13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do with Psychotherapist and Best Selling Author Amy Morin

Psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin graces the Gaslit Truth Podcast, sharing her transformative journey from a rural therapy clinic to international acclaim. Amy's fascinating transition from traditional therapy to writing and media began with the unexpected viral success of her article, which led to a book deal with HarperCollins. She opens up about her unique lifestyle podcasting from a sailboat and how living with the unpredictability of the ocean has mirrored her own life experiences and career shifts.

Listeners will find inspiration in Amy's candid discussion about vulnerability, grief, and personal growth. Having faced the profound loss of her mother, husband, and father-in-law, Amy found courage in sharing her story, realizing that vulnerability can strengthen therapeutic relationships. This episode explores the delicate balance between maintaining ethical boundaries and fostering genuine connections with clients, especially in today's interconnected digital world.

The conversation with Amy delves into building mental strength and resilience, emphasizing the importance of strength-based approaches over dwelling on negativity. By reflecting on Martin Seligman's work on resiliency and sharing personal anecdotes, Amy highlights small acts of kindness and positivity's ripple effects. Her adventurous life on a sailboat with her husband further exemplifies embracing life's uncertainties as opportunities for growth and resilience. Tune in for practical insights and inspiring stories that challenge listeners to recognize their own potential for resilience and mental fortitude.

The Gaslit Truth Podcast will be live and in person at the Feed the Recovering Brain Conference in Dublin, Ohio

Join us with the top names in brain health, including Christina Veselak, Hyla Cass, and Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure.

We’ll be bringing you interviews and behind-the-scenes content as we explore how nutrition transforms mental wellness.

Chapters

• 0:22 Mentally Strong
• 7:29 Navigating Vulnerability as a Therapist
• 21:23 Reevaluating Therapist Skills and Self-Beliefs
• 34:22 Discovering Resilience and Positivity
• 39:25 Building Mental Strength Every Day
• 45:58 Finding Resilience Through Mental Performance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

You are mentally stronger than you think we are. Your whistleblowing strengths Dr Tara Lynn and therapist Jen, and you're listening to the Gaslit Truth Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:32

Welcome to the show everybody. Yeah, we have a special guest that's here today and Amy, I love your intro, Terry, and I love your intro because it is one line that gets us straight to the punch. Everyone, I want to introduce Amy Morin. She is a psychotherapist and she is the international bestselling author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do, and she also hosts the Mentally Stronger podcast. So, amy, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:04

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:08

Go ahead. Wait, I just have to say, just before we get into serious stuff, Amy's on a boat, which I think is so cool. I mean so I don't know, I'm just thinking that's like the neatest place ever to do a podcast from her, is it not as cool as I think?

Speaker 3: 1:22

it is. You know it's pretty cool most of the time. There's the occasional downside, but for the most part it's better than.

Speaker 2: 1:30

I'm waiting to see your goal.

Speaker 1: 1:32

Yeah, I would think that the last two hurricanes were probably the times that it was not too cool.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Correct, hurricane season is not our favorite time of year. And then you know, with the air conditioner, occasionally, like you, have a problem with that it gets really hot If the air conditioner goes out. Uh, we had an octopus that crawled through the air conditioning unit once. Not the best day ever either, but see, that's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 1:58

It was probably trying to steal all those Grammys that are in that smart-ass octopus right? All right, terry, I'll let you be the serious one now. I'll stop screwing around.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Well, that's funny because I was going to mention she was on a boat, because I think that was pretty cool too. But anyway, we will not focus on the boat, we'll focus on Amy. So would you? I'll say, we love having fellow therapists on the show. One of the things that we like is having people on the show that have done non-traditional therapy things right. So, moving away from the traditional therapist role into something else, and do you still do traditional therapy, I'm curious, I do a little bit of both coaching and a little bit of therapy.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Of coaching. Okay, so you also have a TEDx talk out there and, yes, so she's done wonderful things. And there's always like this transition spot from what I know as a therapist to what brings me here, and so I would love for you to talk a little bit about that transition spot and how it relates to you.

Speaker 3: 3:04

So I used to be a traditional therapist in rural Maine, and talking about the absolute middle of nowhere, we're pretty much the only other therapist in town was my sister, and we had offices next door to each other, like like Niles and Frazier crane. Oh my gosh, that's what I was thinking, and so you know, I'm talking about a small town of like 3000 people, but there was all these surrounding towns and everybody came to us. We were in a doctor's office as well. So it was like you came there whether you were getting your x-rays or you needed to talk to somebody about your depression, like it was a one-stop shop and it's not like we could specialize in anything. It was whether you saw a four-year-old who had behavior problems or the 84-year-old who was struggling with depression. We kind of had to see it all and you were stuck with one of us. If I wasn't a good match, you could try my sister next door, and otherwise you had to travel like an hour to go see a different therapist if you needed something else. So I wrote an article called 13 Things Mentally Strong people don't do, because one of the things I was doing on the side was freelance writing. My husband had passed away. We were both 26. And I needed some extra income. We can only work so many hours a week as a therapist, right? You can't work 80 hours a week, and so I needed some extra income. So I'd started freelance writing a little bit.

