jalali

Thank you so much. Wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.



Adrienne Youdim

It's my pleasure. And, you know, we, Shahrzad, you and I recently met and immediately when I saw you, I saw myself, my sisters, my family in your eyes. You share the beautiful classic Persian features. And though we come from the same roots, we have cultural backgrounds and beginnings. And so I thought we'd use this opportunity to touch into the time of global tension and divisiveness. And it's not just global. As we speak, there is a lot of chaos happening right here in Los Angeles, near to where both of us are. And so I want to start with this question, which is, how do you think that our perceptions of our sameness or not influences how we experience this divisiveness? And as a follow-up to that, why this feels so present right now?



 Shahrzad Jalali

That's a great question to start with. So when we recognize ourselves in an other, in their features, their story, or cultural backgrounds, it activates a sense of shared humanity. That sameness can act as a bridge in a world that constantly highlights differences. But when global events reinforce polarizing narratives, that recognition can actually bring some dissonance or grief because we're reminded that people who feel actually very familiar to us can still end up on opposing sides. So psychologically, this dissonance can be deeply destabilizing. It pushes us to hold tension. How can someone like me believe in something so different than me? And that's where real internal work begins, sitting with that paradox without needing immediate resolution. So kind of allowing it to be that there could be someone who holds a point of view very different than mine. I think the reason it's so prominent right now, it's because we're dealing with it on multiple layers. So all of us kind of come face to face with it on a regular basis.



Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, and I want to explore a little bit more two points that came to mind. One that there seems to be this underlying sense of uncertainty, which then leads to fear. And to what degree that uncertainty drives this circumstance or this experience.



 Shahrzad Jalali

So fear narrows the mind's capacity, right? And uncertainty activates the nervous system's threat response. So when these two things happen together, they prime the brain to seek clarity in binaries, right? So ally, enemy, safe, dangerous. So once this wiring is in place, even neutral or ambiguous information gets interpreted through the lens of suspicion. or bias as we see so clearly right now. So recognizing we're being pulled in that pattern requires somatic and cognitive awareness. So for me to have a lot of understanding of what's happening in my psyche, what's happening in my body, noticing where we're emotionally activated and wanting to react to a phenomenon versus having the ability to regulate and respond. So I would say the key is slowing down and then cutting our impulses, cutting our reactions, and going more to actual cognitive responses.



Adrienne Youdim

It sounds very clear.



 Shahrzad Jalali

But very tough to do.



Adrienne Youdim

Right, but very challenging. And even the awareness is challenging. I mean, the way you explain it again, it makes so much sense to me. But to your point, It is the situations are kind of hitting on very ingrained neurobiological reactivities that again are kind of hardwired in our neurobiology. On top of that, you know, when we are presented with scenarios like this, it's very clear to see the other person. Oh, they're being so reactive. Oh, they're being so, you know, nonsensical perhaps. So how does one in that moment, how can you really bring about that awareness?



 Shahrzad Jalali

Yes, that's a great question. So you're right, it is a very neurobiological response because from an evolutionary standpoint, group belongings equated safety and survival, right? The nervous system still tracks perceived rejection or exclusion as a kind of danger to this day. So that's why people cling to ideologies or identities of, tribal kind of connections. This regulates our fear response of not surviving something. So groups still give us structure, clarity, sense of emotional anchoring. It's a deeply human response, I would say. But when unexamined, it also reinforces walls versus bridges. So, you know, if I don't have enough awareness around this, I can say that otherness is bad, whatever, that's not me is wrong, right? So I would say the most important way to address this is to regulate our own nervous system. Because if you think about it, all these negative responses come from dysregulation. So if each of us takes on the responsibility to work on ourselves, then we kind of transfer that into a collective response. But the problem is, I think we're always looking at others to do something differently. And none of us identify ourselves as part of the problem, but we each are in our own individual way. And no problem gets created in society in a vacuum. We all contribute to it.



