Building Mental Strength and Emotional Resilience with Amy Morin

Mental strength, emotional resilience, perfectionism, self-confidence, mindset, and mental health are essential conversations in a culture that often teaches people to push through pain, hide emotions, chase achievement, and measure their worth by how well they perform. Many people assume being mentally strong means never struggling, never feeling afraid, and always having control, but true strength is much more compassionate and sustainable than that.

In this episode of the ANEW Insight Podcast, Dr. Supatra Tovar sits down with bestselling author, psychotherapist, and mental strength expert Amy Morin, LCSW, for Part 1 of a powerful conversation about emotional resilience, healthy habits, self-awareness, perfectionism, confidence, and what it really means to build a stronger mind.

Together, they explore why mental strength is not about suppressing emotions or pretending everything is fine. It is about learning how to understand your thoughts, manage discomfort, respond to adversity, and develop healthier patterns that support emotional wellbeing. Amy shares practical insight into the habits that help people become more resilient, flexible, confident, and grounded in the face of life’s challenges.

Dr. Tovar and Amy also discuss how perfectionism can keep people stuck, why fear often controls more of our lives than we realize, and how building mental strength starts with becoming more aware of the thoughts and habits that shape our choices. This conversation offers a grounded and encouraging look at how we can move away from self-criticism and toward greater resilience, confidence, and emotional freedom.

If you have ever struggled with perfectionism, fear, self-doubt, anxiety, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm, negative thinking, or feeling like you are not strong enough to handle life’s challenges, this episode offers practical wisdom for building mental strength and emotional resilience in a healthier, more compassionate way.

Subscribe for more conversations on psychology, nutrition, mental health, emotional wellness, self-trust, resilience, personal growth, mindset, healing, and sustainable wellbeing.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Amy Morin

00:45 Amy Morin’s Books, TEDx Talk, and Mental Strength Work

02:05 How Personal Loss Shaped Amy’s Understanding of Resilience

03:00 Why Removing Bad Habits Can Build Mental Strength

03:45 Grief, Work, and Coping After Sudden Loss

04:20 Writing the Original “13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do” List

05:15 The First Habit: Don’t Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Yourself

06:00 How Self-Pity Can Keep People Stuck

07:15 How Grief Can Clarify Purpose and Priorities

08:20 From Viral Article to Global Mental Strength Movement

09:25 Why Amy Decided to Share Her Personal Story

10:20 What Public Speaking Taught Amy About Mental Strength

11:25 Mental Strength Versus Resilience

12:30 Defining Mental Strength Like Physical Strength

13:30 How Media, Doomscrolling, and Diet Culture Shape Mindset

14:30 What Are You Feeding Your Mind?

15:15 Recognizing Progress and Growing Stronger Daily

16:10 Inside The Mental Strength Playbook

16:45 Workplace Tools for Anxiety, Confidence, and Dread

18:00 Building a Mental Strength Toolbox

19:20 How to Handle the Sunday Scaries

20:00 Using a Reverse Worry List for Anxiety

21:00 Scheduling Time to Worry

22:00 Building Confidence Before Public Speaking

23:00 Acting As If You Feel Confident

24:00 Why Confidence Comes From Taking Action

25:15 Name It to Tame It

26:00 Why Naming Emotions Reduces Their Intensity

27:00 How Emotional Awareness Supports Nervous System Regulation

27:45 Closing and Preview of Part 2 

Episode Summary

 In this episode, Dr. Supatra Tovar speaks with bestselling author and psychotherapist Amy Morin about mental strength, emotional resilience, perfectionism, confidence, and the habits that help people build a healthier mindset. Together, they explore how emotional strength is not about being tough, emotionless, or perfect. It is about developing self-awareness, healthier thought patterns, and the ability to move through discomfort with greater clarity and resilience.

This conversation offers a compassionate and practical perspective on mental strength, reminding listeners that resilience is something we can build one habit, one thought, and one choice at a time.