Speaker 3: 4:21

I wrote this one article called 13 things mentally strong people People Don't Do. It went crazy viral 50 million people read the article and before I know it, they're asking me to be on the media and to do all of these things, and I'm thinking this is going to really affect my career as a therapist. I'm supposed to be on TV shows talking about things. I wasn't sure I even wanted to do it. And a literary agent calls and says you should write a book. And I said, oh, thank you, but I don't even know what a literary agent is. And I went about my day and luckily she followed up with me a couple of weeks later and said no, really, I think you could write a book. And I said well, there's a backstory to why I wrote the article. It's not because I mastered these things, it's because I struggle with them and I'm a therapist who listens to people's problems I don't really share my own, but thank you very much. And she kept saying you know, no, really I think you could turn this into something. And so I said but I don't know how to write a book Again, wasn't looking for the opportunity.

Speaker 3: 5:19

But within a month we had a book deal and HarperCollins, one of the biggest publishers in the world, said yes, this could be a book. So I wrote the book. I had like 39 days to write it. I didn't even know what I was doing. So I'm writing this book thinking, goodness gracious, what am I doing here? And we got the book out within a year, which now I know in traditional publishing is not even. It's really unheard of that. You would write a book and have it land on the shelves. But it came out and I thought that's great and I continued my job as a therapist. I really didn't mention to that many people that I had a book that came out and continued to work as a therapist.

Speaker 3: 5:58

And then, about a year and a half into my career, or about a year and a half after I wrote the book, I got some unexpected press. It actually came from Rush Limbaugh, who promoted my book on his show. He kept saying we're going to talk about the 13 things mentally strong people don't do. But he didn't get to it that day. And then he didn't get it to the next day, but he plugged the title of it. So by Friday of that week the book had sold out everywhere and I hit all the bestsellers lists.

Speaker 3: 6:25

And so suddenly you know which? Again, as a clinical social worker. So then people are like Rush Limbaugh is talking about you Like this better be good for your career as an author because it might be really bad for your career as a therapist. He wasn't really known for promoting clinical social workers. And so then, because I hit bestsellers list, I thought, well, workers. So then, because I hit bestsellers list, I thought, well, maybe I could, maybe I could write a second book. So I cut down on my therapy hours, started writing and uh, then I moved from rural Maine to a sailboat in the Florida Keys and now I've got six books on the shelves and I'm working on book number seven.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Oh all right. So, I kind of go down to if it weren't for bad luck, you'd have no luck at all, sort of, because it started off with a really terrible story and then suddenly things opened up for you and just kind of really fell into place. But you pushed it all away. In the beginning you were like no, no, no, not for me. Why do you think you pushed it away?

Speaker 3: 7:25

beginning you were like no, no, no, not for me. Why do you think you pushed it away? I think I just thought so. My mother had died when I was 23. My husband died when I was 26. My father-in-law passed away a few years after that and the thought of something like making this huge change in my life if I was going to attempt to do media interviews and do other things, it just felt overwhelming and I thought, if it doesn't go well, I just can't handle. Like one more blow to my life. Like if I take this leap, if I take a risk and it doesn't turn out well, I'm not sure I could handle that.

Speaker 3: 7:55

I wasn't in a very good place in my life and I felt like I was just trying to get by, like to be a therapist when your heart is broken and you're grieving and you're going through difficult things. The last thing on my mind was now I'm going to take my story public and I'm going to write a book and I'm going to attempt to do this really big thing. That really wasn't ever part of my plan and it's really not part of my personality. I was a really private person. I didn't really put myself out there.

Speaker 3: 8:25

The idea of public speaking was definitely not my thing, and to be on national TV talking about stuff was nothing I had ever even dreamed possible. I was incredibly shy and didn't really talk a lot in public. So the thought of those things, I just thought, oh and then if I put myself out there and I embarrass myself or it doesn't go well, it would just be just one more blow to all of the other things that I've been facing. I'm not sure I can handle that. So I really did second guess it and it took some poking and prodding to get me to the place where I thought, yeah, might as well try, yeah, Try.

Speaker 1: 8:58

How'd you get to that place then? Where did you? What was the epiphany moment for you that you're like? You know what I'm just going to do this?

Speaker 3: 9:03

the epiphany moment for you that you're like you know what. I'm just going to do this. I went to lunch with two of my childhood best friends, who are still my best friends to this day, and we were talking about it and I said, you know, now that this article has gone viral and I'm getting like MTV in Finland called and CNN in Mexico, and all of these people are calling me, and I said, you know, I don't, I don't know, and now they want me to write a book. And I don't know, and now they want me to write a book. And they said, well, you have to tell your story. And I was like I didn't even really know what they meant by my story, like, yes, my mother had passed away and my husband had passed away and I'm widowed at age 26.