Adrienne Youdim

Absolutely. And I think in terms of that regulation, I, you know, even I'm kind of thinking about my own personal conversations, right? And these are issues that are charged. They evoke our emotion, they evoke our passion. But I recognize that the conversations that just start with a tone of calm and ease, immediately, just that, before I even get to the point of even knowing what the other person is going to say, evokes that in me. And immediately, just that setting of the tone can set the tone of the conversation and also almost determine the outcome.



 Shahrzad Jalali

Yes, very true. So we first want to start with regulating the body, then engaging the mind, right? So when values or identities essentially feel threatened, I try to kind of encourage the clients to slow down their breathing, feel their feet on the ground, and name whatever's happening inside, not just outside, right? When we do this, we open space for curiosity, because curiosity is the healthiest state of mind. This is why we do well when we're children, because we're curious. There's not much judgment, right? Whatever comes our way, we want to touch, we want to try, we're interested in it, right? So the person who's afraid has lost this. They're very focused on how can I win, right? Because they're afraid of losing something. So when clients learn to anchor in their own emotional safety, and I'm talking about this from a therapeutic perspective, obviously we all do this outside of therapy on a daily basis as well, we feel emotional safety. And from that space, because we no longer want to point out our point of view, we are curious to hear somebody else's. So we're no longer attacking, we're listening. And I think things start to move when we start to listen.



Adrienne Youdim

Yeah. Curiosity without judgment.



 Shahrzad Jalali

Correct. We don't have to like the other person's point of view. I just want to point that out because often when I talk about this, people say, well, they're wrong. How can I just be quiet and not say anything? Well, they're wrong because this is my perspective. It doesn't necessarily make them wrong. Over the years with scientific theories and books, I remember when I was younger, I would abide by one thing and I would think this is it. Later on, as I shifted, my perspective shifted, I learned more. Certain things that I felt like this was the Bible no longer felt that way for me. And other points of view that at that point were not attractive to me now gained some resonance for me because things shift for you over the years, right? So the person that I am today, the belief system that I have today, If I do things right, won't be the same 10 years from now, right? So how can I be so rooted in the fact that this is it? What I am saying is the entire truth and nothing else exists. There's always two sides to every story.



Adrienne Youdim

That's true. And if we're really operating from a place of advocacy, which is a word that is being used a lot these days, right? People are advocating or think that they're advocating for another group. Really, advocacy begins with understanding, right? And secondly, I was going to say that we can engage in advocacy when we are in conflict with the other person. And so I'm just kind of summarizing what you're saying and trying to process it because it almost feels like to be curious and nonjudgmental of the person, the very person that perhaps holds the values or the beliefs that you don't espouse, that really is the core of true advocacy.



 Shahrzad Jalali

And growth and emotional growth, right? Because that's when we start to broaden our horizons. And I think we just needed that in order to do well in life, in everything. But we all wear these particular, I guess, glasses that only sees things from a particular lens. And that is the lens of our value systems, our upbringing, our parental guidance, our societal guidance, whatever it is that I was exposed to. Because I was definitely exposed to something different than you, right? Given that we had two different life experiences. Hence, I feel like what I see is the truth in its entirety, which is not the truth at all. And you feel the same. So if we can broaden our perspective enough to say, okay, this is what I see, but this may not be the entire truth. Kind of like we've all come across that story of the elephant that a bunch of blind people are touching the elephant. If you were touching the back, you would think it's one thing. If you were touching the leg, you would think it's one thing. If you were touching the trunk, you would think it's something different. So I think we do that in life. We go into things blindly, and we just kind of envision that this is it. And we have no willingness to just be open. I'm not even asking us to take the other person's perspective into our own, because that's hard to do. That takes a lot of growth. But at least be open to the fact that this is not the entire truth. That's all.



Adrienne Youdim

You know, earlier you mentioned kind of the core psychological principles that this touches on, or core psychological needs that these issues touch upon. And thinking about core psychological needs, don't you think it is helpful to recognize that at the very core, belonging is something that we are all wishing for, right? For me, from my perspective, even if I disagree with you, at the end of the day, you and I are seeking the same sense of belonging and even closeness. Would you agree with that?