What This Episode Covers

 • Mental strength
 • Emotional resilience
 • Perfectionism
 • Confidence and self-trust
 • Healthy habits
 • Mindset and mental health
 • Self-awareness
 • Psychological flexibility
 • Overcoming adversity
 • Fear and self-doubt
 • Emotional wellbeing
 • Personal growth
 • Building resilience

Connect with Amy Morin
 Website:
 https://amymorinlcsw.com

Amazon Author Page:
 https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00LNL5Q18

Podcast:
 https://open.spotify.com/show/6YDYQoMTW2YiUVC2XKIwLm

LinkedIn:
 https://www.linkedin.com/in/amymorinlcsw

Instagram:
 https://www.instagram.com/amymorinauthor/?hl=en

Continue Your Journey
 📘 Book: Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life

🎓 Course: Deprogram Diet Culture
 https://anew-insight.com

🌐 Visit the Website
 https://drsupatratovar.com

🎥 Watch More Episodes
 ANEW Insight Podcast

🎤 Watch the TEDx Talk
 Rethinking Your Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to the A New Insight Podcast. Empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Kavar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink your relationship with food, feel your mind, and live a diet-free life. I follow my guests' journey to optimal health, providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path. Tune in and evolve with us. Hi and welcome everyone. I am really honored and super excited to have psychotherapist, best-selling author, and mental strength expert Amy Marin with us today. Hi, Amy. Hello, thanks so much for having me on your show. It's great to see you. I'm really excited to have you on my show. I was lucky enough to be on Amy's, and now we are pod swapping to talk about her new book. And I am so excited to talk about it and really kind of delve into all things Amy. Before we do, I'm going to read a little bit about Amy and then we're going to get right into the questions. Amy Marin is a psychotherapist, keynote speaker, and the internationally best-selling author of the 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do series. Her books on mental strength have sold over one million copies worldwide and have been translated into 45 languages. She's also the host of the Mentally Stronger Podcast, which I just mentioned, where she shares practical science-based strategies for resilience, emotional wellness, and personal growth. Amy's journey into mental strength began through profound personal loss, including the death of her mother, husband, and father-in-law. Those experiences ultimately inspired her viral TEDx talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong, one of the most viewed TEDx talks of all time, and shaped her mission to help people build resilience without losing compassion for themselves along the way. Her newest book, The Mental Strength Playbook, offers 50 practical science-based strategies designed to help people cope with stress, thrive under pressure, and build emotional resilience in everyday life and work. I'm really honored to have you here, Amy. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Yay. So let's just talk about your work and how it was shaped. It was shaped by some pretty profound personal tragedy, including losing your mother and your husband and your father-in-law at a pretty young age. Tell me how those experiences changed your understanding of resilience and emotional healing.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I was a therapist and it was about a year into my career as a therapist that I lost my mom suddenly. She'd had a brain aneurysm. And it was in that moment when I was dealing with my grief that I thought, oh, a lot of these things I learned in graduate school about dealing with pain kind of fall short. And I was horrified to think all of these tools and strategies I was using, they just felt like they were a bit superficial or they weren't actually helpful or something I could put into practice in those moments. And one of the things I had been taught is like, you have to build on people's strengths. Tell them what they're doing well and tell them to keep doing that. And that sounds really good. But I also realized if I was gonna go see a physical trainer and they said, Yeah, run on the treadmill, great, I'll do that. But what if they didn't tell me that like the jelly donuts I was eating on the way to the gym was actually undoing a lot of the progress I was making? So it made me realize sometimes it's just about getting rid of a bad habit or two that helps you to grow stronger. And as a therapist, I had the opportunity to have like a revolving door of case studies, people in my office all day, every day. And I was really studying people and trying to learn like what makes people tick and what's making some people go through these tough times and they come out on the other side feeling like they're stronger. And again, it was often about what they didn't do, people who didn't have certain bad habits. And I was glad I started studying that. It was three years to the day after my mom died that my 26-year-old husband died of a heart attack, which I didn't even know you could have a heart attack at 26. But I find myself a widow, I don't have my mom, and I also had to go back to work fairly soon after because I was the only breadwinner. I'm thinking about how do you go to work? How do you manage to be professional when your entire personal life has just been flipped upside down? And all of the things that I've studied and learned, I guess I put into practice and I put into a letter. Uh, my father-in-law had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and we knew that he was going to pass away. And unlike when I had lost my mom and my husband, this one, I knew it was coming. It wasn't sudden and unexpected. And I thought, I can't. I just spent all of these years grieving. I can't go through one more loss. And that was when I wrote a letter to myself about what mentally strong people don't do. And when I was done, I had 13 things, 13 things on the list. I read it to myself and it was helpful. So I thought, ah, maybe it'll help somebody else. So I published it on the internet. I got paid $15 for the article. But 50 million people read it. And it was clear that like a lot of people really wanted to know how do you build mental strength? So it's been 10 years now, and I've written seven books on the subject of mental strength, and I'll keep talking about it as long as people keep asking questions.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Wow. So a lot of observation from your clients, um, and then really delving into what habits I think support you the best. If you could whittle it down to maybe one out of that 13 to start with, what was the one do you think that helped you the most?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