Speaker 3: 9:33

But I never really thought about it in that way of, well, yes, if you tell why you wrote the article, maybe that would actually give you more street cred rather than take away from it. Because my big fear was, if I now come out and share the whole story and admit, hey, I'm not perfect, I'm a therapist, yet I still struggle with all of these things, that maybe, maybe that would make it that then people are like oh, you're not pretending like you're a therapist who has it all together. Instead, you're admitting that you struggle with the same things we do. So it was really that conversation with my friends that made me think okay, maybe I'll do this, okay.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Okay, so after you did this, if you can do a comparison to being a therapist prior and doing some psychotherapy or coaching now, is it different? Like for you? Do you think you make? Like the difference you make is has changed since you became so vulnerable?

Speaker 3: 11:26

yeah, I certainly think so. Uh, I think now I feel like I can relate to people in a in a different way. A lot of people who seek out help from me now have read my book, so they know my story, whereas before, before, nobody necessarily knew.

Speaker 2: 11:42

See, that's great. So your story is like a huge reason right. I'm bringing this up because Terry and I did an episode that was focused on the therapeutic relationship. We talked a lot, a lot about the therapeutic relationship and this unconventional thought that you can't mix these two worlds as therapists. And I'm going to say unconventional because we're taught that there is a fine line there and most of the time we're kind of feared into staying on the other side of that line because we don't want to act unethically, we don't want to practice in a way where we are sharing too much or there's too much transference going on, all the bullshit that we're told and I'm going to call it bullshit because I think it scares us a little bit from further developing that relationship. So yours shifted with your clients and they came to you because of what you went through.

Speaker 3: 12:35

Right, and practicing in rural Maine meant that I ran into my clients all over the place. You go to the grocery store they're going to be the people that check you out. Or you go to the doctor's office and, like the nurse checking you in might be one of your clients, and so you really have to navigate this whole thing, because they do see you in real life as well. Sometimes they see you at the one restaurant in town, so they see you in those places. And so then I think the tendency sometimes is to become even more closed off to any other personal information, because you think if you have kids and they see you with your kids, or you have a partner and they see you with that person, they get a better idea of who you are, and so you think I don't want to give this person any more information, because maybe that would be uncomfortable to them or it's uncomfortable to me. But of course, in the age of social media, we know that when you put content out there too, people are going to read it, they're going to Google you, they're going to look you up. So then you think, okay, now you have more information about me.

Speaker 3: 13:32

And when I took a short leave of absence, when my husband had passed away and my clients had just been told she has a family emergency. And the vast majority of them never knew what the emergency was, but some of them read it again. A small town. There was an obituary in the newspaper, so some of them figured it out and they would check in. When I finally came back to work, they were like is it okay to talk to you about my problems, cause clearly you're struggling with something? And but a lot of them had no idea. Well, now that my story's out there, I think everybody who reaches out to me for therapy pretty much knows what my story is and like, as you say sometimes, that's why people reach out is because they say you know I'm struggling with grief too, or I'm in a really dark place and I know you've been there let's talk about that this is that affliction of many therapists.

Speaker 1: 14:18

As you were talking about your husband passing away and you took a little leave of absence and didn't talk about it as a therapist, my father passed away while I was in a session and my mom texted me this information right, wow. So in between sessions I look at my text message and you know what I did I went out and got the next client Right, right, yeah, like complete suppression. Complete, because you know we're taught that our stuff is irrelevant or doesn't matter. You know you're helping other people, your stuff doesn't matter, yeah. And now I think that probably that was, you know, seven, eight years ago. I, you know that probably would have helped, right, if I would have been a little bit more vulnerable, and I think that would help with some therapists too. Where's the line? No, that's the problem. I think we have to put those ethical constraints, because some people don't know where the line is at all Right.

Speaker 3: 15:21

Yeah, absolutely, and for me we got three days off of bereavement time, if you see. I was actually going to ask well, you probably can get short-term disability, and they said well, short-term disability, you can't get that for grief and she's like, oh, but I bet you can get it for depression and PTSD or acute stress disorder.

Speaker 3: 15:58

So she marches me into the doctor's office who then writes up the paperwork, who was able to make it? So I could at least get three months off, which was necessary just in order to take care of all the practical stuff and to manage my life a little bit. So I felt like, okay, I can at least show up for work and not still have stuff hanging over my head Like how do I close my husband's phone account or something.

Speaker 1: 16:24

Well, we got to keep in mind you were 26 years old, correct? I have 26-year-old kids and that is definitely not some. I said kids. That is definitely not something that I would ever think that they would even know what to do or how to do. It is to close up someone else's life. Right, that's amazing, yeah, the sheer amount. But getting back to this book, so you wrote this book as part of your healing. Is that what I'm hearing, or the article?

Speaker 1: 16:52

the article was written as part of your healing or were you trying to call yourself out Cause these were things that you didn't have?