 Shahrzad Jalali

Absolutely. So division often arises as a psychological defense. both individually and collectively. When people feel uncertain, unsafe, or emotionally overwhelmed, the brain looks for simplicity and certainty. So polarization offers a shortcut, kind of like good versus bad, us versus them. It creates this illusion of clarity and control. on a collective level, the same dynamic gets reinforced through social narratives, media loops, and group identity, turning fear into an ideology. But in its essence, you're absolutely right that we're all looking for the same thing, which is connecting to others because we feel safe that way.



Adrienne Youdim

It almost feels like even though it's the harder path to be in disagreement, it also feels like almost a cop-out. You know, to engage in this way is a cop-out from doing the hard work of really leaning in to a difficult or an uncomfortable connection. Yeah, very true. So, I'm curious about, like, historic experiences. So I think about myself, for example. You know, I was born in the United States. I see myself both fully American, but also born to immigrants from Iran. And while I didn't flee Iran, you know, for religious persecution, my family members did. And so I'm curious, or even, you know, thinking back to a few years ago, the women's life freedom movement, where there was an is ongoing right this trauma that it began over 40 years ago and is ongoing in that country. I never had to wear a hijab. I never had my rights taken away from me. But when that happened, even though I've never lived there, I really felt it to my core or in my core. The sense of grief and despair over what was happening in that country was very concrete and visceral for me. And yet it's not my experience, right? So I wonder if you can speak to past trauma, inherited trauma, and this visceral experience that many of us have around circumstances that don't necessarily belong to us.



 Shahrzad Jalali

What you're referring to is actually intergenerational wounds, which is very, very hasn't in the realm of psychology these days, because prior to Jung, we were under the impression, I mean, Freud was a big advocate of whatever happens in our unconscious is our conscious, it's personal unconscious. Jung brought a different layer of the unconscious. He spoke of the collective. So yes, I as a human carry my own personal unconscious, but I also carry the collective, which is humankind, which is my family, my ancestors, what my people went through essentially, right? So self-reflection creates cause between triggers and reaction, generally speaking, right? So it allows us to ask, is this mine or is this inherited? Right? Intergenerational wounds, especially around race, identity, often live in the body long before they're conscious in the mind. So you and I feel it without even recognizing it cognitively. Right? Awareness opens doors to healing by making space to grieve it. and then see that I have a choice. Yes, this doesn't necessarily belong to me, but people like me, who I'm connected to, who I care about, have gone through this experience, so I vicariously feel their pain. And I can show up for them, I can fight for them, I can fight with them, but what does that look like? Does it have to be in an aggressive way? Does it have to be in a way that creates division in some shape or form? So we can't change what we don't acknowledge first. So I think it's very important to acknowledge this collective, this individual unconscious, and how it impacts us so we can look for ways to grow.



Adrienne Youdim

What if somebody doesn't even know? What if, you know, there's a hunch, you know, your parents came from a region in which there was distress or your grandparents faced distress? Oftentimes, at least culturally, we don't talk about these things, right? Bygones are bygones. We pull ourselves or our parents pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's not something that's even talked about. How would one even go about short of, you know, having the conversation with family members? But let's say that's not feasible. How would one go about exploring exploring this or uncovering this if it really is not conscious and there is no way, you know, correct.



