wanna know what over a decade of therapy, a psychology degree, and my own podcast have taught me about mental health?! in this solo episode, i’m breaking down the key takeaways that i’ve learned throughout my mental health journey.

in honor of it being mental health awareness month, i’m condensing everything i’ve learned from receiving intensive mental health care and years of dbt therapy as a suicidally depressed teenager– combined with my psychology education at upenn and my experience creating this very podcast– to make your 12-step guide to maintaining your mental health.

by the end of this episode, you’ll know all the mental health tips + tricks i wish i’d known when i was struggling!

are you a chronic emotional over-invester?! in this solo episode, i explain how a simple mental health mantra transformed my mentality around emotional boundaries and even lowered my anxiety!

by the end of this episode, you’ll know how to stop the emotional over-involvement and start prioritizing your mental health. 

Today…

Today…

today’s guest is dr. emily anhalt—clinical psychologist, emotional fitness expert, author, and co-founder of⁠ coa: your gym for mental health⁠. dr. anhalt specializes in helping individuals, founders, and teams build emotional wellness through everyday mental fitness practices. in this episode, we dive deep into what it actually means to be emotionally fit—and how gen z can build better mental health at school, work, and in life.

Today's guest is Dr. Mark Zachary Rosenthal—a clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences department and the Psychology & Neuroscience department at Duke University. He is also the director of the Duke Center for Misophonia and Emotion Regulation (CMER), where he pioneers research on misophonia, emotional functioning, borderline personality disorder, virtual reality, digital health, and behavioral therapies. We are also joined by Grace Heppes, the Outreach and Education Coordinator for CMER.

In this week's solo episode, I talk about how you can completely shift your mindset to become more optimistic. I dive into why it's so helpful for your health and well-being to be optimistic before sharing three positive psychology techniques you can try out to unlock your inner optimist.

Today's guest is Emma Seppälä— a best-selling author, Yale lecturer and faculty director of the Yale School of Management’s Women’s Leadership Program, the Science Director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, and international keynote speaker. A psychologist and research scientist by training, her expertise is the science of happiness, emotional intelligence, and social connection.

In this week's solo episode, I discuss why we invalidate our emotions and the power of self-validating! I share what self-validation is and how it's used in DBT, the two most common ways that people self-invalidate, why we self-invalidate and the consequences of doing so, the cycle of self-invalidation, three skills you can use to start validating your emotions, how to make self-validation a habit, goals to set and exercises to practice so you can start self-validating, and your most-asked questions on self-invalidation. If you want to stop judging yourself for your emotions and start accepting your feelings, then this episode is a MUST-LISTEN!

Today's guest is Dr. Emily Anhalt— a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the CoFounder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, the gym for mental health. For the past thirteen years, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees, and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness. We discuss how she started specializing in emotional fitness, the seven traits of emotional fitness that can help you succeed, key ways you can start to build your emotional fitness including becoming more mindful and self-aware, what emotional push-ups are and examples you can try yourself, why people often prioritize their physical health over mental health, the dangerous effects of having low emotional fitness, how to differentiate emotional fitness from other similar psychology terms, the benefits of incorporating building your emotional fitness into your routine, predictions on future trends that will embrace emotional fitness, and important emotional skills all teens (and parents!) should know.

Today's solo episode is all about emotional vulnerability in teens! I explain the DBT model of emotions and the biopsychosocial theory as a background for how teens understand their emotions and why certain teens are more emotionally reactive. I then discuss why physical vulnerability affects teens' emotional regulation skills and how to decrease physical vulnerability using the DBT PLEASE skill. This episode is a MUST LISTEN for teens wanting to learn emotional regulation skills and for parents looking to understand their teens' emotions better!

Today's solo episode is all about coping skills! I discuss all of my favorite DBT coping skills geared toward tolerating distress and regulating emotions and share how you can easily do them at home. These coping skills include the TIPP skill, Opposite Action skill, STOP skill, Check the Facts skill, and ABC skill.

Today's guest is Jay Fields, an educator, coach and author who has taught the principles of embodied social and emotional intelligence to individuals and organizations for twenty years. In this episode, we talk all about emotional regulation, including emotional difficulties faced by college students, how your childhood and parents can impact your ability to emotionally regulate and form healthy relationships, ways to improve your relationship between your body and your emotions, tips for managing your nervous system and building better emotional habits, and the power of self-empathy.

Today's guest is Sharon Brubaker—a certified life coach and credentialed Grief Specialist who has studied grief and healing for over 16 years. Sharon specializes in helping grieving women process their thoughts and emotions. In this episode, we discuss different ways in which people can grieve, the inaccuracies of the five stages of grief, tips on how to cope, ask for help, and heal when experiencing grief, advice on helping a loved one who is experiencing grief, and how our education system has failed to teach children about grief.

Today's solo episode is all about mental health habits! I discuss how the principles in James Clear's Atomic Habits can be applied to mental health, using habits to decrease emotional vulnerability, the PLEASE skill + investing in physical health to support your mental health, the nonnegotiable habits I do on a daily basis, the importance of habit tracking, and habits to break ASAP.