Speaker 3: 16:59

So you know, it was the day that we had learned. So my father-in-law had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and they had said, well, you know he'll, he'll probably live a really long time Usually prostate cancer doesn't kill you. And we got news that actually, in fact, it had spread and it was the day that we learned he probably had weeks left to live. That I just thought like this isn't fair. I lost my mom, I lost my husband, and my father-in-law had become one of my biggest fans of my writing especially, and I thought now I'm going to lose him. And my mom had died from a brain aneurysm that ruptured. My husband died of a heart attack. Both of them were sudden, unexpected. They were here one minute, gone the next. My father-in-law. We now knew he was going to pass away. And the dread and the thought of losing one more person. I thought I can't handle this. But if I'd learned anything, it was like well, it's not like you have an option.

Speaker 3: 17:50

And something I had learned along the way, too, is it's not always about what you do, it's about what you don't do. Like a lot of my clients who didn't do certain things got better than the people who had bad habits. So I really wrote this as a letter to myself on that day of, okay, amy, here's what mentally strong people don't do. And I wanted to get through it the very best I could and to make sure I was working through my emotions, not just suppressing them. So I wrote this letter and I would read it in the morning like, okay, amy, just don't do these things today and you'll be okay. And I thought, well, if this helps me, maybe it will help somebody else. So a few days later I published it online, thinking like five people would read it, and then never imagined it would go viral.

Speaker 1: 18:31

Yeah, well, I kind of want to know what's on the list, or what are some of the things on the list that mentally strong people don't do, because I love it from this angle, because it's mostly about what to do to be mentally strong, right.

Speaker 3: 18:42

Right, right you know, what yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 18:45

Share your favorite.

Speaker 1: 18:47

You don't have to do that All of them, but give me some of the big ones.

Speaker 3: 18:49

Well, number one on the list is don't feel sorry for yourself, cause that's where I was in that moment, like it's not fair that I have to lose all of these people, it's not fair that all of these things are happening to me why me? And? And when we feel sorry for ourselves, we dig in our heels and we stay stuck Like I'm not going to be sad, I'm going to. You know, it's just, this isn't fair and there's a big difference. And being sad is part of the grieving process and that is what helps us heal. But when you get stuck in that self-pity place, you just can't even start healing yet. So that's number one on the list. Number two is not to give away your power.

Speaker 3: 19:28

Ah, so tempting to say you know so-and-so ruined my day, my boss makes me feel bad about myself, or somebody wastes my time, and so in that moment I was like no, I'm in charge of how I think, feel and behave, who I spend my time with and what I'm going to do today, from the moment I wake up till the time I go to bed. If I just frame it all as a choice, I'm choosing to go to work. I'm choosing to go to work. I'm choosing to go to the grocery store. Maybe I don't want to, but it's a choice.

Speaker 3: 19:48

And in that really difficult time in my life, just remembering that that while I didn't have control over everything, I certainly had control over some stuff, especially when it revolved around myself. So that was number two on the list, and if I had to pick a third one, I would say not giving up after failure, which so many times you know, you make a mistake, something doesn't go well and you think, well, that didn't work out or I wasn't meant to be, and I really wanted to remind myself that, yep, I'm going to make mistakes, that's okay, and my goal is to keep going, not to dwell on the mistakes or to consider myself a failure or think I have a character flaw that makes it impossible to succeed.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:29

So is 13 symbolic for you? I know all the books are 13, right, but when you wrote this the first time, did 13 mean anything for you? That that list stopped right at 13 and that was sufficient for you?

Speaker 3: 20:40

You know, it really didn't. I think I just happened to have 13, which I think then helped it to go viral, because 13,? There's some mystery around that number.

Speaker 2: 20:48

That's why I'm asking.

Speaker 3: 20:49

Yeah, but as a letter to myself it was. I don't even know that I numbered them at first, it was just literally a list.

Speaker 2: 20:56

The things that you got to do or not? Do yeah, okay. Okay, I just had to ask because I didn't know if there was any fun story behind that. You know that included an octopus or anything you know, nope, nope, nope.

Speaker 1: 21:06

Okay, no, well, I'm curious because, like I'm trying to figure out, you know the research, whether you want to call it anecdotal research or actual research stuff on how did you find out what mentally strong people don't do versus what they do? Do?

Speaker 3: 21:23

So it was probably after my mom passed away that I realized how much of this stuff I had learned in college as a therapist really didn't leave me equipped to deal with my own grief, and I thought oh, let's pause right there.

Speaker 2: 21:40

That one might end up on a deliverable there.

Speaker 3: 21:45

So many of the things that I was taught as a therapist just didn't feel like it gave me what I needed when I needed it the most, and it was I was 23. I'd only been a therapist for a short amount of time but I thought, ooh, here I am, thinking that I have all of this knowledge and wisdom from my textbooks and from my college professors that I'm imparting on other people, and yet when I find myself in some of my darkest days, the stuff that I learned doesn't give me what I need to get through it. I don't have the tools and the equipment and the strategies and the things that I really need to feel like I'm going to get through this. Okay. And I started paying closer attention to my therapy clients. Some people came in and they'd had a pretty good life, yet they were struggling with so many things. And other people came in and they still had been through awful things, yet they still had a lot of hope and they were optimistic and they were like, yeah, I'm here because I'm really convinced I can create some positive change.