 Shahrzad Jalali

So for most of us, the unconscious actually runs the show. So if we're feeling, not for most of us, for all of us in many ways. So if we're feeling depressed, if we're feeling anxious, usually the first thing we do in a therapeutic format is we start looking for reasons in our everyday life. Sometimes people come to me and they say, you know what? My life is actually great. I don't have any issues. I'm doing well. My spouse is doing well. My kids are doing well. And that's when we start to realize there is something happening here that's beyond this moment, right? And to your point, not everyone has awareness. Some people don't even have parents they can go back to, right? Or they've been separated from them or they've lost them early on. It is very important for people who raise children to give children their narrative. Because the more you know, the more you can define yourself, the more you can define yourself, the stronger your sense of self is. Now, when we don't have that narrative, I think we need to put our own spin on it and somehow try to basically tell our own story so that we come to some form of peace with it, even if parts of it have gaps in them. We can always use our imagination, we can go to our felt sense, we can go to our feelings and kind of try to make sense of our narrative because I think a lot of division, a lot of fragmentation in humans come from not having that piece of narrative. A lot of families, if you go to them, they don't like to talk about any negative themes. So let's say your mother's mother was an alcoholic. Every time you ask your mother about your grandmother, they say, oh, I don't want to talk about that, or don't worry about that, or that doesn't concern you. Well, it does because that's where I came from, to some extent, I carry the genetic pool, I carry the emotional burdens that person suffered. The more I know, the more I can unpack, the more I can name it, the more I can, you know, kind of regulate my emotions around it. So it's very important to put these pieces together because we're all born into wholeness essentially. Life fragments us. I don't care if the best parents in the world raise you, which none of us actually have that, but let's say in a utopic world that happens. Even then, just the birth experience, going through life, trying to survive it, it can fragment people very easily. So the more you build awareness around that, the more you can have a tool to regulate yourself from that fragmentation.



Adrienne Youdim

You know, I imagine And I'll just speak from my own personal experience. I consider myself a very doctor-y doctor. And by that I mean, you know, Western trained. And while I consider myself spiritual, I hold that truth, evidence, you know, what I can actually see with my own eyes, I hold high regard for what is concrete and tangible. What would you say to somebody who would say like, using my imagination, you know, like that sounds, it sounds Pollyannish or it sounds fabricated, is wanting to know the truth or needing that certainty at odds with actually doing the therapeutic work that helps us navigate that?



 Shahrzad Jalali

You know what matters here is essentially your felt sense around something, right? In psychotherapy, the past, I wanna say two, three decades, what's been very dominating is cognitive behavioral therapy. So we look at our thoughts kind of like you were talking about tangible evidence-based concrete thoughts, and we try to reformat them when necessary to have a different feeling about it, right? But at the end of the day, what we come back to is as important as all these tangible thoughts are, What really dominates a human is their emotional experience and their emotional realm. Now, it's very true that these emotions are based in cognition. Right? So when we have that concrete thought, we want to go back to it. But when we don't, we want to take the other way. So in psychotherapy, we do work from two different domains. We do top-down processing, which is we go through our thoughts and fix what's happening sensationally in the body. And sometimes when that's not accessible, we do bottom-up work, which is we go to the body and fix the sensational realm to get to a belief system, a cognitive domain that feels more tangible for me, that feels more intact, that makes me function better. So this is one of those domains where we don't have access to the thought necessarily to begin with. So we start with the felt sense in the body. I am feeling empty. I am feeling dysregulated. I am feeling very chaotic. So we sit with that. We try to kind of put names to it. We try to experience the feeling. We try to grief the feeling. Clearly, there's some form of pain or hurt that I'm experiencing. Now, it could be mine. It could be generational wounding. It could be anything, right? But we start from there and see where we end up. Keep in mind, this is not a court of law. We're not looking for the truth. what we're looking for is getting relief from the pain. And in order to do that is to go through the sensation.



Adrienne Youdim

And so this bodily work that you describe is that does that come under the category of somatic therapies? Can you can you define that and explain what somatic therapies are?



 Shahrzad Jalali

Yes. So somatic experiencing, which is Peter Levine's work mainly, and I would say that's the bread and butter of somatic work essentially. A lot of different practitioners have done other types of work around it and have given it different names. But essentially what happens in it is you invite the person sitting in front of you, because you don't have to necessarily be a psychologist to do this. Body workers do this. Any kind of practitioners can get training in it essentially. is to build awareness about how a felt sense shows up in the body. What do I mean by this? Imagine, I mean, don't imagine, we can actually do it. I can ask you right now, describe to me what's happening. You immediately went to your breath. So that was interesting for me, right? It felt like you needed a breath. So what does that tell you?