The well, the first thing on the list was don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself. And yes, I was in a painful place in my life. And it was important to let myself feel sad and to go through that emotional pain, but I didn't need to exaggerate how awful my life was going to be or to underestimate my ability to cope with it. And I was going to fall prey to that trap. Like I could feel it coming on as I'm thinking, this isn't fair. Why would I lose somebody else in my life? I have plenty of other people in my life who haven't lost anyone in the past decade. Why do I have to keep losing people? And it was that way of thinking that I know would have kept me stuck. I'd probably still be in that head space of trying to figure out what's fair in life and who's more deserving and who isn't, and why bad things happen and all of those questions and thinking my life is just doomed. And as a therapist, I know that our way of thinking tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I came to that conclusion that said the rest of my life is probably going to just be filled with bad luck, it's going to be horrible and it's going to be awful. I wouldn't have taken a chance. I wouldn't take the opportunities to do the things that would make my life better. And the longer I sat on the couch thinking about how bad my life was, the longer I would have stayed in that pit. So that's why that was number one on my list. Because in that moment, it just felt like, oh, I deserve to throw myself the an eternity party and to not just get up and get moving. But at the same time, allowing myself to be sad and allowing myself to go through the pain. I think sometimes we use self-pity as a way to distract ourselves from the immediate pain. It's a way to say, it's not my fault. It's uh the universe is punishing me. And then I can be like angry at the world or I can be uh angry at myself and then don't really have to just deal with the grief that was right there in front of me.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Oh, yes. And I will have to say, you know, after reading your book and just learning more about you, we have so much in common. A lot of what we teach and what we do in our counseling offices are the same.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