Speaker 3: 22:45

So I tried to figure out what's the difference between the people who are resilient, the people who are really striving to do their very best in life and people who kind of gave up and it wasn't about their to-do list, it was more about what they didn't do. Because I would have people that were like well, I practice gratitude. Well, yes, you write in a gratitude journal for two minutes a day, but then you spend 23 hours a day thinking about everything that went wrong, and it's really like those one or two bad habits that were undoing their good habits. And I was taught to be strengths-based. When people come into your office, you point out what they're doing well and you tell them to keep doing that.

Speaker 3: 23:20

But it occurred to me too. If I was going to go see a fitness trainer and they said, run on the treadmill, great, but if they didn't tell me that the latte that I bought on the way there and drank in the car with more calories than I was burning on the treadmill, I'd be incredibly upset because I'd rather shave an hour off of my treadmill exercise then. So I thought you know, I'm doing people a disservice if I don't say to them hey, you have this one thing that's holding you back. Let's talk about that, because our to-do lists are always so long anyway and people are always working incredibly hard to do better, and the thought of then adding more stuff to our to-do list seems overwhelming. At least it was for me. When I was in the darkest places of my life, the last thing I wanted was a list of here's 10 more things you should do today.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Yeah, we do that a lot and we I, Jen and I talk about this too Like our clients want to come in and add more, you know, or they expect you to give them more things to do, instead of really taking that life analysis, of eliminating some of the things that you're already doing Right Even even eliminating some quote unquote healthy things that you're doing. Sometimes overload of healthy things is just as bad, it's just as high of a stress load as doing some unhealthy quote unquote things. Whatever unhealthy is defined for you.

Speaker 2: 25:39

So many people that spend so much time trying to analyze why it is what they're doing. I have so many clients that spend so much time in that space while I sit and I think and I'll write all the notes down and I'll spend a half an hour just getting all the way through to the end of this and why am I doing what I'm doing? And I said what if you didn't do that? What if that's actually not helping you? What if you remove that? And that seems like a farcical, crazy-ass idea. Right, but is that actually helping you? What if you remove that? And that seems like a farcical, crazy-ass idea. Right, but is that actually helping you to sit and ruminate for 30 minutes every single day, is it? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 26:17

What if you didn't do it and you replace that with something more effective or nothing? It's just this backwards way of thinking about it, and I think that that's very common too. I mean, we're trained to add intervention. People come to us to add intervention, right, so then when we give them the opposite and say, well, here's what you don't want to do, maybe you shouldn't do this, that's like a crazy idea.

Speaker 3: 26:42

Absolutely, and I've been a therapist a long time. When I started working as a therapist 25 years ago, we didn't have Instagram and we didn't have social media, and since people have really started talking so much about mental health on social media. That's great, because it improves the conversation and people are talking more about it, but right on the flip side people are then thinking, and yet, you know, I have to understand myself better. So therefore, I'm going to analyze why did this person say that? Why did I say it back?

Speaker 3: 27:10

or apologize the shit out of everything everything goes back to my childhood because my mom didn't take me to soccer practice on time or whatever it is. But they really think that they have to connect all of these dots and they're struggling to then say, like I just need to know myself better. But sometimes the answer is just accepting Okay, maybe I went through something tough and it's made an impact on my life, but you could accept that it made that impact without overanalyzing everything about it and how it's made you different and without ruminating on all of those things from the past too.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah, or pathologizing your partner, because I you know, or yeah, looking at them like there's something wrong and I have to figure out what's wrong with you. And as you were talking, I was thinking, yeah, all of this, why, why, why, why, why did this happen to me?

Speaker 3: 28:00

I think that puts us in a state of existential crisis all the time.

Speaker 1: 28:03

You know I will. I'm going to quote my kid again. He's 23 and he says it's the best, it's just not that deep. It's just not that deep. You know there's something to be said about, you know, not getting so deep, okay.

Speaker 2: 28:17

So and this ties this ties in really well You're kind of transitioning here, amy, right into something that you talk about with some of the courses that you teach, something that you talk about with some of the courses that you teach. One of the things that you talk about is training your brain to think differently, and you talk a lot about core beliefs. So I'm wondering for you was there a space where that became like an aha moment for you? And I'm trying to ask the question the right way? But you were taught all these things in school. You weren't well equipped, as you were saying right, when these losses happen Because, yep, I can talk academically about grief all day long, but for me to be able to look inside myself, understand my belief structure, where I come from and how that can help me heal and get through this, those are two very separate things, right, and so I'm wondering if some of this goes along with the way we have to shift and train our brain, as you say, to really take a look at those beliefs, because we're taught a little bit as therapists to touch a little bit on like okay, well, how do your beliefs influence your relationship with your clients?