Adrienne Youdim

I find that when I'm in a state of anxiety or uncertainty, it dawns on me that I haven't taken a breath. I'm holding my breath.



 Shahrzad Jalali

That's an excellent example. So now you recognize a few things. I'm feeling a little bit anxious. I am feeling a little bit uncertain. As such, I don't breathe. as regularly as I should. So when I take a deep breath, it just opens up space for me to maybe explore some of those, I'm just gonna call them negative emotions for lack of a better word, because we tend to categorize emotions to things that we like and things that we don't, right? They're not necessarily negative. They're just emotions. But that's a form of somatic work. That's a very simple, a you know kind of somatic experience where you notice that your breath is connected to your emotions that we do this with everything we notice this with muscle tension if there's tightness somewhere in the body how we kind of escape from feeling difficult emotions how we dissociate so we bring awareness to all of that we don't just do talk therapy we do talk therapy in connection to how the body experiences these thoughts. And that's where actual change happens. Because prior to this, what psychology did was just be focused on the thoughts. And what we noticed was people talk about something for many, many years, but nothing would change. And the reason was that you re-traumatized yourself by experiencing that in the same body state that you experienced the first time around. So this is what initially we're trying to do in somatic work, which is allowing the person to have that thought be presented or that experience an event without having the same escalated bodily response that they initially had to it.



Adrienne Youdim

Isn't it true that it's kind of like a double-edged sword? To speak about something is to bring awareness to it, perhaps create validation, etc. But then in retelling the narrative, not only to your point, may people bring up that state, right? But isn't it true that you're also kind of ingraining those patterns of mind, right? So it's almost like you're hardwiring further in your brain the very negative line of thinking. I don't like to use the word toxic so liberally, but again, for a lack of a better way of describing it, kind of this toxic pathways that our minds take. It's almost like rumination.



 Shahrzad Jalali

Absolutely. And this is why I tell people when you're going through something difficult, like let's say you're going through a breakup. What do people like to do the most when they're doing something like this? They want to pick up the phone and call everyone and tell them, do you know what this person did to me? They did this, they did this, they did this. And every time they say that, that reinforces the fact that I am this victim that this person has wronged. and eventually at the end of all this this person becomes the devil and I become this poor person who was taken advantage of which doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help me move on, it doesn't help me you know get out of this, it doesn't help me get control of this narrative that I've now come to believe in such a strengthened way because I've repeated it a million times to people who probably don't even want to hear it at this point because they're sick and tired of hearing me talk about this, right? So this is not helping anyone. Please try to avoid it to the best of your ability. I know it's a natural thing to want to do when you're feeling hurt by something, but there are a lot of better ways to go about it.



Adrienne Youdim

So where is the line between, you know, having the conversation, someone who maybe has never explored psychotherapy, Where do you know where you've crossed the line of inadequate exploration or awareness or the need for validation of a story versus kind of rerunning that story so many times where you're now getting into a place of inefficacy?



 Shahrzad Jalali

I try to let people tell me the story once because I feel like, you know, I want to know what's going on. I want to give them the chance to get it off their chest. But from there on. the only place I keep it is their experience. So as soon as they try to get into, can you believe this person did this? I mean, we can't do anything with that. Plus at the end of the day, I have no way of knowing if the person actually did do that because this is this person's, I'm not saying they're lying, but this is their perception of what has happened, right? So the only thing that matters in that moment is to bring the person back to their felt sense. and what they can do with that. So if someone is listening to you and knows what they're doing, what they'll do is they'll nudge you to go back to your own experience. So I felt humiliated, I felt betrayed. Let's talk about that. What is betrayal? What is that humiliation? Have you felt it before? How does it show up? What do you do with it when it shows up? This is taking the context out of what has happened into a felt sense, which now we can grow from or process or grieve or whatever else it is that we have to do.



Adrienne Youdim

I want to pivot now and talk about your story, your book, the title, The Fire That Makes Us. It makes me think that there's a personal story there.



