Mayim Bialik On: Anxiety, Anger, Believing in Both Neuroscience and God, and the Pressures of Being a Teen TV Star

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris

Historically on this show, we want guests who either have skills that they can teach us (i.e. meditation teachers or happiness researchers) or we want people who are willing to get super personal about their interior lives—and today you're gonna meet a bold-faced name who happens to have both qualifications in spades.

Mayim Bialik burst onto the scene in the 1990s as the star of the TV show Blossom. Then she stepped away, got a bachelor's and a PhD in neuroscience, and became a mom. She returned to TV with another sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. And now she has a very full plate as the co-host of Jeopardy! and the host of a podcast of her own called Mayim’s Breakdown. Oh, and she’s also written four books, including Girling Up: How to Be Strong, Smart, and Spectacular and Boying Up: How to Be Brave, Bold, and Brilliant.

In this episode we talk about:

• The pressures of being a teen star
• Mayim’s fascination with the brain
• How she squares her scientific expertise with her religious beliefs
• Why she half-jokingly says she was born “a mental health challenge”
• The difference between anxiety attacks and panic disorder
• Why she's chosen to be so public about her complicated psychiatric history
• Whether it's possible to be overdiagnosed
• The tools she personally uses to stay afloat
• What’s behind her busyness, and what happened when she decided to stop working all the time
• And why at age 47, she's now taking the time to learn how to express her anger in a healthy way

A note that there are some mentions of suicide and addiction in this episode.

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/mayim-bialik-600

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