Speaker 2: 29:32

So you don't I don't know, go sleep with them, right, but I don't think we're taught it in a very internalized way of like how do your beliefs? How are they helpful or unhelpful for you? And is that a brain thing? Do we need to look at how we're talking to ourselves and training that differently?

Speaker 2: 29:50

Yeah, those are all great questions, super loaded question with like 14 questions in one question. So you just do your best with that rant. I just went on there.

Speaker 3: 29:59

Again, I grew up incredibly shy. I probably would have been diagnosed with selective mutism as a kid because I really didn't talk. My friends spoke for me, my sister. To this day, if I'm at a restaurant, my sister will ask them to refill my glass of water because she thinks I still can't talk. Is that a habit from when we were seven? But I grew up thinking that I don't have anything interesting to say, so I just won't say anything.

Speaker 3: 30:23

Then I have this article that 50 million people read. Then I give a TEDx talk that 24 million people watch, and so I think, huh, maybe you do have something to say. Look what it took, though. Right, which sounds ridiculous as a therapist who helps other people deal with their self-limiting beliefs, and so, if anything, it kind of inspired me to challenge a lot of the things too, and as a kid I was kind of the chubby kid as well. So I'm the chubby, shy kid who doesn't talk and I've been taught like well, you're always big boned, amy, like you'll never be a small person. And so then I go on this challenge to be like can you get six pack abs in 30 days? Let's see what happens.

Speaker 3: 30:59

And I just started like challenging a lot of the things that I had held true. And these are all the things I've been telling clients over the years, like, if you believe you're not good at something, like it's not just about changing your thoughts, but as a cognitive behavioral therapist, I think you need to challenge it with your behavior too. Let's do some experiments and see what happens. And and then I figured out well, yes, I can do some experiments too, even the things that I think are an absolute fact. I can put myself out there and say, let's, let's challenge this and see how true. And you know, I don't really believe that amazing things always come out of bad things.

Speaker 3: 31:36

But had had all of these things not happened to me, I would probably still be living in rural Maine and I'd still have that office next to my sister, who still works at that same job that we had before, and I'd probably be living a pretty good life. But now I live on a snowboard and I get to do really cool stuff like talk to you guys, and it's a completely different life. But it certainly has taught me a lot about myself, things that I never knew were even possible. So now I have that perspective too, when I'm talking to therapy clients who are struggling with something like well, I'd like to be a business owner, but I just don't think I'm business minded Like, ooh, let's tackle that and figure out what we could do.

Speaker 3: 32:10

And figure out if it's a it's a belief that maybe is true, and if so, how do we fix it. And if, if it's something that maybe you just believe about yourself that's inaccurate, what can we do about that too? So it's given me that new perspective on how to help other people challenge their beliefs as well.

Speaker 1: 32:27

I was listening to your podcast it was a Friday podcast, I think it was today's episode actually which you probably maybe you record those early, I don't remember. You used an acronym in there to to challenge your beliefs. Do you remember what that acronym is?

Speaker 3: 32:45

Yeah. So TLC. And the T is about talking back to the thoughts that you have that aren't helpful. So when you think, oh, I'm not good at math, well, ask yourself that, like, what's some, what's the evidence to the contrary? And then the L is about looking for the good news in life. Like it's so easy to find the bad news. You just open up your phone and scroll for a minute. You'll find tons of bad news. You have to go after the good. Sometimes we know our brains are hardwired to always look for the bad stuff. So you have to say, well, how do I look for the good? And sometimes that is about practicing gratitude or making yourself asking at the end of the day, like what's something that could happen today? And then the C is about challenging ourselves Because again, your brain's going to say you can only do two pushups. Well, yeah, I'm going to try to do three and see what happens. And when you do that, you start to train your brain that you can do more than you think that you can.

Speaker 1: 33:39

So I get some. I just got a comment on social media and it was somebody. I was talking about mental health, obviously, and somebody said you know our mental health can't change until society changes until everything else changes society changes until everything else changes, and um, well, right Cause I was like talk about disempowering talk about talk about thinking you can, you have control outside of yourself when you don't you know.

Speaker 1: 34:08

So when you think about that looking, I thought looking for the good things there'd be challenged right. Well, there are no good things to look for. What would you say to somebody who is in that frame of mind or frame of thinking?

Speaker 3: 34:23

Then you go out and you create something good. You hold the door for the person behind you and you smile and say something kind to someone. You send a text message to somebody you haven't talked to in a while to just tell them how much you appreciate them. You can create goodness in the world. If you can't find it, then do something and then incredible things happen. You start putting good things out there. You actually then start to feel better and then you start to notice more of look a butterfly, look the sun's shining today or hey, that's amazing that I just saw that person help a complete stranger. Or I have these friends who are actually really kind people and we do help each other. But you'll find it. But obviously when you're struggling and you're in a dark place in your mental health, it's much more difficult to see the good in the world.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Well, and it's much more difficult to think that you have any influence over it. Right, I argue I'm like. Your influence, though, starts with yourself. If you create a new you, then that influence can spread into your family or your children or whatever, and create more of a ripple effect than worrying about globally, that existential global crisis that we have no control over, and I do know that people look for the big thing, like we look to win the lottery.