And also, I my mother did have a brain aneurysm herself. Is that right? Yes, but she survived. I will say that it profoundly changed the way that I looked at life and the world, though, and really helped me prioritize what was important to me and helped me hone my mission. So I do think that out of some of the greatest tragedies can come some of the greatest inspiration and the greatest purpose to do the work that we're doing. And so, yes, loss is horrible, and we can sit in it or we can try to learn from it. And I think that doing that helps us to shift our mindset, and that's what I think you and I do a lot with our clients. So tell me about your pathway. You then, you know, published this article, it went viral, and then you did a viral TEDx talk and then started to create some books. Tell me about that pathway. How did you go from grief to becoming one of the leading voices on mental strength uh in the in the world?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Well, when that article went viral, so 15 million people in that neighborhood read it. It was on Forbes, Business Insider, and uh just kept going. And so, of course, my phone is ringing off the hook. Like CNN in Mexico called and MTV in Finland and all of these people around the world. And the article didn't have any context. It was basically just the list. And people knew I was a therapist. So they thought, this is amazing. You've mastered all of these things. And one of the people that called me was a literary agent. She said, You should write a book. Well, I didn't even know what a literary agent was, and I didn't respond to her right away because my inbox was overcrowded to say the least. And luckily she followed up with me. And by then I was going to New York to do an interview with Forbes, where they asked me, How did you learn these things? I didn't tell my story. I just said, Well, I'm a therapist and I know these things. Because as a therapist, I listened to people's stories. I certainly didn't think I was going to share mine, not in a public way. So I wasn't sure I wanted to, but when I met with a literary agent, I told her, you know, there's a backstory. I didn't write this list from the mountaintop. I wrote it from the bottom of the valley. I actually struggle with all of these things. So I don't think I'm the right person to write the book about these things because I haven't actually mastered the list yet. To which thankfully she said, Well, that might make it even more powerful if you explain that you too struggle with these things and that you're a human being. People might respect it more. So did some soul searching, thought about it, and said, okay. And within about a month, we had a book deal with one of the biggest publishers in the world. The book came out the following year. And it was after the book came out that I was invited to give a TEDx talk. I was not a public speaker by any means and had no idea what I was doing, but said, okay, I'll I'll see how this goes. And it was incredibly nervous. You can hear my voice shaking through the whole thing if you watch it. Uh and I remember stepping off stage thinking, I just sounded anything except mentally strong. And somebody said, How did it go? And I said, I hope nobody watches that. Because in my head, I'm thinking, you know, I just sounded like somebody who's terrified. And then I'm like, wait, but that's what mental strength is, is doing the really scary thing. If it wasn't scary, then it wouldn't have taken much strength. But it took everything I had to get up there. And I was like, okay, well, we'll see where this goes. And much like my book, when my book came out, it sold okay, but it didn't do anything amazing. And when my TEDx talk came out, it was seen by some people, but it didn't do anything amazing. But over time, both of them, the steam kind of started picking up, and there was a snowball effect where every week that went by, my book started selling more copies. And every week that went by, more and more people were watching my TEDx talk, and it's now been viewed 25 million times. And my first book is now in 50-something languages and sold over 1.5 million copies. Because I think it's something that resonates with people all around the world. And it's something that we all need, but nobody really talks about. How do you grow mentally stronger? We talk so much about mental health and mental illness, but nobody's really talking about mental strength and what is it that you do to get through everyday life. And I'd hear so much about resilience. But for me personally, when I thought about resilience, I thought, well, that's about bouncing back when something bad happens. I don't want to just like bounce back and then brace myself for the next bad thing that happens. I want to enjoy the good times too. And after repeated loss, I did feel like I was just kind of holding my breath, like waiting for the next bad thing to happen. And I thought, I don't want to feel like that. Like I'm just waiting for uh the other shoe to drop. How do you enjoy the good times in life? And to me, that's really the difference between mental strength and resilience. It's not just about trying to survive the worst days of your life, but it's also being able to enjoy the best days of your life too.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yes. So if it's not resilience and people are really kind of even wondering, well, what the heck is mental strength? Like, I think you could divine it in so many different ways. How would you define it?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Well, one way is to look at mental strength the same way we look at, say, physical strength. Something that you do every day. You could go to the gym, you could lift weights, you become physically stronger. Doesn't guarantee you won't ever develop a physical health issue. You might still have high cholesterol or high blood pressure someday, but it helps ward off a lot of illnesses. It helps you to stay healthier, to enjoy life more, to get more longevity. Mental strength is much the same. It's those little things that you can do every day. It's about the habits that you have so that you get the most out of the good times and keeps you mentally healthier as well. Doesn't guarantee you won't ever develop something like anxiety or depression, but reduces the odds and helps you enjoy the happy times in life too, to the to the fullest that you can.