 Shahrzad Jalali

Well, there is. The fire that makes us is rooted in something traumatic that has happened in my own life story. It's actually a car accident that happened when I went to visit my parents back home. They were dropping me off at the airport and we got hit by a drunk driver. It was a very tough accident, which resulted in a lot of injuries for me and my father passing. And, um, you know, recovering from it was very difficult for me. I was just starting my, so psychology is my second career. I almost finished a PhD in linguistics and that started doing this because I went through a midlife crisis and I felt like, you know, I needed some help and it changed my life so drastically that I wanted to pass on this gift to other people. So I was on the verge of kind of transitioning to that and. I received a lot of different modalities of therapy in order to cope with it and to heal and to move on. And as part of this journey, I started to write down my felt experience. And one of my sisters at one point picked up a segment that I had written and said, you need to publish this. You need to turn this into a book because I think it can help other people. So I took that and I took my experience, my clinical experience over the past decade and kind of married the two stories together. So the main character, what you see in the book is an amalgamation of my own trauma as well as the trauma that I've heard from the patients over the years. And the book is about 20 chapters. I start telling this person's story and at the end of each chapter I stop and I explain the psychology behind what this character is going through and feeling and kind of give some feedback on what to do when you get stuck in this space and how to kind of process it and how to overcome it. And I'm hoping it can work as a guideline for people who are going through something in life, whether they recognize it or not recognize it, because in fact, the story is based on someone who has a very functional life. So to the outside observer, this person is actually successful living life well, but they get stuck in different patterns and dynamics and continuously ruminating over these losses in their life. And I'm hoping that it can serve as a guideline for people who are going through similar experiences.



Adrienne Youdim

I'm starting it well. I can't wait for it to come out and to read it myself. Appreciate it. Thank you. So as we close, I wonder what gives you hope right now?



 Shahrzad Jalali

You know, what gives me hope is that Quiet resilience of people doing inner work, to tell you the truth. People learning to regulate, to listen deeper, to take accountability without shame. I see connection in the spaces where people are willing to stay present, even when it's hard. You've heard the phrase, hurt people, hurt people. I like to say regulated people regulate other people. So when we tend to our nervous system, we're more available for presence, we're more available for empathy. And these are all essential for collective healing. Emotional health isn't just personal, it's contagious. Every time we choose reflection over reactivity, we make room for humanity to heal, to come together and to communicate in a way that we are still failing to do so.



Adrienne Youdim

Yeah, I love that answer and we're very much aligned. I started doing mind-body medicine and training and certifying in it really out of kind of the chaos of the last few years and the belief that, as you say, that this is like a pebble thrown in a pond, that the ripple effect of doing this work, I think is the way that we're going to cure the divisiveness and the divisions that feels so prevalent right now?



 Shahrzad Jalali

Yes, my hope is that we can all take steps in that direction. Hopefully one day our children will live in a better world.



Adrienne Youdim

I echo that. So if our listeners want to learn more about you, want to hear about updates of the book or anything else that you're involved in, where can we find you?



 Shahrzad Jalali

So I have a couple of websites, they can find me under my name, Dr. Jalali and Associates, Align Remedies, a handle for my Instagram. There's some informational videos on TikTok, Instagram. I'll share all of that with you, as well as some emotion regulation courses that we're offering at the clinic. I want to start kind of offering them in more online formats, so even people who are further away from us can access them, as well as the book is scheduled to come out September 9. I'm very excited. Hopefully I'll be doing some touring. So I'll come to different cities and see different people and looking forward to it all.



Adrienne Youdim

Wonderful. Well, I'm going to make sure that we have all of those handles and links in our show notes. I really appreciate your time, your honesty, and your knowledge. And I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. Same here. Have a wonderful rest of the day. And to our listeners, thank you for being here. Again, I think this is such a timely and universal topic. Whether you're worried about world affairs, political discourse here at home, or even at your own dining table, this is a valuable conversation. So please share it with someone you love, and I'll see you again next week on Health Bite.





People on this episode

Head Shot

Adrienne Youdim MD

Host