Speaker 1: 35:37

Instead of saving a dime or finding a dime on the street, we want to win the lotto right, and it'll never be good enough unless we have the big thing, the brass ring, the lottery ticket, the golden ticket, all of those things. And so you are still talking about I love Martin Seligman. I'm going to guess you might know who he is, yes, so yeah, my dissertation was based on his work. And so, as you're talking about resiliency and satisfaction and happiness, I really think that this is the key to changing our mental health.

Speaker 1: 36:11

I really do, because I feel so saddled in these spaces of dwell on the negative, right, like, even as a therapist like Jen and I do EMDR, the first thing we look for is the negative core belief, right, like, the first thing that we're looking for is those negative core beliefs, and then we got to dig into your childhood and figure out where they originated from and how to undo those and all these things. And I'm like you know, I think that's it's more about looking for the resiliency and taking away, like, the idea that people can be resilient, like when I think about our children, right, like, if we just go in for the medication, if we just go in for, you know, the, the fixing, then we take away the idea that they have any resiliency at all and that is not a strength-based way to look at your child, your situation yourself, you know. So we really need to start looking at the strength-based systems that we have out there, and I think that's the L in the TLC is looking for something different, you know.

Speaker 3: 37:18

Yes, yes, and when I think about his work too. One of my favorite studies although it's a little twisted is the one about the dogs and the learned, helplessness and how there's a they're in a container and there's a partition and they, the dogs, get zapped, which is the part that makes it a little twisted, but then they can to escape being zapped.

Speaker 3: 37:37

If they just jump over this thing, then they can escape it. But some of the dogs are zapped like intermittently, some of them are on a schedule, but ultimately in the end it's about the dogs who feel like they have no control. They just give up and they don't try to jump over this partition, as compared to the dogs who who feel like, okay, I can escape this, and you just think about that in life, like how often do we just think, well, there's no use in trying and then we give up. We don't make life any better when you think the the opportunity to have a better life might be just on the other side of one thing. We just have to do this one thing or just show up or keep our head up to see this opportunity when it comes along. My story was one of those. I mean here. This opportunity is where a literary agent says write a book on one of the worst days of my life, and I almost passed it up right, had she not followed up with me.

Speaker 1: 38:21

But it's so easy to do that sometimes that we have our head down and we don't see the things around us that would potentially make life better that person or that dog that just lays down and the other one that keeps looking for hope Like how often do you look for hope and then just give up? You know what? Like, because I feel like that resiliency factor the dog that laid down has been through some stuff probably.

Speaker 3: 38:49

Right right.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Or not, or that's just their natural set point of life that needs to be looked at differently, or they've never had to solve a problem on their own, you know, and so they don't know how to solve the problem, so they give up real easily, you know. So I mean, how much of this is learned helplessness, you know, like learned hope. Learned, not hope. Like. I don't know that we have the answers to these questions today, but I'm just. It just makes me wonder what makes one person lay down and the other one keep going.

Speaker 3: 39:21

Right, and I do think it has a lot to do with our confidence that we can handle it if it doesn't go well. And when you have hope for something, there's always that danger that you might be disappointed. And if you think you can't handle the disappointment, then you're just not even going to dare hope that something good might happen because you think, oh, I just can't handle one more thing. How has that changed? For?

Speaker 2: 39:41

you. That is like totally changed.

Speaker 1: 39:44

Well, I want to say something. I hear that in dating a lot People are like I don't want to date anymore because I don't want to be disappointed or I don't want to be heartbroken. I don't want to be hurt. So then they just don't go out and do that anymore. That's really interesting to me, sorry. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt yours.

Speaker 2: 39:59

We did. The one thing you're not supposed to do is talk over each other Like you know that's not good for podcasting. I'm curious to know because that's shifted for you, amy. That whole state shifted so so much because, or has it not, and is is there still fear in doing things? For for that you still have that there are some fears that I won't be able to do it or that I will fail. Have you made it over that, or is that still there for you too, sometimes?

Speaker 3: 40:30

Oh yeah, I think I've made it over it and one of the reasons why I was like I feel like the worst and not to tempt fate, fate, but the worst things that could have happened did so. Now I think if I get up on a stage and people laugh at me, that's okay In terms of not sweatinglaw. I feel like okay, I think I can handle whatever it is that life throws my way. And suddenly getting rejected, getting turned down for something, is not the end of the world, and it still happens. I still get rejected for stuff all the time, opportunities that potentially come my way and I wasn't a good fit, but I'm okay with that now.