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Wow, I love that. I see it also as like changing a perspective. You know, if you look at just the simple, like, you know, glass half full, glass half empty. I think a lot of people are conditioned in the world to look at things glass half empty, to look at things from a fear-based mentality. And you can see all of the social uh, you know, pressures and and influences to do that from our social media, diet culture, uh, you know, our news, uh, doom scrolling media, looking at anything on television that has a commercial. It's all designed to make us feel less than. So would you say that uh the perspective of seeing yourself as whole and complete is also a part of mental strength?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Absolutely, right? We know that we talk a lot about like what are you feeding your body, but also it's important to look at like what are you feeding your mind on a daily basis? If you spend 12 hours a day doom scrolling, it doesn't matter that you practice 10 minutes of gratitude, right? It doesn't undo it. So I think it is all about knowing what are the habits? How am I going to fill my time? What do I put into my mind? What am I doing to take care of myself? And it's not always about saying, like, the next chasing the next best thing, like, oh, I go and practice gratitude because I'm not good enough as is. You can do both, right? I accept myself for who I am. And yes, I'm still working on practicing more self-compassion, or I'm working on uh improving one area of my life because much like physical strength again, when it comes to mental strength, we all have room for improvement. There's all things we could work on. However, we've probably also made some pretty significant progress in certain areas of our lives. And it's easy to overlook that, right? The things that you could do today that you probably couldn't have done five years ago, it happens so slowly that we forget, gosh, I've come a long way. There's things I can do now that I couldn't do before. And I think that's why it's so important sometimes, just at the end of the day, to say, what did I do today to grow mentally stronger? Because as you say, all that stuff in the universe that we can't control from the news cycle to all the stuff we see on our feeds all day long. Like, what can you control? We can control what you did today to grow stronger. Helps you put things back into perspective and reminds you what you have control over.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yes. And I love seeing it akin to a physical workout, you do need to do a little bit of a mental workout to undo some of the social conditioning, the negative mindset, the fear-based mindset that we're kind of conditioned into. So let's talk about the book, the mental strength playbook. I love how you organize it into these categories like confidence catalysts, anxiety alleviators, dread diffusers. Tell me what inspired that framework.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Well, I'd spent the last, I guess, eight years talking about what mentally strong people don't do, right? And it turned into a series about 13 things mentally strong parents don't do, 13 things mentally strong women don't do. But a lot of people were asking about like, what about the workplace? And what about when I'm in the office and I have a meeting in 10 minutes? Yes, it's great to not feel sorry for myself, but my anxiety is skyrocketing. I have to present or I want to ask some important questions. I'm about to get on a sales call. I'm really nervous. Like, what do I do at my desk in that moment? So I took some of the biggest struggles that most of us face in the workplace. Whether you work from home, you work for a big corporation, no matter what kind of job you have, I think most of us can relate to those sort of topics. Confidence, right? When we walk into a room, do we feel like we're confident or do we feel like, oh, everybody else is so much more confident than I am? Or dread. Most of us dread a meeting at one point or another. We dread the spreadsheet we have to work on, or we dread having to make that phone call. And so many of those other things, like the anxiety. Of course, we all get anxiety at work. And the tools that you use at home, you can't always use in the office. So if I'm at home and there's something that I dread or I'm anxious, I can put it off till tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next month, if I want to. But you don't always get that luxury in the office. Your boss says, hey, this is due on Friday. It's Wednesday and you haven't started yet. What are you going to do about it? So I really wanted to write a book that said, okay, now that we've talked about what not to do, the bigger changes in your overall life to build a healthier foundation, now let's talk about exactly what you can do and what are the plays you can run right in the workplace. And I wanted to offer enough variety so that people felt like, okay, this one works for me in my situation, because I don't know your boss, I don't know exactly what you do for work. But if you have a menu of these little strategies that are all backed by science, so that when you lack confidence or when you're really dreading something and therefore you're procrastinating, which play do you want to run? Just like a coach in a game, knowing, all right, I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve, let's try this one. And then once you practice them for a while, you figure out oh, the confidence catalyst that works for me when I'm about to give a presentation, maybe it's to channel your alter ego. But maybe when you're making a sales phone call and you feel a little bit of self-doubt, maybe you need to do something else. Maybe in that moment you decide you're gonna visit your victory vault, something else that we talk about in the book. So I think it's about practicing, knowing that you can have a whole toolbox full of tools and you just get to practice of when you play them, which is kind of the art form.