Speaker 1: 41:12

Yeah, that's really. That's that's interesting Cause I yeah, well, because I do tend to live and I tell people, live your life like this, like everything's going to turn out, because it just does. Yeah, you know, unless we stop in the middle and we start overthinking and, you know, going down this negative path, and then the one thing that changes is not the outcome, it's us, you know. We change when we overthink, when we stress out too much, when we worry too hard, when we think we're a failure. Nothing else is going to change but us. The outcomes don't change, we do to the negative. So how you bounce back from that is probably the most important piece of your life, you know.

Speaker 3: 41:55

Yeah, and I'd say the big thing I still struggle with. So I'm remarried now and and we live on a sailboat, so like, for instance, we have a 65 foot mast. Every once in a while somebody has to go to the top of the mast. I will not, I volunteer to do it, not because I'm incredibly brave, but because I can't stand to watch my husband do that. I'm like I've been through enough loss in my life that, like, my anxiety if I have to see you 65 feet in the air dangling by a rope, like my anxiety is going to skyrocket. So you know what, I'll do that.

Speaker 3: 42:25

And um, and he you know all of anybody who sees it they're like they'll tease him. Like, oh, you make your wife go up there. He takes it like a champ, like yep, yep, I don't dare do it. It's just because I say I'll do it, or something gets caught under the boat. Somebody has to do a little scuba diving. Like, totally do it. Like did you have to pull the octopus out? You know, I did not have to pull the octopus out, thankfully, but like, occasionally a rope will get caught around, like the propeller or something. So I'm like I'll totally do that. I'm terrible at it.

Speaker 3: 42:54

He'd be way better at it than I am, but because I have a little anxiety about such things, so he happily lets me do that, yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:08

So now I'm just curious about this boat thing, why?

Speaker 3: 43:12

Great question. So my current husband his bedroom was decorated in the sailboats theme, like since the time he was four. He grew up sailing on the Great Lakes, so when he and I got together he just said, oh, I'd love to live on a boat someday. I thought that's interesting, but probably not for me someday. Again, I was a nine to five therapist, so it really wasn't an option to live on a boat and I lived in Maine where it was cold and snowy and I'm definitely not living on a boat there. But we said, yeah, maybe someday. And then, about the time my father-in-law was about to pass away, I said how silly of us to say let's do that someday, because someday is not promised. My mom was 51 when she passed away and so we said let's just do it and packed up. We had a Fiat at the time, a dog and a cat and packed up my right Put the dog and the cat and a laptop.

Speaker 3: 44:04

What?

Speaker 2: 44:04

is in the Fiat. You only get to bring one pair of shoes, Amy.

Speaker 3: 44:08

That's pretty much how it worked and I came, drove from Maine to Florida and thought, you know, let's do this for a little while. I thought it would be six months, but it's just been nine years now that we've been living on a, on a sailboat, and I think it's opened up so many more things to me about life and what's out there and things that you can do, and it's been a wild adventure and I um don't have any plans of moving off the boat anytime soon. Do you actually?

Speaker 1: 44:33

sail, or do you? Is it just parked?

Speaker 3: 44:36

Yeah, we do sail, so a lot of the times we are parked we have what's called a dock-a-minium, so we have a teaky hut and all of that, so that we can have high-speed internet, hot water, all of the amenities, and then, just around the corner, we can take the boat out and go sailing whenever we like. That's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 44:59

That's a wonderful way to put the period at the end of your book, too, just challenging yourself to doing things that you've not done before or you were worried about Right and as a therapist. Now things have opened up so much with telehealth and coaching Telehealth, you can do it just about anywhere, so it's fantastic. If you had one thing that you really wanted to share with people, what would that one thing be?

Speaker 3: 45:26

I would say that nobody's born mentally strong, but we all have the opportunity to build mental strength every single day. It's all about the choices that you make. And then it's not the same as mental health, because I'll have people that will be like well, I can't be mentally strong because I'm depressed has nothing to do with it. Just like, maybe you have a physical health problem, you have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, well, you can still build big muscles in the gym. Two separate things Mental strength and mental health very different. It's all about the choices that you make every day that could help you grow stronger. All right.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Where can?

Speaker 3: 45:59

people find your book, so it's. I guess all six of my books are. Pretty much wherever books are sold, amazon Target usually carries at least one of my books. Target, yeah, any and all, of course, but my website is amymorin L-C-S-W as in licensedclinicalsocialworkercom.

Speaker 1: 46:19

All right.

Speaker 3: 46:20

Well, thank you for coming on the show today.

Speaker 1: 46:22

Yes, I love mental performance and mental toughness and resiliency. I think definitely we need more conversations about that. So if you've hung out with us this far, please like, comment, share, subscribe, do all the things. Only five-star reviews are welcome here, nothing less.

Speaker 2: 46:39

That's it, that's right people.

Speaker 1: 46:41

All right, and send us your Gaslit Truth stories at thegaslittruthpodcast at gmailcom.