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yes, I love that they are all science-based. Uh, and they're, you know, a lot of them based out of uh cognitive behavioral therapy and other um interventions that are really, really helpful for helping you get, you know, practically through the thing that you need to overcome. I luckily am my own boss, so I don't have to worry about the Sunday scaries. I actually never work Mondays. Um, that's my admin day, and I love that. But what advice would you give? Because there's so many people who dread Monday, dread it and don't love going back into the office and just, you know, they spend their Sundays just uh in in in agony. What advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, you're right. The Sunday scaries are are a big one. And I had it as a kid, I hated school. I can remember by like one o'clock on Sunday afternoon, my stomach could be churning and I was already dreading Monday morning, and you think, wow, I'm gonna waste half a day Sunday just worried about the week. So a couple of plays that can work. Somebody who identifies it more as anxiety, like, oh, I have so much to do this week, there's so many things, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get it all done, and you're worrying. One strategy that works is uh create a reverse worry list, which means if you have a lot of those physical symptoms, your heart is kind of racing fast, your stomach's churning, write down a list of things that you're excited about. And it doesn't have to be just this week. Maybe you're excited about a wedding you're gonna go to next summer, or you're excited about something that is gonna happen on Thursday, or you're excited that you're gonna watch a movie with your kids on Friday night. But write a list of that, those things that you're excited about and then read it. And then you convince yourself, okay, this is excitement, not anxiety. Because we know that our bodies respond to both of those things in a very similar way, but the label you place on it matters. So if you could convince yourself, actually, I'm really excited about this week, suddenly those physical symptoms aren't so bothersome. So that's one strategy that can work for some people. Another one is if you're worried a lot about the week, like you just keep worrying, like, oh, what if that presentation doesn't go well? What if that a phone call, uh, if I say something silly and I embarrass myself? In that case, maybe you're better off to schedule time to worry, which sounds ridiculous. But if you set aside 15 minutes and you say, I'm gonna worry about everything I want, maybe a couple days this week I'm just gonna sit and worry about those things instead of letting it consume my whole Sunday, that can work. There's research that will show you can contain your worrying. And after a while, your brain is like, I don't have to keep reminding you of this meeting that you have coming up on Thursday. Because you're going to worry about it and make sure that you're prepared. So that's another one that can work sometimes for people if you're just really worried about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah, I love that. And I recommend people to do a mind dump before they go to bed if they're really having trouble sleeping and they're really worried about something before. If they just write it down, get it out. It usually kind of just like closes the book on it and they're able to go to sleep. What about confidence? I relate to you. I just give a gave a TED talk last year. Last year. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was last year. That's crazy. Um, and I was so scared, just like you. My knees were shaking. You can probably, if you look really close, you can see my knees shaking in the beginning of the talk. And I think I could have really used your book beforehand. Um, what advice do you have to give for people with, you know, fears of public speaking?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Oh, yeah. And trust me, I've been there. It was my biggest fear for a lot of my life was to get up on stage and speak. Now I do it all the time, and it's not nearly as bad. So I can say exposure therapy really works. But uh one of the things that worked for me, so one of my biggest talks ever was like early on, I had gotten asked to speak at this huge convention, and I didn't know anything about giving public talks. I was a social worker from rural Maine, so I'd probably spoken in front of five people at the most. And I go to this giant conference where the other seekers are all household names, like Gary Vaynerchuk. And I thought, okay, I have absolutely no business getting up on the stage. And so I'm tempted to like start reviewing my notes, making sure I have everything memorized so I don't mess anything up. And I've got like 24 hours before I'm on stage and I'm watching the other people perform. And I thought, well, yes, maybe I can memorize my script, but just because I have it memorized doesn't mean I'm gonna nail it. So I was like, I'm just gonna act as if I feel confident. So I watched a couple of the other speakers kind of got an idea of like, okay, you come out on stage and you do this and you walk over there and you look at the audience. I'm like, okay. So that night in my hotel room, I'm just practicing that. Like, what would I do tomorrow if I felt confident? Like, how would I walk out on stage? What would I do? How would I deliver my lines? And to just say, this is what I'm gonna do is to try to be the most confident version of myself. And fortunately it worked. I got through that first one. But sometimes that's the thing that we need to do. So a lot of people will come into my therapy office and say, I'd like to go back to college, but I'm not sure I can do it. Like, can you help me build up the confidence so that I feel like I can do it? But like sitting on the couch isn't how any of us develop the confidence that we need to do something. You have to take the action first. And the best way to do it is to just say, okay, if I felt confident today, what would I do? And then you change your behavior first, and then the feeling often follows. And that's how we build confidence is through action. So by saying, All right, I'm gonna do this thing. I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'm gonna do my best. You go out there and you do it. And then suddenly you say, Okay, this is this is gonna help me build confidence.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yes, I remember at one of my rehearsals, I had I was so nervous. I mean, it was really bad the shaking. And I went and I sat down and I was like, What is my problem? I'm thinking this all my like, why is this so scary? What if I just said eff it? Right? F it. F it. And so I just said kept saying that, the actual expletive in my mind. And then the next time I got up there, it was so much easier. And I think we just put so much weight, emphasis, you know, there's so much that we put into that moment when it doesn't have to necessarily be there. We can just go up there, be ourselves, we've practiced enough. And if you just kind of let go, oftentimes it just comes out. I love that. So before we break, I really want to know about this tool, name it to tame it. Why is simply identifying emotions such a powerful psychological strategy?

SPEAKER_00 26:02

So when we feel emotional, whether we have high anxiety, we're really sad, maybe you're just incredibly embarrassed about something. Your brain processes that in the emotional part of your brain. When you put a label to it and you just say, okay, I feel anxiety right now, or I feel embarrassed, it switches over to more of the logical processing part of your brain, and suddenly you start to make more sense of it. Research will show that just naming it reduces the emotional intensity of an uncomfortable feeling. So if I can say, oh, all right, I'm feeling kind of anxious today, my anxiety goes down a little bit because suddenly I'm helping my brain and my body make sense of what's going on. Another part of my brain starts to process it. But when we don't do that, sometimes we then start to remember all the other times that we felt that emotion. So I'm embarrassed because I've just stumbled on stage. Suddenly I'm up there thinking about, oh, remember the third grade spelling bee when you uh spelled the word wrong and you were embarrassed. Like all of a sudden, it's like a file cabinet of all of these other times you felt that emotion can come flooding to you. But if you just name it, all right, this is embarrassment, moves to the other side of your brain, then you can usually move on and you start to feel a little bit better.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Oh, I love that. And I think, you know, when you are in that anxious state, obviously you're in your sympathetic nervous system, you're in that fight or flight, you're in your limbic system, in your amygdala. And when you actually take it to your prefrontal cortex and you start to just analyze it objectively, you naturally can flow into your parasympathetic nervous system. And that's where I think a lot of our really profound objective thinking can really come online. And you can help to process all of that anxiety into a place that isn't as activated. I think that that is so powerful. Well, I have 80,000 more questions for you. And we don't have time in this half. I can't believe it. But will you join me for the second half of this podcast? I would love to. All right, so thank you everyone for joining us. Stay tuned for the second half of this amazing conversation with Amy Marin as we continue exploring mental strength, emotional resilience, burnout grief, and practical tools for navigating life's most difficult moments. Thanks for tuning in to the A New Insight Podcast. Please remember the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. You can find us anywhere podcasts are streaming. On YouTube at mydanew.insight and at anew insight.com under the Anu Insight Podcast tab. And follow us on our socials at mydanu.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates. Tune in next time and Evolve With Us.